Title: Not To Blame
Author: Mary Ellen
Email: emmy2@salsgiver.com
Rating: Better an R than a sorry
Classfication: X/A, Xander POV
Distribution: To Jen, for Finnatics, list archives, anyone else please ask.
Feedback: It brings sunshine into my darkness. In other words, please!
Disclaimer: I do not own anything in the Buffyverse. Everyone is owned by Joss, Mutant Enemy and all those guys. Dedication: For Jeneral, Mike, Dana, Jodi and Becca. You give me clarity, inspiration and general warm fuzzies.
Author's Notes: I'm trying something. Smack me if it doesn't work. This is the short opening piece to a series of Anya POV fics. If you really care, mail me and I'll explain my odd thought processes in detail. Otherwise, just know, this is my attempt to exorcise my songfic demons.

I'm just standing here, watching my girlfriend twirl with my best friends, and I'm struck with all the regrets I usually shake off. Anya's so different from the girls I've loved. Sometimes I shake my head when I realize how different my Wills and my Buffy really are, and I wonder how each of them could individually have consumed me, heart and soul.

There was a time when I believed in soul wrenching love, the kind that makes you nauseous and giddy and crazy all at once. That was why I missed Willow the first time around. Her pale radiance was extinguished in the blaze that was Buffy.

Heaving a sigh, I join them, purposely moving so that I'm next to my girlfriend. Dodging her flailing arms, I catch a whiff of Willow's sandalwood and patchouli perfume oil. I read somewhere that it's scent that triggers the most potent and vivid memories, and I believe it, blinking away the sudden tears, and the urge to just hug Willow and retreat to a time when things were simpler and I still believed in happily ever after.


And when I see the sign that points one way
The lot we used to pass by every day
Just walk away Renee
You won't see me follow you back home
The empty sidewalks on my block are not the same
You're not to blame


Willow was never mine and she never could have been. She's sunshine and goodness, but she shines for others. It *is* my fault, and I'm man enough to admit to that. I was purposely blind to her adoration. I thought that my childhood buddy would be there for me, through everything.

I didn't realize that she was so much of my security, until she started dating Oz. I never ran and screamed and I refrained from the hands thrust on the hips indignation, but the first time I saw Willow and Oz kiss, I understood the wrenching betrayal, the sense of sheer wrongness that she must have felt when she caught me kissing Cordelia for the first time.

We've frolicked through so many phases together. She talked me through a thousand adolescent sexual crises and her hugs healed all of life's little wounds. I missed that reassurance when things started changing.

I pull Anya closer, knowing that she needs the reassurance. Sometimes her eyes leave faintly accusing trails down my back, and her fear is almost palpable. I don't know how to explain about history and the deep understanding that Willow and I have. I'll always love Willow, and I'll always regret a little that things didn't turn out differently. It's a shallow man, though, that can look back on his life and not occasionally reflect on the could've beens.


From deep inside the tears that I'm forced to cry
From deep inside the pain that I chose to hide
Just walk away Renee
You won't see me follow you back home
Now as the rain beats down upon my weary eyes
For me it cries


Buffy burst into Sunnydale High as I was starting to believe that everything would be monotonous and grey for the rest of my life. She's a whirlwind, mesmerizing and complex. From the moment I met her I was enchanted, and I pined for her in an eternally adolescent fashion.

Buffy sparkled my life with color, and she taught me how to be brave. I've got no real talent, no extra powers, but I fought by her side and made my share of a difference. Buffy was a centerfold and motivational counselor all in one, but she never really needed me the way that I needed her.

Anya doesn't realize that she's given me something that's just as important. Buffy's blown any chauvinism I ever possessed to bits, but Anya's hyper aware of the differences, large and small, between men and women. She needs me, and I can feel protective without being absurd. I get to walk *her* home, not the other way around.


Your name and mine inside a heart upon a wall
Still finds a way to haunt me, though they're so small
Just walk away Renee
You won't see me follow you back home
The empty sidewalks on my block are not the same
You're not to blame


Sometimes I can feel, rather than see Anya wilt, tears welling up in her eyes. She feels that she's second best, and I can't explain that Willow mbodies the best bits of my childhood and Buffy was my adolescent pin up girl. They're my best friends, and they hold bits of me that couldn't ever be relinquished to someone who wasn't there, who hasn't *earned* them.

I don't know whether to be grateful that Anya chose me out of all the boys in Sunnydale High, or to resent the hell out of it. She brings me her own special brand of comfort, but she persists in thinking that I wish she was someone else.

Anya loves me, which is something that I'm growing to treasure more and more. These days, I can look at Riley with Buffy and Willow with Tara and smile. I've not been pigeonholed as the joker in Anya's eyes. I've just got to convince her that she's not to blame for being Anya, and not Buffy or Willow.

~end~