Xander looked over at the car idling beside the lush grass of the cemetery. "Coming?" The voice was harsher than he remembered, but he should have expected it, given the fact that she'd taken a knife in the throat several years ago. Several years ago the night Willow had died.

"I can get my own ride."

"Get in the car, Xander."

"Yes, ma'am." He walked slowly to the car and got into the passenger's seat, snapping his seat belt as she put the car into gear. "I've always thought it was funny."

"What?"

Dawn had died first, trying to prove herself Buffy's equal. Buffy herself had driven the stake through Dawnie's heart. When he'd asked her why she was crying, she told him it was because she finally had proof her little sister was real the second she exploded into dust.

"I face danger willingly every day of my life." He glanced at her, surprised how much she looked like she always had. "And yet I get in the car and put on my seat belt."

"You don't face danger unarmed." Her hand played with the cross around her neck. The top of it rested in the notch were the knife handle hand sunk in, the silvery-pink scar the same color as the shirt she wore. "Same principle."

She'd worn the same shirt to Giles's funeral in London. She'd just gotten off the plan and was sitting on a low tombstone when he'd found her. She'd looked tired. Together, they'd walked across the low grassland and buried what was left of Faith. 'There's just a few of us now,' he'd told her then.

She stopped the car just down the street and waited as he got out of the car. "There's just two of us now."

"No," she told him softly, her foot pressing hard to the gas pedal and wrenching the door from his hands. She didn't even bother to negotiate the curve, instead slamming the car into the old stone building hard enough to kill even the Slayer.

"What happened?" People clustered around him, voices high with fright, almost drowning out the wail of the sirens in the distance as the car burst into flames. "Are you all right?"

He closed his eyes, the image of flames burned into the retina of the one that was truly his. The cross of his rosary cut hard into his hand. "Father Alexander?"

Xander looked up and offered a smile to the priest beside him, nodding his head. "I'm fine. I was just saying goodnight."