Five Things That Never Happened to Anya

Summary: Two deaths, three men, and five ways Anya's life could have unfolded.
Rating: PG-13 or so.
Pairings: Aud/Olaf, Anya/Giles, Anya/Xander.
Spoilers: It's AU, but it spoils through the end of S7.
Author's notes: The characters are not mine. The dialogue at the top of each section is taken from the Buffy: The Vampire Slayer episodes "Selfless" (sections 1 and 4), "Dopplegangland" (section 2), "Tabula Rasa" (section 3), and "End of Days" (section 5). Thanks to all the great "Five Things" writers who inspired this, and to Erika and Vesica for the betas.

1. My Perfect Aud

"You are my perfect Aud. I could never want for another."

He told her that, and stroked her face, and for a moment it was good.

But it all evaporated like dew when Rannveig walked by, singing in a voice made painfully off-key by drunkenness. Olaf strained towards the door, humming an echo of her song.

"You love her, don't you?," Aud asked softly.

His lips denied it, but his face told the truth. Olaf was many things, but he was not a good liar. She lay stiff in his sleeping arms for a long time that night.

The next day, Aud passed the point in the river where the women drew water on her way to get more greens for her rabbits. Rannveig was there, gossiping and laughing with her friends. Their voices got a little lower and their laughter a little louder as Aud walked by, one telltale finger marking her out. Not like us, their postures seemed to say. Aud quickened her steps.

When she got to the meadow, she gathered a handful of the clover that kept her bunnies happy and fat. But she noticed another plant, a prickly one with tiny yellow flowers. It was one her mother had shown her once, long ago, when she was a child, as part of her education on which twig or leaf or root was good for headache, and which one could soothe screaming babies.

"And this one," she said, "Use this one if your man ever does you wrong – which he will. Grind it up and cook it with his porridge and a drop of your blood, and it is a powerful magic." There was more, but Aud was mesmerized by the idea that something as small as this plant could create something as vast as justice.

She fed the preparation to him that night, hiding her cut finger in the folds of her skirt, her heart pounding and her body hot with anxiety. Would it work? Would he find out what she had tried?

But he glanced up at her in a way she hadn't seen in months. "No berries. I want you for dessert!," he roared, picking her up and carrying her to their bed. And the heat in her body then came from a different source, and she knew that the fidelis spell had taken hold.

After that night, she never did another magic, afraid it would tear apart what her last spell had put together. When she was buried some thirty years later, seven sons surrounded her grave, and five daughters bounced grandchildren and comforted the weeping Olaf. "I will never be complete again. Never!" he wailed, as his oldest child passed him handkerchief after handkerchief and his sons glanced at the ground and fiddled with their capes, not knowing what to do.

The villagers shied away. It was already odd enough that Olaf had been so faithful a partner, keeping himself for Aud even when he went to war. But this wailing made no sense, especially from a man, and one whose riches in land and rabbits would attract another, more desirable woman soon. Especially when one considered that Aud – well, she was pleasant enough, and free with rabbits and advice (a bit too free with the latter, some thought, but she always had been), and no one could deny that she had been a caring mother and a dutiful wife. But even when she was young and had full breasts, they found her a bit strange, not worthy of a partner such as Olaf.

It made no sense at all.

I like the additions, LJ.

2. The River to the Sea

ANYA: Eyrishon. K'shala. Meh-uhn. WILLOW: Diprecht. Doh-tehenlo Nu-Eyrishon. ANYA: The child to the mother. WILLOW: The river to the sea. ANYA: Eyrishon. Hear my prayer.

There was a whirl and the scent of power, and the necklace appeared. Anyanka fell upon it with a squeal.

"We did it! We did it!" Anyanka snatched the necklace up.

Willow looked shaken. "What the hell just happened? That was really intense, in a bad way"

Anyanka felt her body gain its full powers as she fastened the clasp on the necklace. Her head swum with the calls of dozens of wronged women. If she would just leave, Anyanka thought, but she made the effort to keep her smooth human face on for a few more minutes. "Nothing. Just a little temporal fold, like I said. Look, I thought you said you could handle the big spells, but if you can't…"

Willow stared at her, defiant. "I can handle the big spells. I gave a vampire his soul back last year. That was just a little blacker than I like my arts."

"Okay, I won't bother you again. I hear Amy Madison's not afraid of a little power."

The redhead shook her head and turned around, walking out of the classroom. Anyanka waited thirty agonizing seconds to make sure she wasn't coming back before she teleported to D'Hoffryn. He welcomed his prodigal demon eagerly, and Anyanka spent the next year helping wronged women all over the world. Her spells were made even richer, her punishments more inventive, by the time she'd spent imprisoned in a mortal body.

Then she heard a call from Sunnydale. It was strong, clear, angry; it had to come from a witch. Anyanka teleported in.

She found herself on a college campus, so she put on her Anya Emerson face – the one she'd used the year before. Scanning the crowd listening to a nearby speaker, she noticed Buffy Summers and quickly turned to face the other way. It would be no good at all to have the slayer following her, she thought.

The call was coming from a dorm room. In the instant before she knocked on the door, she fixed a cover story in her mind; she had just transferred in and needed to borrow some notes.

"Hi, I just signed on for the English class you're in, and-" She suddenly recognized the girl who had answered the door. Shorter hair, eyes swollen from crying, but it could only be one person: Willow.

"Anya? I thought you had left town again."

Anyanka shrugged. "Well, I'm back. And, um, I need English notes, and the professor said to come here."

Willow looked at her suspiciously. "I don't have an English class this semester. Maybe … I think there's a Matt Rosenberg over on the fifth floor? Only, he's majoring in comp sci, so probably not taking English either." Willow went to close the door. "Sorry."

"Wait, wait-" Anyanka said, thinking. "It's, um, really weird to be back in Sunnydale. And you're one of, like, three people I know here. Could we go get some coffee or something?"

"I don't know, I'm kinda feeling the need for alone time right now." Willow brushed her hair behind an ear. "My boyfriend just left, and the whole social thing is sort of … beyond me."

Bingo - that was her opening. "Your boyfriend? What happened?" Anyanka looked concerned. "I just got dumped, too. That's why I'm back in Sunnydale."

She could see Willow thinking; given that it was Sunnydale, she suspected there was some supernatural thing she was trying to talk around. "We were so happy. But then he met this other girl, a singer. Total slut. And he cheated on me with her, and when I found out, he left town."

"That's terrible. Are they together now?"

Willow shook her head. "No. She's … sort of out of the picture."

"Doesn't help you, does it."

"God, it almost makes things worse, cause the way she left was kind of my fault. " Willow opened the door wider, gestured the other girl in. "Come on in. It feels good to talk to someone."

Anyanka sat eagerly beside Willow on her bed, prepared to hand over Kleenex. She nodded empathetically as Willow told her how wonderful Oz had been, how kind, how much she loved him. "God, that sounds so awful for you. I bet the whole thing makes you really angry."

"Angry, and sad, and … just confused. I mean, I really thought Oz and I were going to be together, you know? And now we aren't. It makes me want…"

Anyanka was all but salivating. "What do you want?"

"I want … I wish Oz knew what I felt like, only physically. Like, his literal heart was actually being stomped on. Not enough to kill him," she added quickly, "Just constant pain."

Anyanka switched into her demon face and touched the necklace. "Done," she said. And it was; she could feel it, feel that the werewolf was suffering from the world's worst case of heartburn. He had been hiking a Tibetan mountain trail, but now he was doubled over in pain on the side of the road. She opened a viewing portal so Willow could see what she had done.

Anyanka didn't think of herself as an especially greedy demon – she'd hardly ever collected the blood tribute she was entitled to – but she liked to hear a "thank you" when she did her job well. None was forthcoming. "Oh my god, was that some kind of spell? It felt really scary," Willow said.

"It was a vengeance spell. And a good one, might I add. Don't thank me – it's just my job."

Willow hardly heard her. She was staring at the miniature Oz as he clutched his chest and swore. "He won't … he won't be like that forever, will he?"

The vengeance demon shrugged. "You asked that he feel the physical equivalent of your emotional pain. So when you get over him, he'll be fine."

"Oh." Willow's face crumpled. "When I get over him? What if I never get over him, and he's just all painy for, like, sixty years, and it's my fault?"

Anyanka laughed and slammed the portal shut. "I've been at this a long time, and I've never seen a heart so broken it couldn't mend. Well, there was that one time in China, but that was kind of a special case…"

"Great. So someday Oz will quit having his heart stomped on from the inside." Willow was angry now, speaking faster. "You know, every time you come around, you do some sort of weird magic mojo that just completely screws things up and scares me. I have no idea what your game is, Anya, but go play it somewhere else."

Anyanka sighed when she saw the resolve on the girl's face. "Okay, clearly you can't appreciate a job well done."

"A job well done? You put the person I love in horrible pain. Undo it, whatever it is."

"Can't. Union rules," Anyanka said. Willow stared at her for a minute; Anyanka was almost curious to see if she would beg, or if her power was such that she would presume to undo a vengeance demon's spell.

It was the latter. "If you won't, then I will." Willow dove under her bed, yanking out a box of herbs and crystals. "I think I know how to fix this…" She pulled out an amethyst crystal and a handful of salt. Sitting cross-legged on the dorm floor, she cast a circle.

"Kali, goddess of chaos, ruler of time, I beseech thee. Let this demonic spell be undone; let no more harm come to he who loved me, save it is Your will." Anyanka groaned as Willow repeated the same spell in cracked Hindu. Normally, there was no way to undo a vengeance spell without D'Hoffryn, but the little witch had almost unwittingly found the loophole; an appeal to Kali, done within ten minutes of the time the spell was cast by the person who had made the wish, worked if the dark goddess was in the right mood. Teleporting out, Anyanka made a mental note to ask D'Hoffryn to try and figure out a way around that one.

After filing a full report with her boss, Anyanka resumed her travels. She made a man in India who had given his wife syphilis be eaten by a tiger slowly, gave a college student in Boston who'd cheated on his girlfriend with her sister the tail and ears of a rat. She answered an Italian girl's request that her lover never again enjoy sex by making him feel excruciating pain whenever another person so much as laid a finger on him. It was pleasant enough work, if a bit mindless after so long.

Three years later, the demon world buzzed with talk of the destruction of a major Hellmouth.

"It was a terrible battle. Many lives were lost," Halfrek said, with glee.

"A Hellmouth? Where?" Anyanka answered, a bit absently. She was trying to decide whether to go to Berlin or Oahu next. The German girl was in more pain, but time on the beach sounded nice.

"California."

"Sunnydale?" When Halfrek nodded, Anyanka said, "God, I'm glad that place is gone. I almost lost my powers there, and when I got called back there a year later back this little girl completely refused to appreciate me. She actually called on Kali to undo my spell, can you believe it?"

"Americans," Halfrek said, shaking her head.

They left for Sunnydale right away, looking forward to the chaos. But where the city had once been, they found only a huge crater, littered with human and vampire skeletons.

"Pity," Halfrek said. "It's a shame," Anyanka agreed.

Then they teleported out, laughing.

3. It Must be Nice.

"I know there's the vampire problem and our memory loss and all that, but still. To spend this time together. Alone. It must be nice."

It was nice, once they'd cleaned up the mess at the shop. They found their full names and her address on papers in the store's safe. Anya cleaned out her apartment, noticing there didn't seem to be many personal items there. "I must spend most of my time at Rupert's," she thought; oddly, his apartment held very few women's clothes. She decided she just hadn't been a very material person, and used it as an excuse for a shopping spree.

They put aside the idea of going to England. "You can't go without a memory; you'd have no idea what you were there for. And I certainly can't go without a proper birth certificate or passport," Anya said, practically. Rupert agreed.

However, he did insist that they sell the Magic Box. It scared him, he said. They didn't make much money on the deal, but it was enough to buy a little cottage on the outskirts of town. Anya refused to get married, saying she didn't want to take such a step until they got their memories back. "After all, it might turn out that I had left you and that was why you were going back to Blighty," she told him. He laughed.

Rupert found a copy of his résumé in a drawer in the Magic Box office, which scored him a job managing a historical bookstore. Anya took a part-time job helping with the books in a dentist's office, and spent the rest of her time trying recipes and spells. Sometimes, she'd read a book Rupert brought home from work. The places in them seemed oddly familiar. She began contemplating the possibility of past lives.

Rupert was kind to her, even when she turned their kitchen table into a small golden chicken. The sex was good. Anya began to fantasize about children.

"Absolutely not," Rupert would tell her. "I already tried it, and look how that one turned out."

They hadn't been able to find any proof Randy had existed as a mortal, and when Joan asked the local vamps about him, they either laughed or rolled their eyes. "I'm not getting mixed up in whatever Spike's got cooking," one said as he exploded into dust, leaving Joan to ask, again, "Who's Spike?" There was never an answer.

As for Randy, he glared at Rupert and mentioned the report on parental kidnappings he'd seen on 20/20. "No doubt all my stuff is with my mum. I bet she was a proper parent," he said, in a voice that implied his father had not been one. Rupert had given up on pointing out that Randy seemed to be slightly past the age where kidnapping was possible.

One day, about six months later, Rupert came home earlier than usual, with an odd look on his face.

"I had a call from Willow at work today. It seems she found some extra information about us. It's rather startling, actually."

That had been happening slowly but regularly. Willow turned out to be really good with computers, and had managed to piece together addresses and backgrounds for almost all of them. And if Alex couldn't quite believe he worked construction, or Tara didn't understand how she had come from the family Willow located for her, their shock quickly vanished in the relief they felt at having homes and jobs and social security numbers.

"What is it? Did we finally find my parents? I'm sure they'd give us their blessing, thought they might have some doubts about my marrying a man who's closer to their age than my own-"

"There's still no sign of that," Rupert said. "But we found quite a lot of things. It seems I kept a journal. Willow and Tara found it while they were clearing the last of the things I left behind out of the Magic Box." While Rupert had been repelled by all the herbs and crystals, Willow and Tara seemed drawn to them. They had taken jobs there under the new shopkeeper, and were learning a few basic spells. Tara taught herself a spell that allowed her to sense the magical uses of items, which told her that the crystal Willow had found in her pocket the day they lost their memories had some kind of spell cast on it. They had put it in a safe place until their skills were good enough that they could tell more.

"A journal? Is it all about our courtship and your love for me?"

"Nothing like that. It's kind of … a working journal. Apparently I wasn't just a shopkeeper. For one, it seems Joan's skill at fighting vampires is more than chance." (They'd found Joan's name pretty easily, once Willow looked up the records on Dawn Summers, but she wrinkled her nose and refused to go back to being Buffy. "My parents must have been on drugs," she said. Dawn giggled.)

"So was she, like, a professional vampire killer? One would think they would select someone larger and more muscular to do that."

"In a way. Apparently she is what's called a slayer, and I was her trainer – a watcher, they called it. There's all this mystical gobbledygook in the journal, it's quite strange really. But I made mention of a Council of Watchers in London. I didn't seem to trust them much, but I think I'll ring them up and let them figure out what to do with Joan."

"That sounds like the wisest course." But Anya was distracted. "I can't believe there's nothing about me in it."

"Very little, mostly just comments about you working in the shop. Well, I did find out one thing," he said as he took his glasses off. "It looks like we weren't engaged at all."

Anya was shocked. "Really? Then what does my ring mean? And our undeniable sexual chemistry?"

Rupert polished his glasses more intensely. "It seems you were going to marry Alex."

"Alex? Alexander Harris?" Anya pursed her lips for a second. "He seems far too young for me."

4. The life and soul of a vengeance demon

"You're a big girl, Anyanka. You understand how this works. The proverbial scales must balance. In order to restore the lives of the victims, the fates require a sacrifice. The life, and soul, of a Vengeance Demon."

She understood, and bit her lip, and looked at him and saw: He was cold and sure. D'Hoffryn might be as jolly as a demon world Santa Claus when he was happy with you, but like Santa, he'd give you nothing but coal if he was not.

"Do it," she said.

The room came into sharp focus even for her demon senses as his sword closed in on her. Buffy was there, vibrating in place. In her eyes, Anyanka saw the split between her desire to save a friend and the certainty that justice was being done. Buffy held Xander back with one hand, stopping him from rushing to save her. Xander's face looked horrified.

The Hallie suddenly appeared, looking first confused, then happy to see D'Hoffryn and Anyanka, then just bewildered by what D'Hoffryn was doing.

And then Anyanka felt D'Hoffryn's steel. Through the pain, she saw faces she hadn't thought of in millennia; her mother, face ruddy from the fire, warning her about messing with magics. Olaf, strong and sure and human. Her sister, warm next to her.

And then she saw nothing at all.

D'Hoffryn pulled the sword out of the body. He chuckled dryly as Xander rushed to Anya's corpse. Buffy crouched beside him, grasping his shoulder as he started to cry.

"Shame to lose her like this," D'Hoffryn said, cleaning his sword with a bit of cloth. "Halfrek, I wanted to make sure you saw this because you are now my oldest vengeance demon, and I'd hate to lose another experienced worker. You'll never leave me, will you?"

Halfrek shook her head vehemently as the two demons clasped hands and teleported away from their companion's dead body.

5. One of Those Lame Humans

ANYA: I don't know. You might survive.

ANDREW: No. You might survive. You can handle a weapon, you've been in this world for, like, a thousand years. I'm not so... I don't think I'll be okay. I'm cool with it. I think I'd like to finish out as one of those lame humans trying to do what's right.

And he was right, sort of. They finished the battle together, hardly believing it as they took down two, three, no, five bringers.

When they heard the rumble of the school was collapsing and saw Potentials streaming out the door, Andrew looked at her, starry-eyed.

"We made it. We're heroes."

"Maybe." She was trying to spot Xander, but it was hard through the smoke and noise.

"No, you were, like, Xena or something. You saved me." He looked at her worshipfully. "You're so brave."

Anya smiled. "Sort of." Extraordinarily pleased, she slung an arm around his shoulder and rubbed her other fist in her hair. "You weren't so bad yourself, for a rookie."

Andrew stammered out a thank you as they reached the door. Still no Xander. Maybe he was on the bus already? She thought about going back through the halls to look for him, but there was no time, the last of the potentials were limping out and she could almost feel the high school … was it contracting? Buckling?

And then they were on the bus. Wood was there, and Giles, and Faith and the zillion potentials she had never quite learned the names of. But no Xander.

Dawn was near the middle of the bus, swabbing a wound on a Potential's leg and rotating her head for any sign of her sister. She shook her head when Anya got on the bus, but said nothing.

It was all so normal -- normal for post-apocalypse Sunnydale, anyhow – that Anya took a seat and started checking out which injured Potentials needed a hand.

"You should recover quite nicely, though you may not have full feeling on this side," She told Rona, wrapping an ACE bandage around her arm. She managed to put the Xander question out of her mind until Buffy jumped onto the bus. Alone.

She dimly heard Giles ask Buffy who had caused the disaster, and Buffy answer "Spike" – good for him, she thought, before the panic took over her brain.

She made her way to the front of the bus and tapped Giles on the arm.

"We have to stop. Xander –" she swallowed. "Xander isn't on the bus. We have to go back, Giles."

"There's no back to go," one of the potentials – the one with the smart mouth who Willow seemed so attached to – said.

Anya knew she was right, and panic rose as thick as bile in her throat. "Quiet, maggot," she said, and turned back to Giles. "He's not here, Giles. We have to go back, even if you don't respect his life choices."

Giles appeared ready to answer when Anya heard a small sound. It was Dawn, walking forward on the bus to stand beside her.

"I think – I think Xander's gone, Anya. I wanted to wait until I was sure before I said anything."

"What?" She was going to scream. There was no way this calm girl was telling the truth; no one could see Xander fall without crying, she thought.

"It was a Turok-Han. He – it – came up to Xander's blind side, and Xander turned at the wrong moment. He was hurt pretty bad, Anya. He told me to run out as fast as I could and not to worry about him."

Anya heard a slight gasp from Willow's seat, Buffy starting to cry. She looked again at Dawn, and knew it was the truth. Her grief and sorrow turned into rage; how dare she, Anya thought. How dare she be here when the man I loved isn't.

Dawn's blue eyes were magnified by tears, but Anya didn't notice or care. She shoved Dawn into the closest seat. "Worthless brat. You aren't even real, why couldn't you die, why did he have to die protecting you? Why is he gone? He – he was the best of us-" and her voice fell apart, her throat aching from swallowed sobs.

"Anya, don't-" Buffy said. Willow was crying for real now, fat tears her girlfriend couldn't cuddle away. Dawn sat there, shaking.

The bus stopped. Anya stumbled off as Dawn shook herself, stunned.

Anya walked a bit away from everyone else at the crater's edge. She'd brought one thing from Sunnydale with her, stitched into the hem of her skirt; her engagement ring. It had seemed like a good luck charm, the promise of a future with Xander.

She pitched it into the crater and watched it glimmer in the sunlight as it bounced off the edge. Then she let herself cry.

~Finis~

Wow, Lyra, those are amazing!

I really, really liked those a lot.

LJ, those were great. Love love love them.

He – he was the best of us

Nice resonance w/ Doppelgangland.