“The Overcompensator 9000,” I say.

“Yeah.”

“The Overcompensator 9000.”

“Yeah.”

“The Overcompensator 9000.”

“Could you please stop repeating that? I'm trying to get an epic vibe going on over here, and it's kind of hard when you keep repeating the name of my ultra-secret superweapon in the extra-squeaky voice you use when you quiz me on how many atoms equals one mole and I ask whether the mole has weapons.”

“My voice is not squeaky, it's pleasantly high-pitched. And what happened to the other 8,999 Overcompensators?”

“Oh, come on. You're a squeaker. You have always been a squeaker, and you will always be a squeaker. When you sprang forth, Athena-like, from the hardback copy of The Feminine Mystique that replaced Sheila's uterus as part of a top-secret military experiment in 1970, the midwife said 'Lo, there is a squeaker brought forth,' and when you die, you will be laid to rest under a plain granite tombstone bearing only the laconic inscription 'Here lies of a squeaker all that was mortal.' So it has always been, so it shall always be, and I shall now provide empirical evidence, such as you so earnestly entreat me to include in my academic essays in place of the solitary footnote referring to the properties of ice as used by Mr. Freeze in the 121rst issue of Batman that is wont to grace them.”

The second half of this speech is delivered between pants as he struggles to hold me down on the bed and tickle me. I respond in kind, and we topple over onto the floor.

“Aha!” he says, having obtained a position of advantage. “Watson, can it be? Yes? No? Yes! It squeaketh! It squeaketh like a very squeaker!”

“I'll squeak you, you, you very annoying person,” I say, using my superior strength to roll on top of him. I'm extremely out of practice with this, as, while I have learned a great deal about pressure points over the past few years, tickling has not been the foremost practical application. But there are some things you don't forget, specifically one particular spot under the floating ribs that I found playing doctor when we were nine -

“Mercy!” he pleads, trying to wriggle away. “I take it all back. You don't squeak. You have never squeaked. Your notice in the obituary column will read 'She bore it all, through thick and thin, through rain and snow, through Harm and Cordy, but never a squeak passed her lips.'”

“Willow, Queen of Emilyland, considers the plaintiff's apology and finds it worthy,” I tell him gravely, referring to the imaginary country I made up for my favorite stuffed frog. I wonder if the other Willow still has it. Not that I care. Stuffed frogs aren't for terrifying creatures of the night, they're for pathetic, useless little wimps who wear cute baggy overalls that might as well have 'Luke, do as you will with me' written on them and hide in corners while vampires kill their parents.

Exhausted from the tickle wars, I curl up on Xander's chest and he wraps his arms around me. And I realize, with a tingle of surprise that spreads up from my toes, that I feel safe.

It won't last longer than about five minutes, of course, because I'm me, and I worried all the time even before I knew how much there was to worry about. But I'm not going to worry about anything right now. Right now I feel warm and important and not pathetic and it's the most wonderful thing that's happened to me since before Dad let in that 'door-to-door salesman' three years and two hundred twenty-six days ago.

“My tombstone didn't say that,” I mumble into Xander's chest.

“Huh?”

“My tombstone. About the squeaking. It just said W. D. Rosenberg, and there wasn't anything to say that I wore fuzzy sweaters or was afraid of frogs or even whether I was a boy or a girl. It was the first thing I saw when I climbed out of the coffin, and I hated it.”

He strokes my hair. He doesn't know why it's important that I tell him this, or why I'm crying, but he knows to hold me and stay quiet, and I love him for that with a tightness in my chest so fierce that it hurts.

“I hated it,” I say again. “The first thing I did when I got out was kick it so hard I hurt my foot. There weren't any other vampires around - I don't think that they intended to turn me, but I had bitten one of them while they were doing stuff to me. So I limped off towards the road and I didn't come back there for a long time.

“But then, about six months later, I remembered this psychology textbook Dad got me when I was twelve, because I had been having nightmares about frogs, and I remembered how it had this chapter in it about the stuff that happens when you try to repress your fears. So I went back, and there were a couple of stones on top of the tombstone - I think they were from my aunt and uncle in Seattle - and a few white roses in front of it.

“And, ya know, I couldn't work out why anyone would do that. With the roses, I mean. My relatives would have left stones instead of flowers, because, ya know, Jewish, and I didn't have any who were still in town anyway. So I hid in a crypt nearby to watch, and didn't tell Xander - my Xander, that is - anything about it, 'cos he was way fun in bed when he got jealous.

“And the next evening, I peaked from the crypt and saw - Wait. I forgot to say that it was a Thursday when I visited the tombstone the first time, so this would have been the beginning of Shabbat, since it's from sunset to sunset. I don't know if that's important or not. Anyway, I saw Xander - my Xander, that is - was putting a rose on the tombstone.”

“Did that make you happy?”

“It made me furious. I mean, he already had me, even if I did occasionally try to make him think that I was seeing somebody else, because, as I said, Xander plus jealous equals mondo hot. So the roses weren't for me. They were for the useless little bitch who went and got herself killed. I made him promise never to leave flowers there again.”

I look up at him, suddenly self-conscious again. “So, long story with no real ending, huh?” I tell him, because I am not ever going to tell him or anyone else what happened next. When he doesn't answer for a moment, I burrow my nose under his chin because it feels a bit cold.

“Actually,” he begins, “I think that I understand why -”

“I went out to the graveyard the next evening when I was certain he wasn't watching and I picked up all the flowers and the petals that had fallen off and brought them back to the room we shared and hid them in a drawer where I knew no one would find them but I still took them out occasionally to look at them,” I blurt out into his neck.

And he hugs me closer to him, and I snuggle up to him and fall asleep, before I stop feeling safe again.


Next






A/N: Wow, Not Willow has definitely been sleeping a lot in this fic, huh? My flimsy justification is that she's been on the streets for a while, scavenging by night and taking shelter by day, and her internal clock is probably messed up.

The real reason is, of course, that Xander/Willow snuggles are my favorite porn. I am aware that this almost certainly means that I am technically becoming a woman.