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The Fire Within by Eowyn315
 
Memories
 
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A/N: If you can't figure out the song in this chapter, you need to go back and watch Once More with Feeling again! :)

*****

Chapter 9: Memories

“Honey, I need your input on the gifts.”

Xander paused in puzzled silence for a moment – still holding the jar of frog parts he was using to restock the shelves – before turning to his fiancée. “Gifts? It’s our wedding, Ahn. I’m pretty sure gift giving is a job for the guests.”

Behind the counter, Anya rolled her eyes at his obtuseness. “It’s customary for the bride and groom to give a small token to the members of their wedding party,” she explained patiently. “As a thank you for putting up with them during the months of planning.”

“Gifts.”

“Don’t look at me like that,” Anya replied. “These are your human traditions.” She shook her head. Humans could be so strange about their customs. “So, I was thinking gold cufflinks for Giles and Spike, maybe with an engraving –”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa – Spike?” Xander set down the jar and stared at her.

“Yes. You know – blonde, muscular, about this tall…” She held her hand up just above her head. “Recently saved Buffy from dancing herself to death.”

“I know who he is, Ahn,” Xander snapped, striding over to her. “When did he get invited, much less in the wedding party?”

“Right around the time he saved Buffy from dancing herself to death,” she replied matter-of-factly. “And you don’t have any male friends, so I just assumed he would be your best man.”

“No – Ahn! Willow! Willow is the best man… best – woman…” Unable to let it go, he repeated, “Spike?”

“Fine,” Anya replied, dismissing him with a wave. “So, for the women I was thinking –”

“Ahn – no,” he cut in, holding up one hand. “We can’t afford this.”

“But it’s tradition!”

“Our friends won’t care! Anya, my parents are spending way too much on this wedding as it is. I can’t ask them for anything else.”

“But –”

“We don’t have the money!” Hs hand slammed down on the counter, and suddenly his memory transported him back to his parents’ house. He was sitting on the floor in the living room, playing with a toy truck, careful not to get between his father on the couch and the television across the room. His father liked to watch TV after dinner, and Xander knew better than to interrupt, no matter how much he wanted his father to play with him.

Especially nights like these, when his mother was just as drunk as his father and they’d been yelling at each other all through dinner. Even now, with the table cleared and his father settled on the sofa, the argument was still going on while his mother did the dishes in the kitchen.

Just as he always did when his parents raised their voices, Xander kept to the corner, trying to make himself as small as possible. If he didn’t stay out of the way, he could very well find his father’s wrath turned on him. He dreaded those moments when his father’s eyes turned on him, when his hands would go to his waist, stripping off his belt and beckoning Xander to him. Every time he felt the sting of the leather on his bare flesh, Xander swore he’d be good from then on. But it didn’t seem to matter. Sometimes, even when he hadn’t done anything, if his father was angry, he got hit. That was why he hid. If his father didn’t notice him, he’d be okay.

Of course, this time, hiding might not do any good, since they were fighting about him.

“It’s only for two weeks,” his mother persisted, hovering in the doorway that led to the kitchen as she dried her hands on a dishtowel. “And it’ll be good for Xander. He could make some new friends.”

“It’s not my fault the boy doesn’t have friends, Jessica!” his father snapped. “If he didn’t hang around with that damned girl all the time – the Jew-girl with the hippie name – maybe he’d toughen up and the other boys would want him around.” Unnoticed, Xander flinched at his old man’s disapproval. “I’m not paying for some goddamned baseball camp just to try to make a man out of him. He can come to work with me this summer.”

His mother scoffed, made more brazen by the wine she’d had with dinner. “You mean you’re actually going to get a job? Could’ve fooled me. With all the time you’ve been spending at the Fish Tank, I didn’t realize you’d had time for an interview!”

“I told you, woman, Jimmy’s gonna get me something at the plant!” he said with an angry snarl, leaping off the sofa with his hands balled into fists at his sides. Xander cowered further into the darkened corner, pretending to be absorbed with his Tonka. He was still young, not yet at the age when he would start stepping in and taking the blows for his mother, until he came to realize that she provoked her husband when she was drunk, and Xander decided she got what she deserved.

“Yeah, just like the last three jobs Jimmy was gonna get you that all fell through.” His mother marched unsteadily to the sofa and smacked her husband with the towel. “Why couldn’t you have gone to college and made something of yourself?”

Xander trembled as he watched his father grab his mother’s arm and shake her. He drew his hand back to slap her, and then the scene shifted again, and Xander was watching older versions of himself and Anya in their places.

“You think I’m not educated enough?” the salt-and-pepper-haired Xander demanded, as his wife reeled from the blow. “You knew that when you married me, Ahn.”

“Well, that was before the Magic Box was destroyed by that pack of Ratnall demons and we lost everything!” she cried. “And the construction was bringing in decent pay –”

“You know I can’t do that anymore, not with my back!”

“Right, and whose fault was that?”

“Don’t start!” he ground out, knocking her back through the kitchen doorway.

“If you hadn’t been trying to be a hero and help Buffy all the time –”

Xander slammed his hand into a kitchen cabinet right next to her head, frightening her. “Don’t make this about Buffy!”

Suddenly back in the present, Xander blinked and said, “Huh? What about Buffy?”

Anya let out an exasperated sigh. “I said, do you think Buffy will be bringing a date? I’d like to know before I do the seating chart; otherwise, it’ll throw the whole thing off.”

“Oh, uh… I don’t know,” Xander replied, distracted. “Why don’t you ask her?”

With a frustrated shake of her head, Anya wandered away from her useless fiancé, leaving him to sing softly to himself, horrified by the things he imagined.

“I’m not ready for you to be my bride
I keep pretending, but I just can’t hide
I know I said that I’d be standing by your side
But I…”


He shuddered, seeing again his past merging with his future in his mind. The possibilities terrified him, paralyzing him with anxiety and indecision.

“Our path’s unbeaten, and it’s all uphill
My father haunts me, and he always will
That’s the reason that I’m standing still
But I…”


He watched as Anya began talking animatedly with Willow, who had just come into the Magic Box. Willow nodded, her eyes glazing over, the way most of his friends reacted when Anya went into super-bride mode. Whenever Xander heard the wedding talk now, he wanted to run in the opposite direction. Not that he didn’t love Anya – he did, with all of his heart and soul – but it filled him with a cold sense of dread to know that he was diving headfirst into potential pain and misery, the same as he’d seen his parents suffer through. They’d drowned their sorrows in booze. Would he do the same?

He was already spending more time with the guys from the construction team, leaving the site after work and heading straight to the bar, then stumbling home to Anya. She never got drunk like his mother did, though she sometimes raised her voice when he missed dinner. He didn’t want to end up like his parents, but the more he thought about it, the more he tried to push it away, the closer he came to becoming them.

“I wish I could say the right words and go on like we planned
Wish I could play the husband
And take you by the hand
Wish I could stay
But now I understand
My fear’s standing in the way”


The door to the magic shop opened, and Tara entered hesitantly. Against her will, she immediately scanned the room for Willow, averting her eyes when her ex-lover tried to meet her gaze. She fought the rush of emotions that threatened to overtake her – she couldn’t stop loving Willow, no matter how hard she tried.

“I’m under your spell,” she sang softly to herself, reprising her song from the night she’d discovered the memory spell. No one else seemed to hear her, as Willow reluctantly returned her attention to the magazine Anya was holding in front of her face.

“God, how can it be
You still have this effect on me?
You worked your charms so well
Willow, don’t you see
You’ll always be a part of me
You made me believe...”

“Believe me, I don’t wanna go,”
Xander chimed in, his first word overlapping with Tara’s last. Then, together, they sang,

“And it’ll grieve me ’cause I love you so
But we both know”


They broke into counter-melodies, each lost in their own world, singing to their oblivious lovers.

“I wish I could say the right words and go on like we planned
Wish I could play the husband
And take you by the hand…”

“Wish I could trust just that it was just this once
But I must do what I must
I can't adjust to this disgust
We're done and I just…”

“Wish I could stay,”
they finished together, finding harmony though neither knew the other was singing.

“Wish I could stay
Wish I could stay
Wish I could… stay”
 
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