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"So I ran like the wind to the water.
Please don't leave me again, I cried.
And I threw bitter tears at the ocean,
but all that came back was the tide."
-- SARAH MACLACHLAN, I WILL NOT FORGET YOU

When Xander sleeps he dreams of Buffy.

He shudders awake, startled and shaking, his body weak and slick with sweat. The woman beside him stares with bright, accusing eyes.

The questions are always the same. Her voice shatters the akward silence hard and sharp with hurt. "Were you dreaming? Was it a nightmare? Was it about..."

Only she can never say the name and he can never answer. All he can do is roll away from her, his tired eyes focusing on the empty room. Sometimes he stumbles to the bathroom and vomits into the rusted excuse for a toilet.

He always locks the door behind him.

Xander doesn't want her to see him huddled on the bathroom floor, his forehead pressed against the cold porcelain. He doesn't want her to see him gasping and trembling in useless exhaustion.

It is enough that the walls are thin. He imagines her sitting up in their rumpled bed, shivering without him, listening...

When Xander sleeps he dreams of Buffy.

He wishes that he could say the dreams were kind and gentle. But that would be the worst kind of lie. Instead he dreams violent and red. Through the haze all he can see is the body lying quiet on the floor, her shining hair dark with blood.

She stares up at him, angry and betrayed. And somehow her still lips whisper into his ear:

Take care of Dawn.

She knows he'll do that much though he wonders if she knows how after the end, when there was no one left, her baby sister turned to the only other person left standing. He wonders if she know how easy it was to go from friends to lovers. How, when there was no one else left, they took comfort in each other.

Most nights he stares at the ceiling, one arm curled securely around the girl pressed to his side. She sprawls, intertwined. So close. Sometimes almost too close. Her lush mouth presses against his neck, slack in repose. Her long hair tangles around them and he revels in her warmth. He can feel the steady rhythm of her heart against his ribcage and the even sound of her breathing fills the room.

When she sleeps so soundly and he knows that she is healthy and whole he doesn't mind that she is not petite and blonde. When her sharp, angry eyes aren't burning into the muscles of his back he can forget that he doesn't love her as much as he should.

In the dark hours as he stares fixedly at the ceiling he can admit that it's okay. Because in the end all that matters is that the dark-haired, long-legged girl beside him is made up of petite and blonde. He remembers that. He will always remember that. In his dreams a voice on the wind reminds him.

They made her out of me.

In the end it is enough that she carries Summers' blood, and that she loves him as much for his ordinariness as he loved her sister for being Chosen. And if there are mornings where she watches him steadily, a curious light in her eyes or if there are moments when she stares off blankly into space he reminds himself not to mind. Now it doesn't matter. They are all that's left. Why should it matter that she once might have loved a vampire and that he has always loved her sister.

They are all that's left and they have each other.

It is enough.

In the end it is all they have.