“Just the beat of a lonely heart

And it’s mine…

And I don’t want to be alone”

-       The Beegees

If someone were writing this, they’d begin like Snoopy begins his crime stories, typing on a typewriter on the roof of his doghouse. “It was a stormy night…”

Well, it’s not night, but it’s overcast, so it might as well be night. Although… all the times I’ve been in a cemetery at night with the Buffster… I got knocked around pretty good. So I guess it’s a good thing that it’s day, then. No monster baddies to interrupt. The only monsters are inside of me.

I’m not much of a fighter, really. I do it because it needs to be done. Because I want to feel like I belong, because I want to do something useful. I never complained. Even with the cracked ribs. I don’t have any special powers, but I try. I try really hard.

Strike that. I do have special powers. They say I’m the one who “sees” things. The last two times I was in a cemetery by daylight, I was taking care of my best friend. The first time I saw enough to me sure she didn’t do something incredibly stupid – ending the world. The second time, she says I saw enough to calm her down about going to see Tara.

Well, I don’t know about all that. I saved her, they say. But who’s going to save me?

I knew there was a price for fighting evil. I did it with a grin, I tried to be the one who could bring a laugh to everyone when nothing else could. Even when I lost the eye, I joked. I joked because we couldn’t afford to fall apart. Not me – or not only me. “We”. There was one time at the hospital when Willow almost lost it. And we couldn’t go there. Not with the First and its rocking turok-hans trying to make log-cabin trophies out of us. So however much I wanted Willow to cry over me because I needed to feel that my friends loved me, I had to be hard and tell her to not go there.

I even managed to joke that terrible day when my girl died. I knew she went the way she wanted to – defending the humanity she was trying so very hard to master – and I still get a half-grin seeing her in my mind’s eye, sword in hand, telling Andrew that they’ll be protecting Buffy with his life - but knowing very well that in the end, she gave her life for him as much as for the rest of us. That’s who my girl was, and one thing I promised myself that day, while I was choking back tears on the bus ride out of Sunnydale (or what was left of it) was that I’d spend the rest of my life telling people about Anya. Who she was, and how in trying to become more human, she made me a better man.

That’s why I’m telling all this to you on this grey, overcast day. I never got the chance… but better late than never.

I think the best thing I loved about Anya was her presence. Sure enough, she was wacky, incredibly literal, and greedy. But she was there. And she loved me, made me feel whole by her sheer ability to fill my apartment and my life.

Even though at some point I walked away, I think Anya was always my girl. In a way, she still is. You wouldn’t believe how often I dream of her. People may say I’ve closed in upon myself, I don’t care. I’m not a whiner, I’m not going to say I got a raw deal out of what happened in Sunnydale in May 2003. I’m just going to ask people to leave me alone for a while.

I think Willow and Buffy felt sorry for me. No – I know they did. But Willow had her Slayer girlfriend. And Buffy had something more important – her freedom. Sure, I could’ve gone to Europe with the Buffster, or to South America with Will and Kennedy. I think all three of them were disappointed when I said no – I mean, we may still be all working together, and on the Watchers’ Council (Giles’) payroll, but after seven years, it was still a parting of the ways. Big time.

I didn’t become a Watcher – even though Giles would’ve liked it, I didn’t think I’d look good in tweed like Andrew or Wood. So what do I do? I go around the country, checking on Watcher-less Slayers and on hellmouths, active or not. In a way, I guess I’m still a zeppo. A handsome, one-eyed zeppo. With large upper arms, as a friend of my ex used to say.

I didn’t mind one bit. It took me long enough, but I do know that I’m in there somewhere with all these people who have superpowers. I matter. And although I know it’s mean and manipulative, I’m gonna say this – it was worth telling them, Buffy and Willow and Giles, that I wanted to spend some time alone, just to see the concern and sadness in their eyes. I know they wondered, and they still wonder, whether I’d be OK.

I love my friends. But after what happened that day in what was Sunnydale no longer… we all needed to do our things, I guess. Willow and Kennedy ended up in Suriname. Buffy and Dawn went with Giles to London to begin the work of rebuilding the Council. And me…

I went to Cleveland. Yeah, cheese guy much. Not that weird cheese guy from our collective pissed-off-First-Slayer nightmare. Just cheesy. South America, Europe… Cleveland. And then Dayton. Not Cincinnati. Rounded up a team of three Slayers. As I said, didn’t play Watcher; just helped them do what they already knew how to do. Stopped a brotherhood of water demons boarding freighters and murdering sailors on Lake Erie. Found the Hellmouth and the Master’s cousin. Didn’t solve the mystery of how the Edmund Fitzgerald went down. And… got a job controlling the quality of iron beams. The regular stuff.

Didn’t get a house. Giles still wanted me on the move throughout the North and Midwest. I learned to do research a la Giles, because apart from Kirsten, my Slayers didn’t really dig the book thing. So, y’know, not so big on the doughnuts anymore, a lot more on the let’s-crack-the-books-open. Can you imagine? Me, doing the stiff upper-lip stuff? Me neither. But someone has to do it.  

So anyway, we’d destroyed a Hellmouth back in Sunnydale. Well, new Hellmouth in Cleveland, and suddenly there’s a huge migration going on. Found out from the transcription of an old Iroquois medicine man’s testament that apparently there are lesser and greater Hellmouths, and the one in the ‘Dale ranked in the high and fancy, while the one under Cleveland – pretty near to the Museum of Rock n’ Roll actually, and I’m sure all those bad Elvis impersonators give out plenty of negative vibes – is lower on the demon must-see list. Except… well, Sunnydale being gone and all, demons are making do with other places.

So, it’s been a busy year. Got an apartment in Cleveland, with a snazzy living room to kinda hold briefings with the girls. I say kinda, cause y’know… not a Watcher here. But it’s amazing how these girls are really into going out to kick ass even when odds are way against them. Like another Slayer I know who’s having a heck of a time in Roma. But now I’m older than the Slayers I help. So I’m “the Voice”, like Vicky says.

You’d like Vicky. She has character. Except that I just remembered – she could never dress trashy enough to meet with your approval. She’s kinda the punkish type. Or, y’know, whatever they call those Avril Lavigne groupies nowadays. Not in with the styles anymore, yikes… But anyway, Vicky says I’m “the Voice”. The voice of reason, I hope, not the nagging one. At least I don’t have a British flag stitched on my butt.

So anyway, I just try to be with them what I was for Buffy for seven years. The guy who sees things. Or so they tell me. I did it for the girls, of course. And I did it for those who aren’t there anymore. For the girls I loved who died. Both the girls I loved who died.

Y’know, I really remembered that Zeppo tag for a long time. And I guess that after a time I wanted you to know what I’d become. Because Anya was gone. I needed to have somebody who’d known me long enough that she would be proud of how far I’d come.

And then the call came.

I didn’t get specifics till I got to L.A. To the big fancy law firm office where Angel ended up. Geez, I wanted to turn him into a cloud of dust when I saw how he lived, what he did, for what he worked… But I know what you did for him. You came back one last time, just to make sure he was on the right track. That’s enough for me.

I lied. It isn’t. I wanted you to come back for me, too. To check that *I* was on the right track. I wanted to hide in the school’s broom closet with you one last time, and you had to leave me for the big shopping spree in the sky… Damn you, Cordelia.

I kept telling myself… I don’t know what I told myself. That maybe, finally, we could get together and just talk, not spend time making snarky comments. Because now we know that life – for people like us, at least – is way too short to waste on snarky comments. Besides, I thought… you knew me then, you would’ve known me now, and I wanted you to finally tell me… that you’re proud of me.

The wind just picked up. It picked up stray dead leaf off your gravestone and blew it right on my face. Is that you’re way of shushing me? Of telling me it’s all good?