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Tweak says, "Excuse me. I'm going to hell."

Anya Jenkins enjoys money (sexpoodle) wrote in wariscoming,
@ 2010-10-09 13:30:00

Entry tags:

anya jenkins, xander harris

Who: Anya Jenkins and Xander Harris
What: They very much need to talk
Where: Xander's Apartment
When: A day or two after she arrives. Early Evening
Rating: TBD
Status: In Progress

She really really didn't want to do this. It was all in her past, she'd moved on, gone on to find herself away from being a demon or a girlfriend or...well she'd never quite managed the wife bit. She'd discovered who Anya Jenkins really was and she'd accepted that. Of course the dying had been unexpected. But she'd stayed and fought with her friends, strange as the concept was to the thousand year old ex demon. When the Mayor had attacked Anya had run for the hills but she'd come back to Sunnydale and fallen in love. And even now... Stupid man and his stupid ability to make her completely ridiculous and worried and flustered at what to say. She knew Prue was right and she had to tell him all of the truth. About the frat boys, about fighting Buffy about Hallie, and becoming human again.

It hadn't been her finest hour.

Still, at least he knew about the sex with Spike. It might have been harder to get him to look at her like something other than a slime demon if he hadn't. He was from when they'd fought Willow. Anya had helped then too as much as she could. It hadn't been a fun experiance. Vengence Demon or not Willow had been scary and veiny and broken inside. So broken Anya would gladly have given vengence to that Warren if Willow hadn't done it herself. But Xander had fixed her. Made her....well he hadn't made her not-broken. But he'd done something, just been there, been him. He was always just him. Just kind like that, sweet and always a presence designed to make everything better.

And now she had to hurt him all over again with her story. Because for a while he hadn't been the one to make everything better. He'd made things confusing and her heart had hurt. She'd gotten lost in the vengence, and what happened on their wedding day hadn't been his fault but it had happened. She didn't hate him for it now but she had then. She had so much. And then there was this place, he was here, and he was Xander and he was wonderful and sexy and maybe there had been other women. Less crazy, less former demony women. Women that she wasn't sure she wanted to know about. But thinking about those made her heart hurt more so she didn't. Instead she found herself outside his door, bearing the chips and beer she knew he would need to make this conversation less painful. Xander liked when there was chips and beer. Simple pleasures. She knocked sharply, a knock she was sure he'd recognise as her. "Xander, can you let me in please. The bag is heavy." She paused, worried that maybe the knock wasn't enough, it had been a long time after all. "It's Anya." she added with a false brightness to her words. She was worried about this.

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xander_shaped
2010-10-10 08:24 am UTC (link)

There was a future Anya. A future Anya that was here in this universe. With him. Again with the here. Okay, not literally, but she was coming by to talk. So it would be literal eventually. A very soon eventually. Nerves on end, Xander flopped back against the couch that he'd been sitting on. He had tried turning the TV on to distract himself, but it was useless. He couldn't get his mind off of her. Anya had been here once before, but her time had been brief and she had been far too bitter with him for him to be around. This Anya...she was different. Warmer, yet so strange to talk to at the same time. It didn't help much that Xander had found out that Anya had died. His stomach twisted into painful knots at the mere thought of someone killing her. Not your fault, she had said. Except it was, wasn't it? She was his to protect. Had. Had been his to protect until he screwed things up with the wedding. Anxiously, Xander twisted his fingers together. How was he supposed to react to all of this? One half of him wanted to get angry, to panic, to do everything but sit here, on this stupid couch, and go about things with the annoying route of feeling useless. That future had already happened. Anya had already died. He couldn't change that -- yet, if he could back home, he could -- but he was still upset about it. Why wouldn't he be? It was Anya who had died. He was proud of her for staying to fight the First, but there was a very large part of himself that wished she would have fled instead.

She wouldn't have though. Something had changed in her. Something Xander really didn't understand.

A sharp knock erupted from the door as Xander reached for the remote to change the channel. Anya. It was Anya. He definitely recognized the knock, even after all this time. Tapping the off button for the TV, Xander hopped off the couch and immediately made way for the door. What was he going to do when he got there? Hug her? Flash a smile? Offer her a handshake?

A handshake. Right. That was real smooth.

"I got it," Xander called through the other side of the door, pulling it open as soon as he managed to do away with the locks. He went with the smile when he found himself looking at her. Funnily enough, the first thing Xander noticed was that her hair was different. Weird thing to notice when you were facing your ex-fiancee for the first time since the failed wedding. "Hi." He stood awkwardly for a moment. Right. Heavy bag. "Lemme get that," Xander started, already reaching for the bag.

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sexpoodle
2010-10-12 11:33 pm UTC (link)

Well this was as wonderfully awkward as she'd expected. He didn't really do anything by way of hugs or even a handshake. She'd have expected at least an awkward confused handshake from him. It would have made this easier maybe. As it was he took the bag from her and moved to let her into the room. It wasn't a bad place, fairly similar to hers but with a decided Xander'y feel to it. Even if it was all strange and awkward now. She wasn't sure what to make of that at all. She'd gotten past those bad feelings, she'd lost a friend because she'd been so confused and scared and D'Hoffryn had taken advantage, and she'd come out stronger for all the horribleness she'd endured. But Xander didn't know that. He remembered the bitter angry vengence demon she had let herself become all over again.

"I got better." she blurted, not very good at the subtle, she never really had been as it happened. "I mean, there was vengence, and unpleasentness and a demon and Frat Boys I took vengence on. But I can explain about that when we're sitting down with the beers and the chips and talking adultly about such things. And even if Adultly isn't a word I feel it should be for the description of all of this." She moved of her own accord, without any invite over toward the couch and sat down on it, more worried than anything else about how she was possibly going to phrase any of this.

"It's complicated Xander, and I know how you remember it. I know how angry I was, I know about the Spike sex not being the healthiest of ways to make me feel better about myself. But at the time it seemed appropriate. I suppose it equates to you and Faith when you did the proverbial teen hormonal nasty." she theorised. "Do you want to get beers and sit down too, the awkward standing is making me uncomfortable. ...Times like this I wish we could sing our fears and worries at each other in a breakaway pop fashion. Scary as the experiance was, the demon had style."

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xander_shaped
2010-10-21 05:07 pm UTC (link)

His apartment definitely had a Xander-like feel to it. There was a half-crafted shelf propped up in the far corner of the room, sitting alongside a pile of haphazardly strewn tools and materials. On the other side of the room, there was a DVD stand filled with Star Wars DVD's, copies of the old black and white Clint Eastwood-esque westerns Xander was so fond of, and literally every James Bond movie released to date. It wasn't the cleanest apartment in the building, but it wasn't horrendously filthy either. All in all, it was very Xander-y. The familiar feeling didn't make this any less uncomfortable. Xander kinda wished that something out there would, because right now he was torn between flailing stupidly and pushing himself to that weird, confusing rambly place. No one wanted to go to the weird, confusing rambly place. It was very unpleasant there.

Xander stared at her uncomfortably before he remembered that he had just offered to take the bag off of her hands. Xander reached over and pulled it out of her arms, shifting a little so that he was able to hold it to his chest with an arm. He opened his mouth to say something more than the awkward offer of taking away the heavy stuff she'd been carrying around, but Anya beat him to the punch.

Ah, well. It looked like he wasn't gonna have to worry about being the one to break out into the awkward, confusing rambly place after all. Anya had beaten him to it. "You seem better," Xander said, stepping to the side as soon as Anya moved for the couch. He shot her a confused sort of look when Anya moved inside, head shaking half out of confusion and half out of amusement as she went. She might have been in a weird, unpleasant place, but it was still ten times better than the last time he had seen her. At least she was talking to him now. And it was in a very Anya-like way. Awkward, yeah, but Anya-like. Which was good. Xander liked Anya-like things.

Xander set the bag on the coffee table in front of the couch and reached in to pull out it's contents. Chips and beer. Xander really did like when there were chips and beer. He peeled open a bag of sour cream and onion flavored chips when Anya began to talk about the anger. And the Spike sex. Xander dropped the chip he had been about to shove into his mouth back into the bag, suddenly feeling that craving for food go straight out the window. Spike sex. Spike and Anya sex. Xander couldn't help it - he made an unpleasant face, what with his mouth twisting to the side and his eyes dropping downward. The reminder, he found, was not a pleasant one. "Thanks for the reminder," Xander grumbled, decidedly going for the beer instead.

"Here," he handed Anya one, plopping down on the couch beside her. He didn't sit too close. Xander really wasn't too sure on boundaries at this point. Anya was being more civil than before though, so that was still better than nothing. Having her sitting beside him at all made for a big relief. Even if it was still weird. "He did kinda have style, didn't he?" Xander shot Anya the briefest look of amusement, before he waved a hand in the air and shrugged. "Bad style. Very terrible. I shouldn't be complimenting demons, 'specially not the one I summoned to make with the happy dancing that turned out wrong." Xander cracked his beer open and took a swig. "Can we go back to the vengeance thing? What was with the frat boy talk?" She didn't have sex with them too, did she? Because if there was any way to get vengeance on Xander - no, wait. She'd said vengeance on them. Okay, that was a little better. Sort of.

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sexpoodle
2010-10-27 02:29 pm UTC (link)

She hadn't meant to remind him of the unpleasentness. They were past that point by now at least from her point of view. But this was a Xander from before. A younger Xander, it was going to be complicated. There was a lot of working through issues he hadn't done yet and Anya had to remember that. But here she was sitting on his couch in a whole other dimension and there they were talking. It was all kinds of complicated and Anya was pretty sure she'd done this already. But it was strangely comfortable amid the awkward because it was Xander and he was always just so Xander about everything. Even if he didn't like some of the subject matter that was okay. They'd get through the talking and then they'd hopefully be in a good place.

She took the beer with a slight smile to her former fiance. He sat a little ways away from her, normal she remembered. "He had a great deal of style. I remember all of the dancing, he was a good dancer wasn't he, very light on his feet. Though I still say we had our moments what with all the tap." She'd sung another song that day too...one she didn't much like to think about now. "Anyway yes, no complimenting demons. Complimenting former demons is of course perfectly acceptable because some of those are lovely and radient parts of your young mortal life" she told him jokingly. But joking wasn't what she needed to do here. No, she needed to have this conversation. The most unpleasent one. Involving murder.

"It started out being your fault, you made me reverse a wish. Just a normal wish and you convinced me with your Xanderness, I was punished for that and the other vengence demons made fun of me, so I heard of this Frat House, horrible boys, just horrible and well...I summoned something to kill them, all of them, a Grimslaw, and it was horrible, awful and I knew. I knew it was wrong but I did it to prove that I was still Anyanka but I wasn't any longer, not in my heart because you had my heart even if it was broken. I begged D'Hoffryn to reverse the wish, I said he could take me, thats how these things work Xander, life for life, but that was too easy thats what he thought and he killed Hallie and he made me human and thats how it happened." It wasn't an easy memory. "Buffy was going to kill me, and she'd have been right to, but I said after that, after Hallie that I'd use my mortal life better. Not be defined by anyone or anything and I think I've been doing that."

She hoped he didn't hate her, he hadn't before and she didn't think he would but it was awful, what she'd done. It was horrible. It was absolutely horrible and she knew it.

"So that's...me. That's all about me."

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xander_shaped
2010-11-02 02:03 pm UTC (link)

Xander didn't want to think about the dancing, singing demon that had struck Sunnydale because of his naivety. Not only because it had been a stupid, stupid decision on his part, what with the summoning the demon on purpose and all that, but because thinking about moments like he and Anya dancing around their apartment, singing about how they were going to get married and all their unpleasant insecurities (or how they weren't going to think about the unpleasant insecurities that they had) made him wish he could turn back time and re-live those moments all over again. Xander gripped at his beer, feeling more than unable to drink it. Maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he'd just cling to it throughout this entire conversation in hopes that it would keep him grounded. Yes, that was right. Beer, foamy beer, was going to save him from the wrath of his unfortunate, annoying emotions. Beer and chips. Possibly his 007 DVD's peering at him from the shelves, too. What Xander really needed to do was channel his inner Bond. What would Bond do right now? He'd rake a hand through his hair, lean back on the couch in a casual, suave-like way, and tell Anya that it was all good, darling, because he was a secret agent and a badass and...Xander needed to stop relying on fictional, not-real characters to get him through this chat. Of course, if Bond actually wanted to show up here, Xander would be cool with that. He wouldn't have been the first fictional character to drop into his life.

Bond showing up wouldn't be a bad thing either. 'Cause, right now, Xander felt like he'd be taking in the information that Anya was throwing him a lot better than Xander was right now. "I probably made you reverse that wish because I didn't want you getting anyone killed," Xander pointed out. "Which, by the way, I seemed to be right about since you did get someone killed." Xander shot her a look of disapproval. He should have expected it. She had jumped back into the vengeance fold after he had left her at the alter. Sometimes, though, Xander had a hard time seeing Anya as a ruthless killer. He forgot about how crazy that demonic side of her got, but that was because he had gotten so used to the warm, loving, slightly confused and tactless Anya that he knew and loved today.

He couldn't hold what she did against her though. It was partly his fault for letting her go and breaking her heart. Anya never would have went back if it weren't for him and they both knew it. Xander looked down at his beer quietly, guilt springing up without delay. He hated himself for leaving her. "Self-sacrifice, huh? Never figured you for the type. That's kind of..." Xander looked over at Anya cautiously. First he learned that Anya died because she wanted to stay back and fight for the right reasons rather than run off, then he found out that Anya had been willing to undo her mistakes to save the lives of others in exchange for her own existence. Xander was kind of proud. She really had come a long way from being that lost ex-demon he had met back in high school. And even though Xander thought that she could have avoided the whole vengeance thing altogether (still his fault), he found that he couldn't get mad at her for what she had done to that fraternity. It was hard, getting mad at her in general these days. It all usually came back to being his fault somehow, without fail. "I'm sorry about Halfrek."

Xander didn't want to think about the rest. If that was what he had to look forward to when and if he got back to Sunnydale, Xander wasn't too sure if he wanted to go back. Anya massacring people, Buffy trying to kill her...Xander didn't think he could take it.

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sexpoodle
2010-11-03 08:16 am UTC (link)

He had gone silent, staring around his apartment and Anya inwardly narrowed down the things it could be this being Xander. There was a list. She followed his gaze and spotted the bunch of DVD's on the wall fixture before laughing in spite of herself. "You're imagining being Bond aren't you. Or at least him being here" she asked him. She would expect nothing less. Its possible she knew him too well. Or at least about his Bond fantasies. She'd fulfilled them before in the name of kinky fun. She'd never worked out why all the women had such silly names either. Nonetheless that meant he didn't know what to say. How to react to her, he was worried, and he hadn't completely liked what he'd heard. She hadn't thought he would. The things she'd done. The people she'd hurt and it had all been because her love for him had gotten her hurt. Men were complicated. Confusing. And Xander most of all. Vengence had definitely been easier.

"You did make me reverse it." she told him, remembering. "You appealed to my better nature and it worked. But then they started saying I was weak. The other vengence demons. They called me soft serve. Said there was no way I could get my knack for the job back and that it was sad because at one time I had been the best, and a man had changed me. I...went a little mad I think. Took vengence on those boys in that Fraternity. And the price to reverse it was...was Hallie." It had been her fault her friend was dead, there was no denying that, none at all. She nodded softly to Xander's sympathy. "You were right and I should have listened to you but you'd broken my heart. I couldn't think about anything but that."

She hadn't wanted to fight Buffy, or get stabbed, again. That had been less than fun. But the Slayer had had no choice and Anya understood that. "Buffy was being the Slayer. I'd expect nothing less, and it won't happen again. Back home I'm..." Dead. "I stayed and fought. I had to. It was the right thing to do wasn't it? Even with what happened?" She'd never thought she'd see him again to ask him any of this. She'd died. "I thought about you. Right at the end, I remember wondering would you be proud of me or cross with me for being so sloppy and inefficiant as to die." Anya drank down more of her beer, it was an awkward conversation to even consider with a Xander from when he was.

"I'm sorry I died" she told him. "I wanted to continue fixing us"

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