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~