Special thanks to Selene for the gorgeous artwork for this story.
“Xander?”
The voice was hesitant, almost fearful, and Xander looked blearily up at the shape before him. Too much booze, too little sleep, too many tears… Xander didn’t have much in the way of vision left even without those factors. Add them in—well, voices and body shapes were fast becoming his friends when it came to the art of the quick ID, even when the distance was only half the width of a room.
“What is it, Andrew?” Xander sighed. His voice had gradually lost the vicious edge it tended to take when he was addressing the boy, tempering over the days and weeks since they’d all settled into something much calmer, something almost—though not quite—accepting. The first few days after the hellmouth, after Andrew’s revelation of Anya’s fate, he’d maintained radio silence where the boy was concerned; that changed as he began to see how hard the other was trying to fit in, began to see more of himself in this man/child that was only a couple of years his junior. How strange, Xander often thought, that he’d remained so emphatically and purposely immature for so many years, only to end up feeling so old before he’d reached his mid-twenties.
Once he’d realized that his fury towards Andrew had little to do with Anya’s death, was much more owing to his own frustration with long-departed innocence and a forced adulthood both hard-won and too early in coming, he’d begun to temper his behavior. His addresses, as they’d become necessary or volunteered, slowly progressed from clipped and furious, to curt, to merely resigned, to tentatively friendly as he had grappled with the realization that Andrew wasn’t responsible for Xander’s sacrifice any more than he was for Anya’s. Even knowing it wasn’t fair to punish the kid for still breathing, for still being excited over action figures and the opening night of comic-book-based blockbusters, however, wasn’t always enough to make Xander patient with him—he was, after all, only human, and Andrew had ably proved himself to be capable of pissing off even the most infinite of evil.
“I… I wrote something… for you.” The sound of papers rustling punctuated the words, and Xander squinted to try to make out exactly what was in his visitor’s hands. “For Buffy, too, but hers is a little different, because she wouldn’t necessarily need a copy of yours, ‘cause she and Anya weren’t all that close, and I don’t think you’d want a copy of hers… but if you do want a poem about Spike, I could…”
“Andrew! Can I have whatever it is?” The sharpness of Xander’s tone cut short the boy’s rhapsodizing, and his outstretched arm signaled simultaneously his impatience and his acceptance of the gift. Both Andrew and Xander ignored the shaking of the extended hand, as well as the resultant rustling of the paper; some elephants were meant to remain in corners, unacknowledged.
“It’s a commemoration, if you will, of your brave Anyanka’s sacrifice on the mouth of hell itself,” Andrew offered, voice somehow managing to convey both gradiosity and timidity. “I’ll just let you…” He trailed off, watching as the paper was moved towards its reader’s face, then away as Xander attempted to find the perfect reading distance.
Xander just couldn’t focus on the words—couldn’t make them take proper form and speak to him—and he was frustrated in a way he hadn’t been since kindergarten, the year that Willow’s patience had paid off in terms of his literacy. The basics of movement and direction—of maneuvering with input from only one eye—he’d mastered in the wake of Caleb, but the finer points… well, they’d been pushed aside in the face of the apocalypse. Why teach yourself everything all over again, he’d joked when Willow offered to help, when the world could end tomorrow? He’d just let everyone else do it for him, he’d teased. Now, though… well, he had a life ahead of him, friends with lives of their own… and his own near-blindness.
“No.” The refusal was softer, both in tone and in volume, but Andrew heard and stopped in his tracks. “Stay? I can’t… can’t quite make out all of it.”
“Oh. My handwriting is awful, I know. My mom used to make me practice it but then I stopped when we became Buffy’s nemesises, and then we were on the run and then all the rest…”
“Yeah, handwriting practice falls to the side during an apocalypse or two. Explains all my grades in high school. But that’s not what I meant.”
Andrew, for once, read between the lines and managed to keep the obvious to himself—Xander needed help. He could do help. “Well, then, how about I read it out loud? It really is beautiful, if I say so myself… I copied the meter from some of the greater epics and the language itself is meant to be spoken and—“
“I’d like that.”
“OK, then.” Andrew stopped and pulled up a chair, voice hesitant and soft as he began reading the open line.
“That’s Klingon.”
“Yeah… it was easier to write it out like this, and seemed more fitting because, you know, warrior language, but I can translate if you…”
“It’s OK… I know Klingon, too. And you’re right—it’s meant to be spoken.”
The two exchanged a silent grin of mutual appreciation and geek solidarity before Andrew cleared his throat and began anew, voice clear and strong.
Xander listened raptly, each word striking more deeply than he’d believed it possibly could. When it was over, he attempted to inconspicuously wipe away a tear that Andrew pretended not to see, murmuring a thank you when the paper was returned to the table. Blushing, Andrew stammered his “you’re welcome” as he stood and walked to the door, leaving his epic behind.
“Andrew?”
“Yeah?” The boy turned, though Xander didn’t.
“Worf himself couldn’t’ve done better.”
Another shared smile, this time unseen by the other, as Andrew left and Xander stayed behind—one pondering a new perhaps-friend, the other pondering a new life and old memories, all the while fingering parchment littered with alien script.
Companion follow-up: I've Seen a Love (Spike/Buffy, PG)