WHO: Xander & Babs. WHAT: Training and angsty conversations. WHEN: Afternoon. WHERE: The apartment complex. RATING: A for Angst.
Xander probably shouldn't have bothered coming out to visit Babs today. He had spent most of his time since Buffy's visit to his apartment the night before sitting quietly. Just sitting. His hands had been clasped together loosely in front of himself as he'd sat on his bed, quietly staring at the walls. People coped with loss differently. Some people cried. Others got angry. Xander? He was a mixed bag and, in this particular instance, he had surprised even in himself. Sure, Buffy had seen some upset out of him. But there weren't tears. He didn't break down and declare that his life had been shattered into a thousand pieces. No, Xander had retreated to his room, sat down, and ceased to exist. He had shut down. By the end of the night, Xander had curled up into his bed, squeezed his eyes shut, and spent the rest of the evening fighting off guilt ridden thoughts and feelings about the woman who had died. His ex-fiance. The crazy, annoying, yet lovable woman he'd been looking to spend the rest of his life with, only to have had broken her heart because he had been terrified of destroying her. Anya. She had been a sharp pain his chest for longer than Xander had even been in Lawrence, but he had been working at getting over it. Xander had even mustered up the courage to joke around and flirt with other women. And now, after that tiny bit of progress, he was back here again. It felt like someone had taken a truck and rammed straight into his chest, leaving him with nothing but that sense of shock and pain that followed. Pain. That was what love was. Pain. That was all it had turned out to be.
He didn't know why he woke up the next day and decided that going to train with Babs was a good idea. Xander was wrecked, but he couldn't sit around his apartment. He had to get back into things. He had to pretend that he was fine. Xander didn't wanna be that guy who holed himself away from the world and sulked. He wasn't Batman. And Xander found that this wasn't the first time he wished that he could be.
Xander showed up to meet Bab's a little later than expected. He tried to keep himself together for the training, even though he found that in spite of his decision to come out and try to ignore the stabbing pain in his chest, he couldn't. He was unfocused, he was quieter than usual, and all in all, Babs might as well have invited another person to meet her that afternoon entirely because Xander Harris was as far from himself as he possibly could have been. He had been thinking about telling Babs that he needed to take a break for a little while when he heard her speaking and, somewhat distantly, Xander looked up to meet her gaze. "Huh?"