The combined funeral of Anthony and Jessica Harris was a sparsely attended affair.

The overwhelmingly long guest list that had marked the not-wedding of Xander and Anya was nothing but a distant memory, as the very small group gathered in the cemetery, in the softly falling rain, to pay their respects to the fallen couple. The Harris clan apparently was far more willing to take part in a celebration, than in a time of loss and suffering.

If there was such a thing as “fair weather family”, it seemed that the Harrises’ relations fit the bill.

Reputation and simple poor manners had left Xander’s parents with few friends in Sunnydale; so there were fewer than twenty people in attendance of the funeral. The Scoobie gang was represented only by Willow, Giles and Anya. Willow had been a friend of the family’s since early childhood, and Anya felt that it was the appropriate thing for her to attend.

After the way the Harrises had treated her, Giles felt that she really had no obligation to go, but Anya had told him that she would have felt wrong not to go, no matter what Xander had done, after all that had passed between them before.

Giles had looked at her with affection in his eyes as he had asked her softly, teasingly, “Are you quite certain that you’re no longer human? Because it seems you do a better job at humanity than some humans I know.”

Anya had given him a self-conscious smile, half-pleased, half-troubled, tucking her head shyly as she had shrugged and replied in a soft, uncertain voice, “I don’t know – sometimes I forget that I’m not – not everything you deserve for me to be...”

Calmly, yet with a fire of anger in his eyes, the Watcher had replied in a soft, careful voice, “If by that ludicrous phrase – ‘not everything I deserve you to be’ – you mean ‘human’…you have absolutely *nothing* to worry about, my dear…”

“I know,” Anya replied a bit fretfully, looking away from him. “It’s just – I get so confused sometimes…I know that being human is better – you know, for humans – and sometimes I still *feel* like I did when I was human…but I know that you really deserve better…”

“No, Anyanka,” Giles interrupted, his expression softer as he raised a hand to gently cup her cheek, raising her lovely but uncertain eyes to his again. “You are better than I deserve.” He had taken to calling her “Anyanka”, telling her that he thought it much more fitting to her than the shorter – and in his opinion sillier – “Anya”.

Anya loved hearing that name on his lips – yet another evidence she needed that he accepted her as she was.

She gazed up at him with a yearning, almost awed expression in her eyes that never failed to go straight to the Watcher’s heart – and occasionally further. She looked away almost shyly, shaking her head in the beginnings of denial, but he stopped it before it could start.

“Whatever good is in you,” he continued earnestly, “is not some remnant of your brief time of humanity. It is because of *you*…Anyanka…that you feel the things you feel…say the things you say…are the wonderful person that you are…and that person is far more than I deserve.”

Those words left Anya speechless with wonder at his confession – and his next confession left her breathless as well.

“I suspect – I may be falling completely, irrevocably, in love with you, Anyanka.”

She had stared at him for a long moment, their lips bare inches apart by this point, before wildly glancing behind her at the clock, and turning back to him with a hasty shrug.

“The funeral’s in an hour,” she had pointed out breathlessly – and more than a little hopefully.

His eyes had widened, glancing past her to the clock, before nodding quickly and agreeing, “There’s time.”

They had been a bit flushed and thrown together – but an hour later, the Watcher and the vengeance demon had been at the funeral with the handful of other mourners.

As for Xander himself, he was still in the hospital, stable, but in a coma – and the doctors did not hold out much hope of his ever waking up.

The bullet had destroyed a good portion of his brain, including the parts responsible for movement and speech. A machine was keeping his heart pumping, his lungs breathing, as his brain was no longer capable of it.

The doctors said that there was little chance that he could hear, or speak, or was aware of anything around him, but that there was a good chance that he was still capable of conscious thought. The regions of his mind responsible for thought and memory were still intact, though his brain injury would never allow him the ability to actually communicate with the world around him – never again.

Xander was trapped in a world where he could not move, could not speak, could not communicate or act on his environment in any way – with only the murmurs and memories of his own mind for company…for the rest of his life.

Buffy thought it ironically fitting to his crimes.

She had been at the hospital almost every day since that horrible day when Xander had killed his parents, and tried to kill himself. She had felt the need to check in with his doctors each day, to find out how he was doing, and if there was any change – but when they had offered to let her actually visit her friend, she had always refused.

Somehow, she could not bring herself to face Xander, even when she knew he would have no idea that she was even there.

She had absolutely no idea what she would say to him.

Dawn had refused to go to the hospital even once – which was exactly what Buffy had expected – but Willow had been there every single day, sitting by his side, talking to him, hoping that something she would say might trigger a response in her friend, might somehow bring him back to consciousness – so that he might eventually be brought back to *her*. She was firmly convinced that there was hope – he *could* come back.

After all – she had come back.

But Buffy was convinced that this was different – worse – than what had happened with Willow.

Willow had killed the boy who had killed Tara, and the man who had fed her addiction and violated her body and soul.

Xander had murdered his own family in cold blood – and tortured a helpless creature who had been utterly defenseless against him.

Buffy was convinced that the two situations were nothing alike.

Her life fell into a routine over the next few weeks.

She was getting mostly day shifts at the Doublemeat Palace, and she would go to work in the morning, then stop by the hospital in the afternoon to check on Xander’s status – without actually checking in on *him*. Most days when she got home, Dawn would be there already, usually on the phone long distance to L.A.

Usually, she would abruptly hang up the phone when Buffy came through the door – but Buffy knew who she was talking to.

She was talking to the person that Buffy herself desperately longed to talk to.

When she walked through the door one afternoon, exactly three weeks after Spike had left, she finally managed to summon the courage that had evaded her every other day, and called out to her sister hurriedly, “*Wait*! Dawnie, don’t hang up!”

Dawn’s hand froze with the receiver still pressed to her ear, as she looked up at her sister from where she sat on the sofa, her eyebrows raised in a surprised question.

Dawn’s anger with her sister had evaporated quickly after the incident, as she had come to understand how torn Buffy must have been, between the boy who had been like her brother for six years, and the vampire that had recently come to mean so much more. She still felt that her sister had made a huge mistake in her handling of the situation – but she could not help but feel compassion for the obvious pain Buffy was in, in Spike’s absence.

And Spike himself actually had quite a bit to do with her change in attitude.

It was obvious from their first long distance phone conversation, that Spike missed Buffy, too – if the number of times he managed to mention her in each and every conversation was any indication.

By the time that Buffy managed to work up the nerve to actually ask to speak with him – Dawn had come to hope that she would.

But in the moment after – that nerve fled Buffy again.

“Um – can you find out if Angel’s around?” she asked in a breathless rush, her eyes wide and panicked as she uttered the quickest out she could manage.

Dawn rolled her eyes in irritation, sighing dramatically as she muttered into the phone, “Don’t flip out, okay? Is, um – Angel there?”

There was a moment of heavy silence, before Buffy heard the sound of loud, British cursing on the other end of the phone, as Dawn winced and held the phone a couple of inches away from her ear.

“I know,” she said in an appeasing tone of voice. “I know…actually, I think ‘moron’ is a better word…okay…okay…well, she’s still standing here waiting to talk to him, so…” She nodded, saying, “Okay, I’ll talk to you later. Bye,” and holding out the phone expectantly to her sister.

Buffy’s face flushed with embarrassment as she crossed the room and took the phone from her sister’s hand.

“Dummy,” Dawn commented quietly as she passed her and made her way up the stairs.

Buffy did not even attempt to defend herself.

“Buffy?”

“Yeah – Angel?”

“Yeah – um – why is Spike pacing outside my office fuming? What did you say to him?” Angel asked a bit nervously.

“N-nothing,” Buffy admitted quietly. “I didn’t talk to him. I just – asked to talk to you.”

Angel was silent for a long moment, before he replied in a strange tone, somewhere between pleased satisfaction and exasperated annoyance, “Well that explains it then. Buffy…” His voice softened, as if in an attempt to not be heard by his childe outside his door, “…would it kill you to talk to him?”

Buffy blinked in surprise, her eyes widening in confusion. “But – does he *want* to talk to me? I mean – I thought – he’s gotta be – isn’t he still mad at me for what happened?”

Angel sighed. “No, Buffy,” he told her. “He’s not. He just – needed some time away.”

Buffy swallowed back the sob of relief that rose in her throat, trying to control the shaking of her voice as she asked in a hesitant whisper, “Then – then why didn’t he even – say goodbye?”

“Because if he’d tried to say goodbye, you never would have let him leave.”

Once again, Buffy had no argument for the truth.

“I’m not saying it’s easy for him to understand, Buffy. I mean – for you it’s this huge gray area, and it’s gotta be painful and confusing…but for the one who actually got shot, kidnapped, and tortured for months – the whole thing’s pretty black and white,” Angel pointed out matter-of-factly. “It was tough for him to see you that night – taking up for Xander’s life.”

“I know,” Buffy admitted softly, tears streaking her face as she tried to make him understand. “It’s just – Angel, it was *Xander*. I know you two never got along – but he saved my *life* -- he saved the *world*! He meant so much to me – and I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t bring myself to take part in – in his death. Can’t you understand that?”

“Yes, Buffy, *I* understand it,” Angel replied with patience and compassion in his voice. “It’s a little harder for Spike – but I think he’s starting to understand it, too, with a little distance to put things in perspective. But – there’s something *you* need to understand, Buffy.”

The Slayer was uncharacteristically silent, subdued, waiting for him to go on.

“It’s *not* Xander – not anymore,” he reminded her gently. “He’s not the boy you knew – and apparently he hasn’t been for quite a while. Spike remembers everything now -- *everything* -- and from what I can figure, when Xander talked Willow down from ending the world…he already had Spike chained up and starving in the Initiative caves.”

It was at that point that Buffy broke down in tears.

“He’s not the same person you knew, Buffy. And – if you’re ever going to move on…you’re going to have to face that.”

******************************

“Hey. I bet you’re – probably wondering why I haven’t been by until now.”

Of course, there was no response from the pale, silent figure in the hospital bed.

“Well,” Buffy corrected quietly, frowning as she slowly sat down in the chair beside the bed, “actually, I – guess you’re not. The doctors say you – can’t really hear me.” Her voice was halting as she sought the words she needed to express. “I guess there’s no point in being here, really – but – I just have to do this.”

She was quiet for a moment, swallowing back the tears that rose in her throat – but they made their way down her face in spite of her best attempts.

“I’ve been spending half my time these past few weeks, trying not to hate you,” she told her former best friend, who lay utterly unresponsive in front of her. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought that he was simply asleep. “And – I’ve spent the other half -- *trying* to hate you,” she whispered, her voice aching with the pain of her words.

“I – I think that I should – after all you’ve done – and in a way, I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive you – but – in another way – I think that I already have. You – you’ve been there for me so many times – you’ve saved me in so many different ways – and I never could have imagined not having you in my life…but – I’m going to have to, now.”

“I don’t even know you anymore, Xander,” Buffy whispered, shaking her head sadly as her tear-filled eyes studied his still, slack face, memorizing it for what would likely be the last time. “And – I think I haven’t for a long time. You’re not the person you were when we met…that person is gone. The person that did what you did – to Spike – to your parents – to Willow, and Dawnie, and *me* -- I don’t want anything to do with that person. And if that’s all that’s left of you, Xander – I’m ready to move on, and let go. There’s – only one thing left for me to do.”

Buffy found that as she went along, the words came easier, though her tears did not stop, as she whispered softly, with the remnants of affection she still felt for the friend she had once known.

“It’s time for me to say goodbye.”

She rose from her chair, moving to the side of the bed, gazing down with sad eyes.

“I love Spike. I know that now – and as much as you’ve meant to me – there’s no part of me that can ever accept what you did to him. I – I had a hard time – choosing between you, as my friend – and him. But – now that I know what the choice really is – between Spike – and the person that you’ve become…” She shook her head with a sad smile, “…somehow the choice seems so much easier.”

“I’m going to miss who you were to me, Xander,” Buffy whispered, as she leaned over the bed, pressing a soft, almost reverent kiss to his cool, dry brow. She stood up straight, the single word a mere breath on her lips.

“Goodbye.”

And with nothing left to say, the Slayer turned and walked out of the room – without a backward glance.