Title: Roses without Thorns
Author: Tonya
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I don’t own any of the characters so if you’d please refrain from suing me that’d be great. You wouldn’t get much anyway so ha!!
Distribution: SU, Acts of Fate. Just ask me and it’s yours.
Spoilers: Basic Season 7 with my own speculation thrown in.
Summary: Anya remembers.
A/N: And mucho thanks to Topaz for the beta!! And for Rach who waited patiently for this!!
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Anya slid lower into the warm water. It moved just past her lips, and the bubbles tickled her nose. As she felt a sneeze beginning, she pulled herself back up and away from the bubbles. Her back rested against the cool porcelain of the tub and sent a chill all the way down to her toes. The rose scent of her bubble bath drifted up to her nose, and Anya felt a heavy sigh build up inside her in response.
Now she remembered why she very rarely used this bubble bath. The smell. The smell just brought back things she had had a hard enough time repressing over the past year. Roses.
She had held a rose that day, twisting the stem between her hands until it began to splinter and shed. They had surrounded her—all of them wearing their gloomy dark colors and their heads hung low. She remembered people crying, the sounds of her friends sobbing. But she didn’t cry. She knew she should have been crying, but she couldn’t. She had wanted to fall to her knees and weep like she had never done before in her 1200-plus years on the planet. But a person couldn’t cry if they were numb. Numb from the shock, from the grief, from the painkillers she had been given the night before.
Anya reached into the water, her fingers gliding over the dimpled scar across her stomach.
She had seen a couple of apocalypses in her day, and she had survived each and every one. But this one had been different. Normally, when she knew it was coming, she got the hell out of town. Who in their right mind would stick around when the world was about to end in a bloody, violent fashion? Demon or not, she didn’t want to be around when the earth opened up and swallowed everyone whole.
This time, she didn’t have a choice. She wasn’t demon anymore. She didn’t have the luxury of teleporting away, the option of hiding out in D’Hoffryn’s lair. And as much as her common sense screamed at her to go anyway—just go anywhere—she knew that she couldn’t. She had friends now, people who were counting on her for her help. She couldn’t leave them, even if it meant dying as one of them….
And she had almost done just that.
In her centuries as a vengeance demon, she had been involved in a fight or two. And occasionally, she had been injured. But nothing, not even a sword through the chest by a Slayer, could have prepared her for the pain. There was nothing that had the same feeling as her tender human flesh being ripped open by some nasty uber-vamp’s claws. Not a damn thing….
"Anya!!!"
There was no pain at first. Just shock. Anya put her hands to her stomach and looked down, as her blood seeped between her fingers. Never before had she seen her own blood flow so freely. Hell, she didn’t even think it was possible. But apparently she was wrong….
"Anya!!!"
She could hear Xander calling to her, but it sounded so far away. So empty against her eardrums.
Anya brought her bloody hands up to her face, the blood dripping down her wrists. And then the shock faded. The shock faded and the pain came.
She collapsed to the ground, her breath catching in her throat for a moment. Tears of pain welled up in her eyes as the vampire stepped over her body, ready to finish killing off the others one by one.
"Anya!!!"
Giles that time. She could tell. Both men screamed to her, but she couldn’t answer. Every time she opened her mouth nothing escaped but a gasp of pain.
Anya laid in the wet grass, blinking away the tears that clouded her vision. Her hands pressed onto her stomach as she kept thinking, "Apply pressure. Apply pressure." She wasn’t sure what applying pressure would do, but she had read it once on the back of the first aid kit when Xander had hurt himself trying to fix a cabinet one night. It had worked then so maybe it would work now….
Apply pressure…. But how do you apply pressure to a geyser of blood…?
The pain seemed to travel to every nerve in her body, setting off a fire within her, as she stared up at the sky. The beautiful, cloudless sky with its twinkling stars—stars that seemed to be mocking her. Laughing at naïve little Anya, the girl who had had the audacity to bring unspeakable pain and torment upon others for centuries. Not so much fun now, is it…? Not when it’s you, when it’s your pain.
Anya closed her eyes, shutting out their laughter.
And in that moment, when she finally shut out the stars, she felt the earth. And it was moving.
"It’s starting!!"
The clashing of swords.
"Giles, we’re too late!!"
Growl of a demon.
"Buffy!!"
"Xander!!"
"Giles, it’s too late!!"
"Willow, no!!"
She listened to them. All she could do. She listened as her friends yelled and screamed and fought for their lives. The tears trailed from the corners of her eyes, sliding gently down the sides of her face. The earth trembled harder beneath her, and as she slipped from consciousness—the pain and fear-filled screams of her friends echoing in the night—she had only one last thought.
From beneath you, it devours.
Anya hadn’t welcomed death that night—not like she had done with Buffy months earlier. That night she hadn’t had the option, the choice to sacrifice her life or not. Death had chosen for her, and it was ready….
But little had she known as she laid bleeding in the park that it wasn’t her that death was readying his carriage for that night….
There was no way they would all survive—she had been thinking that since day one, since the first omen had arrived. And in the back of her mind, she had always figured that it would be her. She was the oldest of them all. She had lived long before any of their great great grandparents had been born. She had figured it was her time. But when she had awakened in her hospital bed, IV lines and monitors hooked up to her, she had known. Someone was gone, and it wasn’t her….
Anya sat between Willow and Buffy, all women silent as the priest began the last rites.
Buffy looked straight ahead, her bloodshot eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses. The bruise across her right cheek had been concealed as well as it could have been, but there was no hiding the large gash fixed by stitches above her left eye. She folded her arms tightly around each other, her gaze never straying away from whatever far-off object she had forced herself to focus on. For a moment, Anya wondered if she had fallen asleep or had simply zoned out, but as soon as that thought entered her mind, a single tear made its way past the rim of Buffy’s glasses and trailed down her cheek.
Willow sniffled at Anya’s right, and Anya quickly glanced over at the girl. Paying no heed to Anya, Willow brushed away the tears that had gathered at the bottom of her chin with her free hand. A frown formed on her face as a pain shot through her broken left arm. She gently adjusted the sling over her shoulder before turning her eyes back to her lap, the tears falling freely again.
Anya sat between them—the stem of her poor rose being abused in her grasp—too numb to cry.
Afterwards, everyone had shut down. She remembered that quite vividly. None of them ever really recovered from his death. They all had turned their grief inward, bottled it up like it had never been there, but Anya couldn’t do that. She had needed someone to talk to, someone to explain to her what had happened, but they couldn’t do it. Listening to her, answering her questions, would have only brought back their pain, the pain they had kept swallowing down at the beginning of each day.
With a grunt, she threw the last of her luggage into the trunk of the car.
She stood next to her car for a moment, simply staring up at her apartment complex. She had thought many times about getting the hell out of Sunnydale. Back when graduation was going to be turned into a giant demon all-you-can-eat buffet. Back when Xander had ripped her heart from her chest on their wedding day. She had thought about it, but had never gone through with it…. Until now.
She needed to get away now. She couldn’t stay—especially with him gone and haunting her every night when she closed her eyes. It wasn’t long ago that she had wished for his insides to rupture, for him to feel the pain he had caused her, but she had never wanted this. Xander. Gone. Never did she want this.
Even after everything he had put her through, she had still loved him. And now he was gone…. And she was still here. With his friends. With his family. In his city. Driving his car. And she couldn’t stay. Not this time.
She had nothing to stay for.
Giles had returned to the other side of the globe recently, wishing all the girls—Anya included—all the best. At the airport, Anya had been the last to cling to him. Clinging and holding him tightly. Hoping that if she held him long enough he wouldn’t go. He couldn’t leave now. Not now. Not when Buffy and Willow were still on auto-pilot, still trying to comprehend that their best friend was now gone. They may have lost their best friend, but so had she. And if Giles left, there would be no one left for her. No one to console her because everyone had their own pain to wade through.
She had wanted to scream, "Giles, don’t go!" But for the first time in her life, she couldn’t find the words. She just held on to him and hoped. He had reached up and smoothed down her hair, whispering gently, "You’ll be okay, Anya. It may seem hard to believe now, but you’ll be okay. You’ll be able to live your life again, to move on. It will take time, but you’ll be okay."
And as he untangled himself from her embrace, she had wanted to believe him.
She wanted to be okay.
Anya sighed and opened the driver’s door, sliding in behind the wheel. "Moving on," she said quietly as she placed the key in the ignition. "I’ll be okay."
Alone, terrified, with no purpose in life, and no clue where she was going. But she had to believe she’d be okay.
"Anya?"
Anya’s eyes shot to the bathroom door as it slowly pushed open. Goosebumps formed on her arms as a draft entered the bathroom. "Yeah?"
"Is everything okay in here?" Giles asked, leaning against the open door.
Anya smiled softly up at him and nodded.
"You’ve been in here so long I was afraid you had fallen asleep in the tub again," he teased.
"Only takes one time to learn that lesson."
"Yes, I suppose it does."
He watched her for a moment as she shifted in the water, the light layer of bubbles undulating with her motions.
"So, you’re okay?"
Anya hesitated, running a finger up and down the rim of the tub. She inhaled deeply before turning her eyes back up to his. A gentle smile formed on her lips as she replied, "Yeah, I think I’m finally okay."
"Good," he replied, returning the smile. "How about I make us some tea before we call it a night?"
Anya nodded and Giles stepped out of the bathroom, slowly pulling the door closed again. Anya watched the door close before pulling herself from the water. As she dried herself off, her fingers lingered over her scar for a moment. She kept her hand to her stomach as she cracked the bathroom door and listened to the sounds of Giles in the kitchen. With a smile, she pushed it shut and grabbed her robe from off the back of the door.
"I’m okay," she whispered to herself as she tied the terry robe around her waist.
End.