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.

*exhales*

When y'all were quiet for half an hour, I was sure you were trying to find polite ways of telling me I sucked. I'm so glad that's not the case, and thanks for your praise.

Reading it on the board, I can see that the sentences are running a bit long, and I want to fiddle a bit with the third part -- Willow doesn't feel quite right. But in general, it was fun to write. I'm looking forward to finalizing it.

My sister in insecurity! But we've already covered that for today.

LJ -- I haven't been on the board all day. I just read it. And it's lurvely.

Whee, Rupert/Anya! And Randy and Joan! Whee!