Title: Not Gone, Not (Yet) Forgotten

Author: Adam

Rating: R

E-mail: adam_brittboy@yahoo.co.uk

Pairing: S/X...kinda

Archiving: Yes, for the places that already have my stories, if not, just ask :)

Feedback: -Would be great!

Warnings: Nothing really. I just put a higher rating to cover anything...just incase.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters in this story, and no profit is being made.

Summary: A deteriorating Scooby, and a sad Vampire.
Thanks to those of you who helped check through my story; annalise-again a fantastic help! Lee, thanks a lot for your help as well! :)

Not Gone, Not (Yet) Forgotten

When it comes right down to it, which is worse? Watching someone, the man that you've grown to love and cherish through the years, slowly losing himself. Not all at once, mind you. Only pieces. . . fragments, falling away, as the ever-present cancer consumes his beautiful body.

Now, as a vampire, someone who's immortal, you get used to losing people. Not that you lose that many though, because if, there's someone you like enough you turn them, and if you don't, then they can't have been that important anyway. But Xander...Xander was a boy, no, he was a man who should have lived forever. He wasn't a great warrior, or a skilful witch, no; our Xander was just a regular man.

Some may say, despite this.

Despite his normality, despite his plainness.

But that's wrong. It's because he was so average, just a normal bloke who wanted to make a difference... someone who fought with sheer grit and determination through all the terrors that the Old World had to offer. This is why Xander Harris is a great man. Buffy may have all her battles and triumphs, and Angel, let’s admit it, is legendary. Even 'Red', our own sweet Red has become a very well known witch in the Demon community.

Xander, despite what people believe is not an average man. He is way more than that and I suppose, no, not suppose, I know that 'Life' has got the last laugh. Taking from us a man of courage and valour by what? Some random demon attack? A Vampire draining him? No, that would be too easy. Almost an escape from the exciting life that the boy led. So why not a disease? Yes, that's what a man who's given everything he has to the cause gets. A disease.

So, as I look at him now, his defeated, withering body sitting at an unnatural angle in one of the Watchers study-chairs, I feel pity. It may not sound much, but believe me, for a Vampire-pity, is not a common emotion we express. I'm a Vampire of almost two hundred years. I've killed countless people, maimed, mutilated and tortured hundreds, and never have I once felt so helpless. So useless.

This time last year he was a healthy, vibrant man in his prime. He had his health and his whole life ahead of him. Sure, he was single again, but with those puppy eyes who wouldn't want him? I certainly did.

Those eyes of his are different now though; aged prematurely from so much pain, so much suffering. His face is pale, gaunt, lifeless...Just like the expression that is now forever-showing on his face. What I wouldn't give for that goofy grin. Just to see it one more time.

He sits there in that bloody chair, day and night, night and day. Unmoving, just staring into space, allowing the final few shreds of his old life, his real life, to fall from his grasp. He should be out there, anywhere. Living and enjoying every last second, but no. He sits there, disintegrating before our...my eyes.

The fight in him has gone, gone completely and gone for good.

Crying. How many Vampires do you know that cry? None that I know of, and certainly not over some bloody human. But as I sit here looking at the once-'nummy-treat' I cry. I don't know why I cry, but most of the man I knew is gone now, and everything a person is, lies in their memories. Xander's are gone. Oh, sometimes he gets that spark in his eye, the one that makes us all believe that the old Xanders back, that he remembers something. But everytime our hopes are dashed, because as soon as it comes that spark, that light is gone again. His mind is already dead, and his body not far behind.

I told him about a month before all this crap started how I felt about him. That I cared for him more than any other human I'd ever met. That he was a bloody demon-magnet, but not just for the ones that wanted to kill him. I remember the night I told him what I felt. The one night in all my existence I ever felt alive. Even as a human I never felt as alive, as complete as I did when I told him about my feelings. He didn't reject me, but didn't accept me either. We remained friends, or as close as Vampire and a Vampire-slayerette can be. We still made jokes about each other, snide comments, but the brunt was taken off. They were never intended to hurt after that. Said almost as routine.

I don't regret telling him; I don't regret it at all. I have never asked anything of anyone through my un-life. Nothing of any importance anyway. A bag of blood here and there, but that's all. I asked Xander for a kiss that night. I wanted to go for a kiss and a grope, but I didn't want to push my luck. Why should I? I'm a Vampire and will live forever, and Xander...Xander was young and had all the time in the world. There was no need to rush.

That's what I thought.

The kiss was...I could spend a lifetime, several infact, and still never be able to truly describe what it was for me, meant to me. I used to be a bloody poet, that's the kind of thing we did, but I never was a very good one. It was...another perfect moment, but only a moment, in that wonderful day I had with Xander Harris. I want to say what it was like for me. More now, as I'm the only one who knows what that day was for me, for both of us. But I can't. It was our day, and always will be.

So, again I come back to normal, average man, Xander.

Do I regret anything? Of course I do. There are always regrets. I regret not telling him more. More about me, more about what he meant to me. I tell him now, so do the rest of them. Talk to him for hours on end about how much we love him, and care for him. We talk and talk about any old crap that comes to us. Is it out of guilt? I think so. They never really spoke to him when he was really here, and now it may be there last chance so they're doing it whilst they can. But I talk to him now as well. Talk about things I could never tell him when he was really here with me. He sits, his eyes unseeing of the world around him, sitting silently. Forever silent.

I suppose it's really the coward’s way out. Talking to someone who's just this side of death.

In the eyes of many, what Xander has now is not a life, but an existence. I want him back with me, back with us all, doing what he did best, cracking jokes, splitting up all those uncomfortable silences that come so often now.

Xander Harris is dead. He'll never speak to me again, never tell me to shut up, or go away. Or give me one of those patented puppy looks. He's here in body, but in his mind, and his soul...well they're long gone. To Heaven probably or wherever good people like him go. It's for certain that I'll never see him again. Nope, nowhere good for me to go when I die. But for as long as I exist he will too, in me. Within my thoughts, my memories and forever, in my dreams.

The End.