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DISCLAIMER: Joss.
SUMMARY: PG. Xander comes back to Sunnydale to say goodbye. Instead he finds
Spike. S/X.
WORDCOUNT: 959
NOTES: Written for Kyrieane at Sekrit Admirer.
ASK NO QUESTIONS
(for the answers are nowhere)
by Leni
If there is one thing Anya taught him, it was to be honest. At the very least with
himself.
After the mad 'we survived!' bus ride, they drifted apart, straight to a combination of
duty, old dreams and post-Apocalypse relaxation. Xander stayed behind, saying good-bye for
the nth time to Giles (to England, with the new Slayers) then smiling when Willow told him
of her plans with Kennedy (to Brazil, you really don't want the details) and helping Dawn
pack when she and Buffy finally decided their next destination (Italy. They are very quiet
when you joke it's the land of love).
Xander watched his friends make plans and admitted that he had none. So, he kept to the
basics: get up in the morning, mourn for his on-again girlfriend, call Willow or Buffy and
assure them that he was still alive, close his eye and point to a point in a map.
That brought him here, to Africa. It's a good place as any to be.
The weird thing is that here nobody knows him and he knows nobody. He's just Alexander
Harris, a man he hasn't had the pleasure of meeting yet. To be honest - thank you, Anya -,
Alexander Harris didn't hold any interest to Xander until he finds himself in this strange
land where 'Xander' isn't the Friend, or the Zeppo, or the Joker, or the Heart or any of
those things he has identified with for all his adult life, short as it's been.
He sets to know himself. Goes through his life as if it were a neighbour's scrapbook,
visiting memory after memory of losses and laughter and more death than a 23-year-old
should know.
His results?
Alexander Harris is a man who has clearly loved. Loved hard and deep. He has hated too,
hated so much that it almost scares him now that he's alone and the memory of that hate
bounces against his skin, trapped inside and howling for its long gone target.
It's too much not to direct it to somebody, and that this somebody is ashes in Sunnydale
doesn't help. He settles for second best, goes back to America to yell all his hates and
frustration to a pile of dust who can't answer back. But Alexander Harris will take mute
answers if it's all he can have.
Except he doesn't find dust; finds Spike himself instead. He’s calmly sitting at the
edge of the crater, smoke drifting carelessly from his cigarette.
“What are you doing here?” Xander asks, afraid that his questions have led him
to madness.
“Just waiting for sunrise.” Spike chuckles, not glancing up. “Like
everyday.”
Xander does not understand. He’s had to learn to cope with the fact that Spike’s
death saved the world, saved him. To find him here, so calm and relaxed... It makes
him furious. “Not brave enough, huh?” he asks now, not caring if it’s just
an illusion. “Where’s that fucking courage you rambled about then?” He
doesn’t need to explain when ‘then’ was.
Spike shrugs, flicking the ashes of his cigarettes. Seconds pass as the grey smudges fly
down and down and down... “Well, I had it right here just a minute ago..." he
finally answers in a whisper. “Then you arrived. Hell if I know anymore.”
Xander steps forward, trying not to see the void that is staring at them.
“What happened?”
After the explanations - spells and ghosts and L.A. and ends of the world he never heard
about - Xander finds himself yelling at the vampire. For ever coming to Sunnydale, for
kidnapping him, for coming again, for being kidnapped himself, for staying in his
basement and wearing his clothes... for four years of fighting at his side and yet the
closest link between them is a woman buried somewhere at their feet, a woman they
unintentionally shared. And don't you care she is dead?
Spike nods and that silences him.
"I hate you," Xander says, and it's the truth. "For never being part of us,
for becoming Angel's so quickly when you were ours for years."
"I am nobody's," Spike replies, and how he says it becomes almost a question.
"Wrong." That's even truer. Spike has always strayed from one person to another:
from Drusilla to Buffy, to Angel, to... him? Xander realises that maybe that's why he's
here, to reclaim whom everybody lost so mindlessly. Why him? All Xander can dig out of his
heart for this vampire is...
Hate?
No. Not exactly. Not anymore. He's honest with himself and - you won't like this, Anya -
it's as if that torrent of words he spat at Spike has polished his feelings, giving it
another shape. A shape Xander is too familiar with because it has always been this hard
and it's always been this deep... but it never had so much danger spelled in it.
But he laughs in the face of danger, doesn't he? Alexander Harris laughs so hard that soon
Spike has to help him breathe. Just. Breathe.
Then everything fades to black, and all that remains are two men at the edge of a
forgotten town.
There is confusion and lots of denial and even more questions. It is only years later
Xander decides that going back to the basics is his best shot.
Get up in the morning, mourn for his could-have-been future, call Willow or Buffy and
re-assure them that yes, he was alive and no, he wasn't changing his mind any time soon.
Go back to bed and not wake up until his how-did-this-happen? future did.
Then both close their eyes and point to a point in a map.
It doesn't matter where they go, just that all the needed answers can be made up between
them.
The End
16/07/04
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