RATING: PG-13 (Mentions character death)
SPOILERS: Through The Gift
SUMMARY: Months after Buffy's death, Anya muses on the gap she left behind.
DISCLAIMER: All characters in this story from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are owned by Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and Kuzui Enterprises.
SPECIAL THANKS: To Amy, Loki and Laura, who keep me sane when I'm ready to
give up. I love you guys.

Anya´s POV

For eleven hundred years, I needed no one. I lived every day alone. With
no one except whatever girl had cursed her man to keep me company.

But I wasn´t lonely. I didn´t have time to be lonely. With all the filthy
philandering men in the world, there was rarely a day off, let alone time to
be lonely. And I suppose I can blame all the time I spent alone on the job
I had; on what I was -- I mean, as a demon, you don´t exactly garner friends
and lovers. But that wouldn´t be true.

Truth be told though, I didn´t like humans. ‘Petty, squabbling, unfaithful
and simple animals´ was how I viewed them. Some days now, I marvel at how
right I nearly was. Just watch the news on any given night and check out
the murder and mayhem all over the world. Humans without regard for each
other, for the life they´ve been given. I can´t watch the news anymore. It
makes me too sad to see what people can do to each other. Thank goodness
there are also people who understand the gift of life, and rush to help
preserve it at every turn. People like firemen, and policemen, and doctors.
  Slayers and Watchers. People who aren't Slayers or Watchers, but who step
in to help anyway. People who stop to help at an accident, or who hold a
child who has just seen something scary. Before I gave up on humans
altogether, I figured out there were heroes and good people on every corner,
if you gave them the opportunity.

Sometimes I think that each human should have been born like me. I was
physically born a long time ago. In a little country in what is now Russia,
to a woman who made bread and a man who made pottery. I had an older
brother who wanted to be a farmer and ended up dying of a fever the winter
before I was ten. I can´t even remember their names now. But I still
remember the smell of yeast and the sound of the pottery wheel. I remember
my brother´s wheezing lungs in the days before his body just gave up. I
remember those things like I was there yesterday. But I don´t consider that
to be when I was born.

I´m sure D´Hoffryn, my former patron, thinks it was when I was made human,
when my amulet was destroyed. When I was reverted to a human body with
human worries and needs and desires. But he´d be wrong too.

If you asked someone close to me now, they´d probably say I was born when I
met Xander. When I fell into his chocolate eyes and finally understood the
true depth of emotions some of the women who called me must have felt. But
that´s not right either.

I was born when I heard Joyce died. When Xander turned to me and told me
the news. That´s when I first felt the sadness crush the weight of my soul.
  That´s when I knew I was human – when I was able to grieve. When I was
able to feel the loss of someone I knew in my heart and be sad as I realized
she was gone and never coming back. That´s when I was born. That´s when I
finally understood all the frailty it takes to be human. Because no matter
how strong people are, or how unaffected they seem, it´s always the
weaknesses that makes them human. It´s the caring though anything, the
feelings and the thoughts that make people human. Humans are imperfect,
impetuous, caring, and full of feelings they can´t control. Everyone should
have that thunderclap of awareness when they're born. The awareness that
makes them cherish every moment, even the bad ones, because you never know
when it'll all end for you.

When Joyce died was also when I first understood how loneliness can consume
you. I knew Joyce well enough to call her out of the blue or to drop in or
to know that she liked honey in her tea, but I wasn´t family. So, I was a
bit removed from the loneliness that consumed Dawn and Buffy. Although they
still had each other, they missed *her* presence in their lives, and they
were left with a hole that only Joyce could have filled.

I watched Buffy plan and attend the funeral. I watched as she made sure
Dawn would be able to stay with her. As she quit school and tried to heal.
I watched as she kept slaying, kept covering up the hole in her heart, until
it wasn´t any smaller, but it was well hidden enough that strangers wouldn´t
see it. I watched as the loneliness took over, hunching her shoulders a
little. Making her sniffle when she thought she was alone in a room.
Making her miss her Mom.

Buffy laughed for the first time nineteen days after Joyce died. I wonder
sometimes if anyone else kept track. Spike got some gum caught on his boot
and he was sticking to every carpet in the shop until Giles kicked him out,
and as Spike left, he tripped a little. He didn´t fall, and made a
spectacular recovery involving flailing arms and teetering balance that
ended with him narrowly missing staking himself on Mr. Edward´s wall-mounted
flagpole outside the store next door. And Buffy laughed. Just a little
laugh, and I could tell she felt guilty right after by the little tears in
her eyes, but I was glad to hear her sound happy again. Even if it was for
only a few seconds.

You can be surrounded by people who love you, and still be lonely. I didn´t
understand that at first, but the more I watched, the more I saw it in
Buffy. I read a lot in the slayer journals Giles keeps upstairs in those
few weeks after Joyce died. And the theme through all the Slayers was the
same. Slay alone, fight alone, die alone. It´s a lonely existence, and,
until Buffy, was the rule. But Buffy had friends, and that´s what saved her
from the overwhelming feeling of being *alone* after those first weeks, I
think. Her friends and Dawn. After a month, she began to smile more. She
began to call us instead of us always calling her. She became more
vigilant in guarding Dawn from Glory. And her shoulders straightened a
little. I could see the loneliness creep away in the daylight as she spent
time with us.

The loneliness is back now. And blacker than ever.

Buffy died forty-three days ago.

Xander still has trouble even smiling. Willow sniffles like Buffy did all
the time. Giles can´t remember anything for more than two minutes, and then
he´ll clear his throat with misty eyes. Dawn walks around with her arms
wrapped around herself all the time. There´s too much loneliness here for
just me to help with, but I try.

I hate that there´s a part of Xander that I can´t reach. There´s a part
that belongs to Buffy´s memory, and that part is still holding court over
the rest of him. He still gets up every morning and does his job, and then
his Scooby duty, but the little light behind his eyes is a bit dimmer. His
steps are a bit slower. He doesn´t care about the world as much as he used
to. Because he misses her. He misses talking to her, joking with her,
teasing her and standing beside her in the good fight. She´s left a
Buffy-sized hole that I can´t fill.

But I make sure every night that I hold him tight and tell him I love him.
I try to send a spark back into his soul. I don´t know if it´s futile yet
or not, but I want to chase the loneliness away. I know Tara does the same
for Willow, but we haven´t made the breakthrough yet. It´s a big job. We
miss Buffy too, but she wasn´t as big a part of our lives. Our holes are
manageable.

Sometimes I think I'm close. Xander will look up and his eyes will get the
little half moons under them like he's going to smile, but then he seems to
remember that he's missing Buffy, and it all stops. It's been so long since
I've seen him grin that I almost forget what it looks like. But as long as
I remember, I'll keep trying. I can't give up. Not only is this something
I want, but I'm pretty sure that Buffy would miss Xander's smile too. She'd
be very upset over how everyone's closed down now, I think.

Giles is still keenly feeling the loss of a daughter who wasn´t born to him,
but rather chosen. The fabled Chosen One that brought joy to his life in
ways he never imagined as a Watcher. They chose to be each other´s family,
and in ways that´s more precious than being born into one. He misses her
too. Every time the little bell over the door rings, he looks up, and he
looks so hopeful for just a second that it breaks my heart when his face
falls every time he´s disappointed. He knows she´s not coming back, but his
heart doesn´t believe it yet. Buffy was too good. She cheated death and
won so many times that now that it´s real, none of us can believe it.

Sometimes now, when Giles and I are at the store, and there´s no customers,
I try to get him to talk about her. I ask questions about how they met and
the battles they went through, but he usually changes the subject pretty
fast. Then he gives me more work to do so I won´t have the chance to ask
again. I understand that he´s still hurting, but I wish he´d let me in,
just a little.

It´s all enough to make a former demon go to desperate measures. I´ve
searched through spell books and tomes looking for a way to lessen
everyone´s pain, and yesterday, I found a way. I think.

Everyone comes by the store every evening now. To get assignments for slay
duty or just to hang out together – pretending that as a group we´re not as
lonely as we really are. I´m sitting beside Xander, and he´s not really
paying attention to anything Tara is saying, but Willow is busy drawing
runes on her stones with charcoal, and Giles is closing out the register, so
they haven´t noticed. Spike is working at getting drunk, like he does
every night, and Tara continues telling her joke, and when she gets to the
part with the clown and the duck, I laugh. Because it´s funny. Spike roars
with laughter with me, and makes some comment about the clown deserving his
fate. Willow looks up in surprise after it´s all over and offers a weak
smile. Xander still doesn´t react at all, and Giles looks horrified with
what the clown did with the duck.

“That´s it for me, kids,” Spike announces. “Got my bad joke for the night,
and now I´m off to kill some night-time ghoulies.”

“Don´t forget to torture them with the joke before you stake them,” I say,
smiling as he catches my eyes as he makes his way to the door. “It´s not
like you can use real torture anymore, Chip-boy.”

He points an unsteady finger at me. “Xander is a bad influence on you.”

I smile innocently and watch as he purposely flaps his duster as he spins
away from me. He´s such a Drama Queen.

It´s all over in about three seconds.

Spike catches his boot on the wood I surreptitiously nailed to the doorway
earlier, and as he flails about, I watch everyone else, waiting. Spike
finally lands in a heap just outside the doorway, narrowly missing Mr.
Edward´s flagpole again. He sits up in stunned silence and finally utters,
“Bloody hell!” before grasping what dignity he has left and stalking into
the night.

I´m still waiting.

Everyone is staring at the doorway, watching Spike disappear down the
street, exhibiting no sign of the ruckus he´s just survived. But no one is
saying anything. I hold my breath, waiting for Giles to come down on me for
putting a hazard in the door that could potentially harm customers, but it´s
all still eerily quiet.

Then Willow looks up at Xander, and the two of them smile strangely. “Do
you remember how Buffy laughed when Spike did that the last time?” She asks
breathlessly.

Xander actually chuckles, and I see the spark shoot up to his eyes. “Yeah.
She had a great laugh.” I'm awestruck at his smile all over again. I can
feel the tears rush to my eyes, and I insanely grin at all of them.

Giles steps forward and a ghost of a smile crosses his face. “She had a
wonderful sense of humor.”

And then they begin talking about Buffy. Really talking. Remembering what
she liked and why. Who she loved and who she touched. Remembering why they
loved her so much that when she left them it was unbearable.

My heart is zooming a little in my chest, and my eyes are still filled up
with happy tears. Tara catches my gaze and we share a hopeful look. Maybe
now we can push some of the loneliness away by remembering Buffy together.
Because the Buffy-holes aren´t ever going to get smaller, but they can be
filled up with her again and again by sharing her with each other. That´s
what fighting loneliness is about. Getting filled up when you´re empty.

It was forty-three days before Xander, Willow and Giles laughed after Buffy
died.

The important part is that they laughed.

Buffy would have liked that, I think. I'm sure, that wherever she is, the
sound of their laughter might make her happy for a moment.

Maybe it's taking some of her loneliness away.

The End

Feedback