Title: Dancer Remembered

Author: Caliadragon

Category: AU

Fandom: Buffy

Pairing: None

Rating: PG

Spoilers: Current Episodes up to 'Dirty Girls'

Warnings: Angst, Mentions of Character Death

Archive: Any list I send it to, those with prior permission and BC

Series: Pt 5 of the Dancer Series

Summary: Xander from Giles POV

Thank you to Edi for the beta.

Dancer Remembered
by Caliadragon

I look at the young man I have loved for years and feel like a failure. I have lost myself and now I have lost my children. It's true that I did not facilitate their coming into the world, but they are mine. I have been with them through their highs and their lows. I've been there to see them fall in and out of love.
Yet when they needed me the most I ran to England, and in the process destroyed any hope I had of showing them my love and devotion.

Buffy has rightly turned her back on me. I still do not understand why I ever sided with Wood. The man irritated me no end. Of course Spike irritates me as well, but for wholly different reasons. In fact, before I left for England after Buffy's death, we had made peace. Each of us loved her, and it destroyed us when
she died.

Then there's Willow, beautiful fragile Willow. I abandoned her to the magic that was slowly eating at her soul. It was only after Tara died so horribly that I even realized how far she had fallen. There is a coldness in her now. Deep and still as though she never loved with all she was. We have drifted apart.

However it is Xander that haunts me. I cannot look away from him. The night the demon woman tried to sacrifice him, I scolded him for using humor to get past a horrifying event. Instead of joining in, and helping to tease him past the fear and exhaustion evident in his eyes. My children knew better than I the dangers of the First. They were the ones who had been dealing with the blood and the horror of the bodies left in her path.

I can still remember the look in his eyes, the way he truly meant it. The others thought he was joking. The only ones who took him seriously were Anya and Andrew. Yet instead of taking advantage of the situation Andrew reunited Xander and Anya, then became their third.

When I lost Jenny to that bastard Angelus, it was Xander who pulled me through. His humor, his gentle nature. He drew me in and let me heal. Buffy and Willow never realized just how much Xander healed us all. Yet when he needed me, I stepped back. I left him to his grief and his pain. There was no one to hold him and tell him he was loved. There was no one for him to weep and wail to.

He doesn't call me G-man anymore. I never thought I would miss that annoying nickname, but I do. I can see the damage we have done and I pray to a god I'm beginning to question, that it is not to late. I cannot understand why I have done these things. How I could have done any of the things I have done in the
past year. So many things are confused in my mind. I have told no one, not even Wesley, that I do not remember my time in England. It is like a fog in my mind. I don't remember anything from the time before they called and told me Buffy was alive again. I do, however, remember how Xander's eyes lit up when he saw me again. I remember the pain on his face each time he saw Anya after they separated. I
remember the way he peeked at Andrew from beneath his lashes. I remember how he would wrap his arms around Anya and Andrew and glow when they laid their heads against his chest.

I remember the way his screams echoed through the night as he realized they were both dead. I remember the way he looked that last night, so young and fragile. I remember how he wept as though his soul were being torn to shreds. I cannot remember a time, since coming to America, when Xander has not been in my life, but he's not here. His body rests in the chair across from me, but his mind and heart are elsewhere.

I remember so much about Xander, his anger, his laughter. I can only remember now, because those things are lost to me now. Lost to us all. I don't want there to come a time when I only have memories of Xander, and not even a body.


The End