GOOD LUCK CHARM
Anya watches because that's what she does. Once the wish is made, it's her job to just sit back and ride it out. She's lived in a million different dimensions, a million different wishes but this one is different.
This one's her own.
Xander's sitting at a bar in some no doubt god-forsaken town soaking up the St. Patrick's Day revelry with a beer of the most putrid shade of green she's ever seen. He looks different - older, wiser…well, maybe not wiser. It is Xander, after all. She wonders if she remembers how it works. How it all works.
"Buy you a drink?"
He looks at her with his one eye, his lashes long and dark. The chocolate brown lightens then darkens with emotion as he sees her and then *sees* her. "Anya?"
She doesn't respond, finds it hard to with him holding her so tightly. It feels good to have his hands on her, moving over her as if to reassure himself she's real.
"You're real. You're real." He holds her at arms length, his eye narrowing. "How are you real?"
"It pays to have friends in low places." The wound hurts her, it always does when she remembers, but she thinks it has more to do with how hard he hugged her. It's a better hurt than it's ever been. "And most of my friends were very, very low."
"So you're a demon again?"
"You know what they say. You can take the girl out of the demon, but you can't take the demon out of the girl." She smiles and that hurts too. "I can't stay."
"But you…" he catches himself and that hurts most of all. "You offered to buy me a drink."
Maybe he was wiser after all. "So long as it's not green."