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Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.

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     I know that we both talked it over,
          and said it’s best to forget.
     We’ll leave all our mem’ries behind us;
          it’s better ended … and yet —

– i –

It’s now into the second week of Xander’s long-anticipated road trip (which had not anticipated Cordelia inviting herself along). The last several days, they’ve been eating in progressively cheaper places; even so, Cordelia looks up from her pancakes now and observes, “We’re going to need to stretch our money more than this.”

Every time she speaks to him, Xander expects it to be an announcement that it’s done, she’s leaving now. Not this time, apparently. With studied casualness he says, “I’ve been planning my ‘On the Road’ summer since Buffy came back to Sunnydale last September … assuming I lived through graduation, which, no, I didn’t assume, and yes, I did live through it. But what I’m saying is, I spent most of the school year saving up for this. What I’ve got, it’ll carry us a while yet.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Cordelia waves that away. “I stuck some back, too, and pawned everything I could cart off ahead of the IRS. The thing is, what I said about holding back the cash for a bus ticket to L.A. once I was done with this? I still need to have enough to live once I get there, at least for a couple of months.”

Xander thinks about it. “Our biggest expense so far is motel rent.” (They tried sleeping in his car ONE night; never again.) “Isn’t much way we can get around that.”

Cordelia’s gaze is flat. “There’s one way.”

They buy the two-person tent at a surplus store, but only after Cordelia goes over it with the exacting thoroughness he would have expected her to exercise with, well, shoes. Xander is surprised by her knowledge in this unexpected subject; his own overnight ‘campouts’ in his back yard didn’t prepare him for all the necessary details to be considered, but Cordelia won’t explain how she came by this seeming expertise. When she’s finally satisfied, they move on to sleeping bags. The requirements there are less stringent, but … “These two,” she announces.

Xander indicates the one he’s been looking at: quilted, extra padding, inset ‘pillow’. “I kind of like this one.”

Cordelia checks it out with a quick glance. “Uh-huh,” she acknowledges. “I might go for that kind myself, if it was just for me. But these —” She nods toward the two she picked out. “— can be zipped together.”

Oh.

*               *               *

So, they stretch their funds by stealth-camping most travel days, and buying dry foods in discount stores, their occasional indulgences few and carefully rationed.

Cordelia complains constantly, of course, even though it was her idea. Xander lets it roll off him, because that’s Cordelia.

Most nights do include sex — not all, but most — but they never talk about it. Every time, he thinks about what could have been, if he hadn’t blown it. (Does she ever do that? He has no idea.)

He did blow it, though, and that’s just how it is now.

– ii –

This trip is about the journey (time together?), not distance, so they travel without hurry. Stop where they like, check out whatever seems worth seeing. (Which mostly means, what they can see for free.)

Sunrise over the desert some mornings. Cool evening breeze from the hills, some evenings. Sitting together for hours — folding camp chairs — saying nothing, just absorbing the world around them.

(The only time they ever touch, though, is during sex. Sometimes Xander thinks he’d trade every ‘night of passion’ they share, just to have her rest her head on his shoulder.)

It’s not all communing with nature, though. It can’t be. Xander has frankly been astonished that mall-queen Cordelia could enjoy the quiet life as much as she seems to have been doing. Still, after a day or so of that, she always wants to see some life that’s more than the two of them. At which point, it’s time for towns.

Xander looks up from one of the many brochures they’ve collected at various stops for gas or snacks. “Here, look, how about Santa Carla? Beach, boardwalk, free outdoor concerts … that’d make a nice change of pace, for both of us.”

“I could do with some beach,” Cordelia agrees. Then she stops, frowns. “Wait a minute. Santa Carla? I thought you meant Santa Clarita, not … Didn’t there used to be all those stories about Santa Carla?”

“Yeah, right,” Xander scoffs. “Urban myth, and even that was from clear back in the Eighties —” He trails off, suddenly remembering exactly what kind of stories were being told about that town.

“Yeah,” Cordelia says tartly. “Clear back when we still thought vampires were a myth.”

Damn it! They’ve faced vamps, way too many times, and Xander actually saw Cordelia kill one at Graduation: direct kill, straight-up staking, not a group effort with weapons or a strike from ambush, but as deft and brisk as any Slayer. All the same — “This is vacation,” Xander tells her firmly. “We’ve been dealing with Sunnydale crazy for most of the last three years. The whole idea was to get away from that crap.”

“No argument from me.” Cordelia shrugs. “Keep thinking ‘beach’, just somewhere else.”

Xander nods agreement. He puts away the brochure, pulls out another.

*               *               *

He’ll go back to Sunnydale eventually, he knows that; he can’t walk away from the fight, not when so many of the people he cares about are still dedicated to it. And he doesn’t blame Cordelia a bit for her determination to leave it far behind. This summer is about something else, though, and there is just no point in wasting any of it on —

Well, on what has basically become his ‘normal’ life.

Part of him wants to ask when did that happen? But he knows exactly when.

– iii –

Splurging on a motel room is something they do once or twice a week, a break from sleeping in the tent and ‘hygiene’ with wet-wipes.

As usual, Cordelia stays in the shower till the hot water is gone, emerges only barely covered by a small, cheap towel, flushed and trailing a cloud of steam. Xander smiles at the sight; she rolls her eyes at that, ostentatiously ignoring him while she carefully selects fresh clothing … but she drops the towel to begin dressing, her nudity at once genuinely casual and deliaberately provocative.

She’s so beautiful, body lush with promise and memories. She knows it, revels in it, teases him with it.

Shares it with him.

But only so far, only so much.

Tonight they treat themselves to yet another indulgence, supper at McDonald’s. They take their time over the Big Macs and chicken nuggets, their conversation light, relaxed, reminiscent. “Wait, what?” Xander is saying. “All this time I thought her name was Aura.”

The scorn in Cordelia’s pfft! is perfunctory. “Aura came earlier, part of the original crew. This was Tana, Tana Guiette. More of a hanger-on than a full-fledged Cordette, she decided she didn’t like the way Harmony was running things while …” She pauses, her lips thinning, goes on. “Back after I’d just got out of the hospital. Besides, most of senior year she spent more time with the Drama Club geeks than with us.”

“Harsh,” Xander says, but not with any heat.

Cordelia shrugs. “Her choice, and I won’t say she was wrong. Top of the heap for high school doesn’t matter so much once it’s over.”

Yeah. Where they are now.

She’ll be off to L.A. eventually, and in his own time he’ll be back with Buf and Wil and Giles, doing his best to hold up his end in the struggle she’s showed the good sense to put in her rear-view mirror. This time right now, the two of them … she made it clear from the beginning that it would be temporary.

He’ll take it.

“So,” he goes on easily. “Did I ever tell you about the time I saw Jonathan trying to chat up the Guzman twins? And the funny part is, the girls actually seemed to be enjoying it —”

*               *               *

She’s not giving off any signals — she never does — but he knows how this evening will end. She won’t want to waste time they can spend together in an actual bed.

Except, not really together. That … that’s gone for good. His fault, his choice, his stupidity and selfishness. Every moment with her now is a privilege he doesn’t deserve, and an ache he couldn’t begin to know how to put into words.

And he’ll hold onto it for as long as it lasts.

– iv –

Another evening in the camp chairs, this time at a rest stop off the Interstate. The sun isn’t down yet, but they’ve set up in the shade, and they’re just relaxing in the quiet.

(They both enjoy this, but Xander knows it has to be measured out in cautious doses. Cordelia’s going to want some human contact soon, even if all she does is make snarky comments about people from out of earshot. For now, though, this is good.)

He’s already standing up before he realizes why, searching in his pockets and finding nothing. “You have the keys?” he asks Cordelia.

“You stuck them in the cup pocket of your chair, dummy.” Then she gives him an eyebrow, perhaps catching something in his tone. “Problem?”

“Noises in the bushes,” he explains. “Maybe nothing, but —”

“But Sunnydale taught us that ‘maybe’ can have big-ass teeth,” Cordelia says. “Like, literally.” She stands up herself. “Time to vacate?”

Xander shakes his head. “I like this spot, and it really might be nothing. Probably a good idea to get the pike out of the back, though.”

They head for his battered Gremlin together. “Normal people would just leave,” she observes … not criticism, just a plain statement of fact.

Xander pulls out the short pike, Cordelia determinedly grabs the lug wrench from next to the spare tire, and they start toward the bushes together. “Normal, huh?” Xander says to her. “Wonder what that’s like.”

In response to their probing, the thing that erupts from the bushes is less than four feet tall, insectoid, two legs and four arms: small cleaver in one ‘hand’, paring knife in one, what turn out to be short steel spikes held in the other two. Of course, determining that last part comes after Xander spears it with the pike to hold it at arm’s length, and Cordelia whacks it in the skull with the lug wrench. A bit more stabby-stabby and they can be confident it’s dead, and Cordelia steps back and asks acidly, “What is it with us and the bug guys?”

“Pretty sure I saw this type in one of Giles’s books,” Xander says, studying the little demon. “Churros, tchotchkes … Tchurisch, that was it. Not very sociable, almost never more than two or three of them hanging out together, and they really like knives.”

The two of them drag the carcass back past the screen of bushes, far enough in the undergrowth to push it over a low bluff where the elements and ordinary scavengers will take care of its eventual disposal. “We’re never getting away from this kind of thing, are we?” Cordelia asks as they carry the chairs back to the car.

Xander shrugs. “You said it yourself: normal people wouldn’t have noticed, or would have just left. We knew enough to pay attention and to get weapons.”

“Not exactly reassuring me here,” she grumps at him. But then, her dislike for having the supernatural intrude into her life hadn’t stopped her from backing him up like a champ.

The two of them belted in, he starts for the next city without her needing to tell him to. Some things, you just know.

*               *               *

She’s come so far since her first exposure to the supernatural, when she was hauled up onto the stage at the Bronze for draining to free the Master. Then — quite understandably — she had screamed and wept helplessly. Now …

Well, she isn’t as good as Xander, and he isn’t as good as Giles, who isn’t as good as Buffy. Still, Cordelia has become a fighter, even if she’d rather be anything but.

He wishes he could see how much more she grows to be.

That doesn’t seem very likely, though.

– v –

They haven’t counted the days, but it’s been over a month now, their budgeting proving its worth. Another motel stop, and the A/C in their room turns out to be genuinely adequate. On top of that, they allow themselves to eat at an actual steakhouse. Unaccustomed luxury.

Someone left a tiny votive candle in the motel bathroom. Cordelia sets it on the bedside table, lights it without saying anything. That predictably leads to lovemaking: slow, sensuous, soft, all but silent. Afterward, Xander gazes at her, throat tight with words he knows he isn’t entitled to say.

Cordelia looks back at him, something of the same in her eyes. What she says, though, is, “It’s time.”

*               *               *

He doesn’t try to talk her out of it. He threw away anything he could have had with her months ago, and she laid out the rules before they ever started their current journey; it’s set, always has been, and nothing he can do is going to change her mind. Because of this, they don’t speak during the drive to the bus station. He’s been worried about the engine — that tappit-ing noise (with the occasional clunk!) has been getting more frequent and foreboding for the last several days — but the silence between them is louder than anything in the background just now, like a melancholy song winding down to an inevitable, sorrowful end.

When she turns back from the window at the bus station, though, ticket in hand, it’s time to say something or let everything stay unsaid forever. “I know you didn’t mean for it to be that way,” Xander tells her. “I know you’ve been honest about every part of, well, of everything. What we’ve had, though, the last several weeks … Right here, right now, this is the worst you ever could have punished me.”

He half-expects her to say Good. Instead, Cordelia sighs. “We both lost,” she says to him. “I wish we hadn’t — God, you can’t know how much I wish that — but we did.”

After that, there’s really nothing that can be said. He wants so desperately to hug her; her eyes tell him he can’t, while his tell her he knows, but …

At the last, she boards the bus without looking back. When it pulls out, he steps out to watch it disappear down the highway, stands looking into the distant emptiness long after the bus is gone. Then it’s time for him to move ahead into an emptiness of his own.

*               *               *

She doesn’t know how many times he came so close to saying I love you, and bit it back because he knew it would just hurt her more. (She suspects it, though.)

He doesn’t know that she called an end because ‘getting him out of her system’ wasn’t working at all, she could feel herself falling in deeper with every moment and this had to STOP.

…

With all that he means to her, she’ll still do everything in her power to forget him now, to blot him completely out of her memory.

He’ll never be able to forget her.

He’ll never want to.

——————————

     So would it be wrong
          to give our love just one more try?
     So sad the song
          that says goodbye.
     – Gladys Knight

– end –
 

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