Title: Pandora
Author: Robin the Crossover Junkie
Disclaimer: Xander isn’t mine, and Anya isn’t mine, and everything in this fic isn’t mine, except for the stuff I made up.
Spoilers: I’ve seen up to Hell’s Bells, so spoilers up to that.
Summary: Marriage is bliss. Really.
I’ve done it now. I love my wife. She is my everything. I asked her to marry me on the day my best friend died, and we announced our engagement shortly after my best friend came back from the dead. We married in a regular ceremony, at least for Sunnydale, and she made my friends wear the most awful dresses in the world. My drunken relatives fought with her relatives, and it was a great big blood bath of horrid family secrets.
And now I’ve done it.
Marriage is supposed to be bliss. It was in the brochure. I think I want a refund. I’m feeling very betrayed right now.
She asked me if she should cut her hair. I love my wife. When I met her, in high school, she had short hair. It was strawberry blonde. She was beautiful. When we married, her hair was long, and blonde. And she asked me if she should cut it.
What was I supposed to say? I could have taken the easy route, and said, “You’ll always be beautiful, no matter what your hair looks like,” but she knows better. She tortured men for a thousand years. I bet she knows all the excuses.
I could have said no. All I had to do was say “No, your hair is gorgeous the way it is, and it makes my knees weak whenever you walk in the room, you fox you.” But I didn’t.
I said yes.
“Sure,” I said. “Why not.” And now I’ve done it.
Suddenly, I don’t think she’s beautiful. Our wedding was a disaster because the whole time, I must have been thinking that she’d look better with short hair, and that we had to do the wedding pictures over again once her hair had been cut, and maybe even the ceremony so that I could marry the woman I think is pretty. She’s screaming. She threw a pillow at me. I think she’s planning to poison my cereal in the morning, because she keeps getting up, while not talking to me, and checking to see if we have more than just the one bottle of Tylenol. Apparently the one full bottle isn’t enough to kill me.
Can you kill someone by putting Tylenol in his cereal? Cuz I think she’s gonna try.\
I love my wife. She loves me. Why do we have to fight over something so stupid?
“Why are we even having this stupid argument?” I ask her, and she turns on me, and I swear that all the veins in her head are throbbing, making her look like a Vengeance (Justice) Demon again.
“So what now you think I’m stupid?”
And now I’ve done it.
*~*~*~
I woke up slowly, my tuxedo wrinkled from the night. I hadn't slept well, and I knew I wouldn't be able to return it. I looked around the dingy motel room, my eyes red and watery from the tears I'd cried before I went to sleep.
I wanted that dream to be real. So much. It was a horrible dream, full of fighting, and anger...but it wasn't, not really. I knew that under all the angry words, under the idiocy...we were in love, and happy. And I wanted that.
It hurt so much. Knowing that I'd hurt her...and knowing that I still would have hurt her if we'd gone through with it. I loved her so much. But I didn't want to become my father. Tony Harris was not the kind of person Xander Harris wanted to become.
Granted, the visions of Anya's infidelity, and me...attacking her...they weren't real. I knew that. But my father. That WAS real.
Didn't they always say that abuse runs in a cycle? If your father's an alcoholic, chances are YOU'LL be an alcoholic? I don't want to be my dad.
I don't want to hurt her.
I love her.
END
