Fallen: Part Two
by Kirstin
Sometimes, it's hard to know how you would react to something until it happens. I mean, sure, everyone has said to themselves, "What would I do if so-and-so were to die? That would just kill me!" But none of those people really know how it feels. They don't understand what it means to lose your best friend. The person you grew up with. The one who was there for you when everybody else had something better to do. The person who was friend, and family, and sole confidante - when no one else wanted to be. None of those people knew what it was like to have a Willow, or to lose one. And to think that she wanted more. All those years, and he knew nothing about it. So she was in love with him! She was everything in his world, and she wanted to be the only thing she wasn't. He was glad that she hadn't told him. Perhaps he would have been better off never finding out. But at least this way, he didn't have to cause her any pain. The person who given everything for him, how could he tell her that he didn't share her feelings? He never could have, to her face. Not to his Willow. But he couldn't have been untrue to her either. So what could I have done, Xander thought ruefully. Run away? Well, I guess I don't have to. She did that for me. And now I have nothing. When she left, she took away everything that mattered to me, everything that was good, and right with the world. Xander and Willow, that is what's right. That's the only thing in the world that I could count on. Just Xander doesn't have the same ring to it. Lonely Xander. I guess I'll have to get used to it though, because I'm going to be lonely Xander for a while.

Unless . . . but no, that probably still hadn't changed. Even if Willow had left, he knew that one constant remained in his life, the fact that Buffy didn't love him. Not the way that he loved her, at least. Maybe Willow and I had everything in common after all, he thought, unrequited love seems to be a characteristic of our friendships. (Oh god, it must have killed her to hear me talking about Buffy all the time. If only I had known, I would have spared her that pain.) But maybe . . . maybe with Angel gone, Buffy could look at him in a different way. Maybe she would see in him something that she hadn't seen before. Maybe she would notice all the wonderful aspects of Xanderness that she hadn't seen in the year that he'd known her. After all, he reasoned, Angel has been in the scene since the beginning of our friendship. No one could have competed with tall, dark, dead boy with his angst and dark clothing. Buffy had to pull the Romeo and Juliet bit, it was practically a law. But Romeo and Juliet died, and Buffy is still alive. And maybe she can move on. Maybe somehow she can see through the pain of her loss to the guy that is still around, the guy that has been in love with her since the moment he laid eyes on her. Maybe she can move on to me. It seems so natural. We're all that we have left. She's all that I have, and all that I want. If she could only see me, really see me, and really understand how perfect we could be together. If she could only fall in love with me, because the Lord knows I've fallen in love with her.


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