feistyvengeancewaif:

Doing vengeance with the Scoobies had never gone well for Anya. That time in Sunnydale she’d tried to rally them all against Xander to avenge her nuptial abandonment — oh, that had been mortifying. Not to mention her reality-warping dealings with Cordelia, which had landed her in high school and mortal in the first place. When she’d first arrived in Cleveland, she’d quietly sworn to herself never to initiate a vengeance gig with one of them, no matter how tempting the circumstances, but all of that had evidently long fallen to pieces — back when she made the decision, she’d also been under the impression that she was going to kill Xander with several floating knives or other miscellaneous bladed objects, so really, a lot had changed, and it was no surprise she’d ended up teleporting into Kennedy’s living room and sitting down next to Buffy in a Cleveland bar.

All things considered, the best stroke of luck she’d had since she came here was running into Buffy drunk instead of sober and with a stake in her hand.

“Oh, men screw over the best of us, Buffy,” Anya sighed empathetically, returning the shoulder pat with more than a little awkwardness. “I think we can all agree the planet’d be better off without them — granted the rest of us could evolve fast enough to compensate for the whole no-reproduction deal — but sadly, they’re here for good, and sometimes they’re even lovable.” She winced. Whatever man Buffy had vested her trust in had let her down big time, judging by the smell of assorted beverages on her breath. Besides, not just anybody jilted the Slayer.

She shifted in her seat as she considered her next stratagem. Telling Buffy she was a vengeance demon straight off the bat again wouldn’t do at all, despite Buffy’s throwaway comment about how much of a shame it was she wasn’t a demon anymore. Even if she was inebriated enough to be okay with it for the time being, she’d probably grab her axe and psych herself up to decapitate her as soon as she got over her hangover, knowing how seriously she’d taken her actions the last time she went demonic. No, that was far too risky a plan, and would likely derail things completely. The way she saw it, she just needed to guide Buffy along the path to vengeance until she said the magic words; once the wish was over and done with, and its consequences presumably well-received, maybe Anya could take a chance and tell Buffy the real story. Hopefully she’d be so satisfied with the deliverance of vengeance that she’d view Anya in a light favourable enough not to consider fighting her again, even if she had made a few vengeance kills along the way. Until their business was concluded, though, she couldn’t know.

“Anyway, you’re in luck, Buffy,” Anya clasped her hands together and smiled, “because I happen to have the perfect, cathartic little exercise for you.” She bit the inside of her lip, trying not to glance down at the hand print in the bar she knew was there. Slayer strength without the control to accompany it was terrifying. “It sounds like you feel powerless because you just need someone to share things with. So! Why don’t you just pretend I’m still a vengeance demon, and tell me the whole story? What he did to you, how it felt, what you hypothetically wish would happen to him… all that.”

Buffy nodded sagely in agreement with Anya. She was definitely the best, and somehow even she got the short end of the stick sometimes when it came to men. Anya gave her a shoulder pat of comforting. It was a little stiff, but Buffy’d take it. That Anya, it turned out she was nice after all. Who would have thought. Buffy knew she was good when she wasn’t all vengeancey, but even then she’d never gone as far as to say she was nice. No, Anya was pretty rude most of the time. But you couldn’t hold that against her, or at least Buffy felt bad when she did. Buffy let out a small hiccup and reached for the half-empty glass in front of her. She didn’t think she was too drunk, nope she was fully in control. She just had to put in a little effort to maintain that control was all. With a lot of effort, Buffy drew the drink to her mouth with a fairly steady hand. If she was grading her cup holding skills right now, she’d probably give herself a B+.

Buffy smiled at her B+, not really listening too closely to what Anya was saying. Something about ridding the world of men? It wasn’t a very smart idea whatever it was. Without men the world would be full of ladies and that just wouldn’t do. Even though they were a nuisance to Buffy at times, she appreciated some of them. Angel and Giles and Xander and even Spike were decent enough. Much more decent than a certain other man in her life, or out of it now, but still. Cameron: what a bastard. And to think she was going to have his baby? No. That couldn’t be true. Everything felt like a hazy memory to Buffy when it came to Cameron, or possibly even a dream. It just didn’t make sense.

“What did I do to deserve that?” she asked Anya. It didn’t really cross Buffy’s mind that Anya probably had no idea what she was talking about. Anya seemed to respond anyways. Cathartic? What was that? Anya was one of those smart talking people and in this state Buffy just couldn’t even bother to pretend she knew what was being said to her. “Anya, I don’t get so much the big words… But, I’ll do your exercise.” Buffy nodded her head once again only this time she wagged her head with a much lighter enthusiasm than when she was agreeing on the terribleocity of men. Or she should say man.

The alcohol was somehow able to clear her mind instead of clouding it. She zeroed in on the root of all her problems. Her fuckbuddy, her gay best friend, and her potential baby-daddy: Cameron. Cameron, with his sexy stealy demon powers. That prick had the audacity (whoa A++ vocab!) to go and get his demony sperm all up in her uterus. Nobody knocked up Buffy Summers, she just didn’t have the time for that shit. She was more sure than she’d ever been about anything ever that he was the root of all this media drama that had been making her life a living hell. That fake bitch of a vampire, Matthew, wouldn’t have had the courage to spin his web of bullshit without the support of his pussywhipped little boyfriend/dog-slave.

“This story Anya, it starts, as they all seem to, with a man. A god-damned sexy demon bastard who somehow wriggled his way into my life…” With much gusto Buffy launched into her story. She felt every emotion over again as she spoke. She felt the intense sting of betrayal sneak up on her once again like a slap to the face. Hand gestures were flung every which way as she got carried away in telling her tale. She may or may not have hit a glass off the table or possibly punched the bartender. It all seemed to blur together after a while. As she wound down from the cheesy soap opera of a story (And it was all true!) she relayed to Anya, she found herself in tears. She wasn’t really sad, though. She was just pissed, and she was miserable, and she was in hell. God was her life hell right now. And it was all because of Cameron…

“You know Cameron? I’ve told you about him… But either way, if you did know him.” the tears continued to stream down her face which was splotchy and red. “Oh, Anya. If you only knew him you’d know that he just…” Buffy didn’t think about the words that were coming out of her mouth anymore, they just sort of spilled out of their own accord. “He really should just go to hell. He can have sex with Hitler in his fiery little prison cell, for all I care! I just, I wish he’d go to hell.” With a scrunched up face from both anger and the burn of alcohol, Buffy downed the rest of her drink and collapsed on the table into a puddle of blonde tresses and salty tears.

feistyvengeancewaif:

Anya had a knack for entering a place and figuring out the lay of the land: who could be a potential client, who would yield no useful wishes even if bothered to wit’s end, and who just wanted to be left alone. Granted, the vengeance demon powers didn’t hurt; those, combined with her centuries of experience, had made her ridiculously efficient at entering bars and picking out women with bones to pick and wishes to grant. It had become less intuition, and more a logical working practice that maximised time efficiency and capitalised on opportunities if and when possible.

So, when Anya slid into the stool next to a drunken blonde woman seated at the bar, she didn’t give the action much thought. Slumped as she was over several glasses, she seemed the obvious choice. She didn’t look like a hardened drinker, given that it had only taken three drinks to lull her into a stupor, so she must have been drinking for something — the likelihood  was that it was a failed romantic conquest. And if reading those cues wasn’t enough, the vengeance vibe she was getting off her was uncannily strong. Anya’d ordered a drink, preparing herself to strike up a conversation with the woman, when the woman beat her to it. Out from the mass of blonde hair turned a face, one that was immediately familiar, and oh god, it was Buffy, and how in the unholy fuck was she going to crawl out of this one unscathed?

“Anya! Aren’t you supposed to be dead? You need to explain yourself right now, Anya. I can’t have dead things being alive right now, it just won’t do,” Buffy immediately launched into the accusations, and Anya couldn’t tell if it was because she was piss-drunk or because she’d jumped straight to the conclusion that she was a vengeance demon again, but for whatever reason she wanted answers.

“Uh,” Anya started, hoping for dear life that Buffy wasn’t clutching the edge of the bar because she was trying to restrain herself from going the full Slayer on her right then and there. “I can explain. If what I’m about to say makes zero sense, it’s probably — definitely — because you’re drunk. Really, really drunk.” If she was lucky, Buffy would buy whatever excuse she threw on her right then in her desperation to not fall off her stool. Clearly extreme alcohol tolerance wasn’t one of the gifts a Slayer inherited with their fate. Maybe she could even turn the situation to her advantage.

“See, I never actually died,” she finally blurted out. “Andrew thought he saw me die, because he was panicking like a little girl and, um, wildly hallucinating, and Xander thought I was dead because he couldn’t find me in the building, but… I got out of Sunnydale before the entire town blew up.” As she finished her explanation, Anya let out a heavy exhale. Maybe, just maybe, in her current state, Buffy would buy it? “So don’t worry, because I— I’m not some manner of creepy-crawly undead demon thing or anything of the kind. I am alive, and a human.”

Really, it was the perfect lie.

Even though she was drunk, what Anya said did make a lot of sense.  That Andrew, of course he had just thought he saw her dying.  It explained everything, she knew Anya wouldn’t just go and die in a battle like that.  She had to live, if not for the money.  Buffy had to focus extra hard to see straight, but she knew one thing for certain.  Anya liked money.  And when she told her not to worry, she didn’t.  For all she knew she was in the bar hoping to get someone to buy her a free drink, that did seem like the kind of thing she would do.  But whatever the reason that Anya was in this particular bar at the exact same time that she was, it didn’t really matter.  Because Anya was alive, and she wasn’t on the vengeance path any more and Buffy just knew she didn’t need to worry.  Because Anya had said so.

What really mattered was that she was there.  And while Anya wasn’t always the most understanding and she only got like 40% of the pop culture references Buffy made, she felt like Anya was just the person she needed to talk to.  She would listen.  It occurred to Buffy that she might also laugh at her, but she thought better of it.  Why would Anya laugh? She wasn’t that drunk after all.  She was just a girl in need of a friendly face to talk to.  And Anya’s face was friendly, especially tonight.  Anya gave off this sort of vibe she hadn’t really noticed before this particular evening, she just felt like Anya wanted to know all of her problems, that she cared.  The drunkenness of course, only enhanced this feeling.

“You know, Anya, it’s a shame you’re not in the vengeance mode as of now.” Buffy began with a slight giggle.  She couldn’t really control where the laughter spilled out when she spoke.  She knew she was trying to forget her problems, but talking about them was something she felt might make her feel better.  Because she never really got to talk about these things. “There isn’t a soul in the world I can talk to about these things, except for you that is, Miss living Anya.”

She found herself regaining the ability to keep herself firmly planted in the chair, which allowed her to remove one of her hands from the metal bar.  She noticed a hand shaped dent left behind from where she’d clung for dear life, and again she laughed.  She always forgot just how strong she was.  Taking her free hand she gave Anya a little shoulder pat, not for any reason in particular.  Just to show their buddyship, which was going very strong in Buffy’s eyes.  "I just, I have so many things in my life that need avengeance (is avengeance even a word you silly?) and I don’t have any way to fix them! Do you know what that’s like for a me, Anya? I am Buffy! I always know what to do, only no I don’t apparently.“ The words poured out of Buffy’s mouth as she babbled on, hardly giving herself time to breathe, much less allowing Anya to get in a word of her own.  But when she finished she looked over to Anya, maybe someone as old as she was would know what to do about all of this.  She could only hope.

Buffy didn’t consider herself a drinker, not really.  She’d only been drunk a few times in her life and she honestly didn’t know a thing about alcohol.  She had no preference except that she hated whiskey.  But, even with all the experience she lacked, she knew one thing: when things got really rough, a good drink or two could ease the pain.  And boy did she have a lot of pain.  Everywhere she looked things had been going wrong.  She’d had to deal with a distraught sister, betrayals, a media blitz she had zero ways to handle, an ensouled vampire to reform, and now the impending doom of a dear friend.  It was all too much, she hadn’t really learned how to cope with such issues.  But she needed to push them to the back of her mind, if only for a night.

And so, she found herself at a bar.  She was on her third White Russian, a drink she’d never tried before, and she felt pretty damn good.  Sure, the world around her was a little watery and she had to focus really hard in order to see straight but none of it really mattered.  At least she was free from her life for a little while.  The only thing that seemed of great importance to her at the moment was unzipping her makeup bag so she could touch up her lipgloss.  This proved to be a harder task than she’d imagined before she started it but she focused really hard and eventually undid the zipper finding the squishy little tube from which the glittery goop came.  She gave it what she thought was a light squeeze and slathered it onto her lips, she got out of the “lines” a little bit but she knew she still looked good.  She could just tell.

By the time she finished this task she looked up to the bartender to ask for another drink, but her focus was derailed by the person sitting next to her.  She hadn’t noticed that she wasn’t alone, but the familiar face caught her eye.  Sitting next to her was, of all people, Anya.  Anya, the dead ex-vengeance demon.  Yes, she was fairly certain that Anya was dead.  But Anya was there despite the fact that she was dead.  It didn’t really make sense and she found herself needing to figure it out what on earth was going on, and pronto.

“Anya! Aren’t you supposed to be dead? You need to explain yourself right now Anya. I can’t have dead things being alive right now, it just won’t do…” The words flew out of her mouth with a sort of desperation she hadn’t intended.  She was aiming for suave  but instead came off sort of demanding.  She didn’t really think it was a problem though.  Anya always forgot her manners even when she was sober, so Buffy hoped in some corner of her mind that Anya wouldn’t be offended by her lack of any real greeting.  She looked at her old friend expectantly and with intense focus, she was trying really hard not to fall out of her chair.  She found the edge of the bar and clung to it for dear life with both of her hands, grasping so hard that her knuckles turned white.