failegaidin

Okay, this is my first foray into the Buffy-verse. It's a drabble. I don't think it's that good, but finding a tone was really difficult. Xander is nothing like the characters I write in 24. It's set post-S7, and is Willow/Xander.

Back in high school, a little boy had made all their nightmares come true. Willow had been forced to sing onstage, Buffy had been turned into a vampire, and he had been chased around by a clown hell-bent on killing him. They had faced their fears – with screaming and running, mind you – and eventually overcame them.

But nine years later, Xander still had nightmares. Not about clowns or other beasties chasing after him, but of loss. If there was anything he had learned while living on the Hellmouth, it was that people could be taken away from you in less than a heartbeat. And it was that fact that woke Xander up night after night in a cold sweat.

He would never know that it was a dream until the moment he sat up suddenly in bed, a scream lodged in the back of his throat. They felt so real, his heart pounding in his ears, sweat dampening his scalp. Sometimes they were set in the present, his eye patch obscuring his vision. Other times, they were back in high school, and he had the full use of both eyes. In the end it didn't matter though, whether he could fully see or not. He always had to watch someone he loved be lost to the darkness.

The worst ones involved Willow. It ate him up no matter who it was – Buffy, Anya, Dawn, Giles, even Cordelia sometimes. But he had to admit that Willow meant the most to him, that she occupied a special place in his heart that he hadn't even realized he had given to her.

They would be walking down the street, side-by-side, talking about anything, making ridiculous pop culture references whenever it suited them. It was usually dark, but they were familiar with the things that went bump in the night, and they were no longer afraid. Instead, they walked with an air of nonchalance – the monsters could come at them if they wanted to, but they would fight them, win or lose.

But then something would go wrong. A creature would disentangle itself from the shadows and impale her on its claws. Her soft brown eyes went wide and her mouth opened as she stared at him in shock. Even as he reached for her, she fell away, disappearing into the darkness.

Other times, they would be fighting some kind of final battle. Buffy and the other Slayers were pitted against the vampires, staking and beheading them as they moved through the fray. He would be struggling to hold his own, or trying to protect Dawn. As his eyes roamed over the scene, he spotted Willow, standing in a clear area, her hands raised and her eyes dark as she fought against the enemy with magic. The power flowed from her in waves, knocking down those around her, pushing back the creatures that wanted to rip her throat out.

But then the tide would turn against her. The magic changed and slammed back at her, filling her, consuming her. The black in her eyes grew blacker, and he could see by the expression on her face that she knew the battle was lost. As it gnawed at her soul, the creatures around her surged, sensing vulnerability. And then the darkness took her and she was gone.

Then he would wake up, his breathing ragged, his chest heaving, sweat streaming down his body. He turned his head to look at his best friend, who was still sleeping peacefully next to him. Trying to find and train all the new Slayers meant a lot of traveling, and they had taken to sharing a room – they found a comfort in each other that they had thought was lost long ago, and in this time of battle, they needed it desperately.

He smiled softly at her as the moonlight touched her face, and he reached out to push a stray piece of hair out of her eyes. She shifted then, opening her eyes slowly.

"Xander?" she asked, her voice heavy with sleep. "Are you okay?"

He laid back down next to her. "Yeah, Will, I'm okay. Bad dream."

She murmured something he couldn't quite hear, but was sure were words of comfort. Then she nestled against him, resting her head on his chest. Xander gently kissed the top of her head and wrapped his arms around her, closing his eyes and drifting back to sleep.