Just a Little Lost

[madimpossibledreamer]

Main Points:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer/NCIS/Arrow
Chapter Summary: Xander and Anya have a frank conversation about what happened.
Word Count: 1107
Rating: Gen

         Anya doesn’t scream when she turns around to find him in the apartment.  Probably because she’d been expecting it.  “I should get my powers back and curse you, you know.”
         He bites his lip and forces himself to look at her.  He’d been expecting the tears, but they still shock him, somehow.  His arms hang useless at his sides.  He wants to hug her, but knows she wouldn’t accept it, and he doesn’t know what else to do.  “Could you come up with anything worse than giving me my own bow and arrows and forcing me to hunt down and attempt to murder the woman I love, my best friends, the girl I think of as my own sister, and be conscious during the attempt?”  His hands are clenched, shake with the need to commit violence, to release his feelings, but aware that’s exactly how they’d got in this situation in the first place.  “I deserve everything you could do to hurt me, but I don’t even know how to fix this.”
         “You’re good at sex, but that’s not going to help.  And you don’t earn enough money.”  He reaches out, aborts his attempt to wipe away her tears when he realizes he’s not sure if either of them are ready for him to touch her.  Ever again.  “Spike is very good at sex,” she continues, and he just closes his eyes.
         He swallows.  It’s a pretty solid indication of everything he feared.  “Is there a possibility we’ll ever even be friends again?”
         Anya frowns.  “I don’t know,” she finally answers, honestly, and that’s one of the biggest things he loves about her, isn’t it?  The fact that she’ll be utterly honest, even when it’s inappropriate.
         He tries to smile.  Tries to move on, when all he feels is empty inside.  “You’ve never liked the Archer.  Now you just have a good reason.”  It’s not close to a good facsimile of an emotion.  Usually, he’s better about faking it than this.
         She shakes her head insistently.  “This isn’t about the Archer.”
         “This is entirely about the Archer, actually.  Anya, you can talk about it.  I can take it.”  She’s never approved, of that side of him, of him helping out Buffy, any of it.  The Archer’s just a convenient scapegoat.  If he had any better indicator of how she felt, it’s that she’d mentioned it a couple of times, been upset and scared when he wouldn’t just give it up when she asked, and then just stopped talking about it altogether.  She talked about everything, even things she disliked.
         “I just…I hoped you would earn enough money and stop putting yourself in danger.  You’re a mere fragile mortal.  You shouldn’t be fighting a Slayer’s battles.  But that’s not going to happen, is it?  You’re going to keep putting yourself in harm’s way.”  She wraps her arms around herself, and at least that’s something he can do.  He fetches her a blanket from the couch and loosely drapes it over her shoulders as well as he can without getting his hands too near her shoulders.  “You’re going to get yourself or someone else killed, and I won’t be able to stop you.”
         He shrugs a little.  “I’m going to try not to get hurt, but I also can’t give up the fight.  I couldn’t sleep knowing I could have saved someone and chose not to even look.”
         She sniffles again.  “It’s okay to be selfish sometimes, Xander.”  He just gives her a sad, wistful look.
         “I can’t.”  It’s hard to convince himself that he can choose things for Xander, that Xander deserves anything.  He’s not useful unless he’s the Archer.  As the Archer, he’s worthwhile.  He can save lives.
         Anya shivers again, even with the blanket.  “Spike told me about Andrew.”
         His heart sinks into his chest.  He just keeps hurting her.  “It doesn’t mean anything.”  She’s still staring at him skeptically.  “It’s just flirting.”
         He’s not sure how this conversation got to the point where her making that pitying look at him makes any sense.  “You really believe that,” she states in wonder, and he’s suddenly on the defensive.
         “I believe it because it’s true,” he insists, and she shakes her head, a slight smile appearing.  It’s fond and sad and makes him deeply uncomfortable, because he doesn’t understand.
         “You’re so much more broken than I thought, aren’t you?” she asks, and he can’t hold in the need to fidget, this time.  He’s usually pretty good about that.  “You’re so much more broken than any of us thought, and you won’t ask us for help.  I may have been bad with humanity when I was first human, but even I know that’s what friends are for.”  She pauses, then adds, “Correct?”
         It actually gets him to chuckle.  As she’d intended.  Her sense of humor was odd, but so was his.  “Usually, yeah.”  He sighs heavily, sits on the arm of the couch.  “I just didn’t want to worry any of you.  You all had more to worry about.  I didn’t want to be just another burden.”
         Anya sits near him on the actual couch.  They don’t touch, but the proximity is comforting for the first time in a little while.  “It wouldn’t have been a burden.  We love you, Xander, even if you are a cretin.”
         He quirks a smile.  “I definitely deserve that.”  They sit in silence.  “It may come to you as a surprise, Anya, but I have no idea what I’m doing.”
         She smiles back at him, like it’s a joke.  It kind of is.  “Most people don’t.”  She pauses.  “Except when it comes to sex.  You definitely know what you’re doing when it comes to sex.”
         He blushes slightly.  Which he knows she likes. 
         “You like him because he likes the Archer.  And you, as far as I can tell.  And he understands some of the dark decisions and mental places you’ve been, being the town’s supervillain and all,” she continues, and—and it hurts.
         Because she’s right.
         “He really likes you,” he muses, because there isn’t a lot they get to talk about, especially given the whole ‘secret identity’ thing and all, but he’d gotten pretty good at reading the Warlock when they’d met.
         “Well, that just shows he has good taste,” she decides, and smiles when he laughs again.
         “You should maybe talk to Cordy,” he muses.  “She’s in LA now, so she might have some up and coming American Dream prize lovers for you.”
         She shakes her head.  “Maybe later, when I have a clearer head and am not likely to curse you at any given moment.”  It’s oddly peaceful.