‘Confessions of a Simple Mind,’ or ‘How my life sucked, let me count the ways,’ by something pretending to be Xander Harris.

So I still remember everything, no matter what. I’m kinda like Jesse that way. I remember us as the three outcast musketeers, Willow and Jesse and me. I remember sophomore year, when the first Slayer came into our lives, and everything changed. I had no idea how bad it would be, Buffy was so beautiful, and I fell for her hard. Literally. I had bruises the next day. And there were the vampires. Not so beautiful, and I got bruises when I met them as well.

I woke up in the hospital the next day, not knowing that this would become a recurring theme in the life of Xander Harris, to find out that I had been knocked cold and been out all night and most of the day, that Buffy had managed to rescue Willow, and while the girls carried me to safety and got me to the hospital, the vampires got Jesse. Not a fair trade, I remember thinking, when Buffy told me that she had gone down into the sewers to try to find Jesse while I was unconscious, and that she had and that he wasn’t coming back, as he was now a vampire and had lured her into a trap and nearly killed her.

Mr Giles, her Watcher, explained to me that there was no ‘coming back’ for Jesse, that we couldn’t save him, that there wasn’t even a ‘him’ to save anymore, just the monster that killed him. We let ourselves believe that, and while Buffy killed the minions of the Master, killed Luke, killed Darla, and even the Master, she never managed to get her hands on Jesse. I did, once, in the Bronze, and he would have killed me, but I managed to plant a stake in his shoulder while he was discussing how great it would be to reunite the three musketeers on his side of the fence and he decided to get gone when he saw Buffy kill Luke and realized that ‘his side’ was getting smaller.

Buffy died killing the Master, having poisoned herself, so that he would ‘choke on her.’ I found them dead in his underground chapel-thingie. Well, I think he was dead. He sure was after Giles cut off his head. Mr Giles took Buffy topside and we let her body be found, another victim of Sunnydales ‘gang activity.’ He was gone the next year, back to England, I imagine.

Our Junior year was looking pretty bleak, me and Will and Miss Calender the only ones left with a clue about what was going on. Cordelia had taken that clue and moved to L.A., as it turns out that Jesse still had a ‘thing’ for her, and had left her some nasty presents outside her bedroom window. She went to a private Catholic school, and was wearing a big sweater with little crosses all over it when her parents took her away. I remember that I feared for the church.

Having seen it all before, when the new girl Kendra showed up, Will and I tagged her as a Slayer pretty darn fast. Well, Will did, I just tagged her as ‘the-new-girl-who-didn’t- know-that-Xander-was-a-virgin-loser-yet.’ Either way, we got close to her and her secret was up within the week. Her Watcher, a Mr Zambuto, hated us with a fiery passion, and even said that it was our fault that Buffy had died, distracted by her love for her friends, and that Mr Giles had as good as killed her himself by allowing us to hang around her. I was suspended for three days for punching the new librarian, and Mr Snyder was gloating the whole time.

I got off light. It would have been murder if Kendra and Willow and Miss Calender hadn’t pulled me off of that smug bastard.

It turned out that Kendra admired how I stood up to her Watcher, and we began to meet secretly. Miss Calender managed to smooth things out with Mr ‘don’t-call-me-Sam’ Zambuto, so that he would allow her to run middleman between us and Kendra, and he began to find Willows computer help to be a real asset to his Watcherly / Slayerly duties. He still had no use for me, and once he found out that Kendra was ditching class to mack on me in the janitors’ closet, he flipped out. Much more quietly this time, I think he didn’t want to get punched again. He ‘forbade’ me from seeing Kendra, and he was very nearly in tears as he explained to me that I was going to get her killed. I didn’t budge. I was young and stubborn and always right. I thought I was in love. I thought he was just being petty, because he didn’t like me, and it was unfair to forbid her from living a life, since it might not be a long one and she deserved a chance for happiness, and blah-blah-blah insert-selfish-self-justifying-rationale-here. So he told Kendra the same thing, and she decided to ‘honor his wishes’ and break up with me.

I reacted like a stupid kid, and made Amy do a love-spell on a cross I’d gotten Kendra and stole back from her locker. It backfired and affected every woman in Sunnydale, except Kendra. It was carnage. Willow and Amy and Miss Calender fighting over me, Drusilla trying to make me a vampire so that she could have me forever, Mr Zambuto trying to reverse the spell, while Kendra fought off my admirers. She was overrun, nearly killed by Drusilla and I was beaten into a pulp by the women fighting over me, by my Wills and by Miss Calender, women I loved and trusted and never meant to hurt.

I spent the next three years in a coma, so I’m not real clear on what happened then. Apparently I died briefly, and the spell weakened when I did, and thanks to the wonders of CPR, Willow and Miss Calender managed to save my life. Mr Zambuto managed to end the spell, while it was weakened, so at least I wasn’t the most popular guy in the coma ward.

Life went on, for everyone but me. I know that there were times I felt like I was drowning and it was cold, and there were times I felt warm and loved. But mostly time just happened and I don’t remember anything about it. While I slept the slept of the deeply stupid, Drusilla killed Kendra and Mr Zambuto died there as well, by her side. That was my fault too, but only me and Jesse know that Drusilla blamed Kendra for ‘letting’ me get hurt, and wanted to hurt her in kind.

Willow and Miss Calender were there when the new Slayer, Faith, and her Watcher, Miss Post, showed up in Sunnydale. Faith enrolled in the high school senior year and caused lots of trouble. I would have paid to see her punch Snyder unconscious the first time he gave her lip. New faces appeared, Miss Calender managed to find a way to re-ensoul Jesse, who was the head lieutenant of the new Big Bad, who was none other than the Mayor. Through the information they extracted from the newly restored Jesse, and with the magic of the Glove of SomethingOrOther (some lightning-chucking thing that they later had to destroy, when it began to corrupt Miss Post and that’s why she just has the one hand now), they managed to defeat Mayor Wilkins plans. Other members came and went. A werewolf named Oz that Willow won’t ever talk about. Jonathan Levinson, invisible boy. Amy, witch, then rat, then witch again. Harmony took over the ditzy cheerleader / screaming damsel-in-distress role from Cordelia. I’m glad I slept through that one, although it’s not so cool that she didn’t make it out alive. Jesse still has nightmares about that, killing Harmony. I remember her as an annoying girl who picked on us, but she didn’t deserve to be hunted down like an animal.

Still I slept. When I finally awoke, I was alone and it was night. Willow was in college by then, a teacher’s assistant even, everyone but me having graduated (even Jesse had gotten his GED), but she dropped everything to come help me ‘re-assimilate.’ I couldn’t even walk for a week, as I had to relearn how, and then I had to build up enough strength in my legs to carry my weight. I looked gross, a pale nasty combination of scrawny and fat, with permanent scars from where the tubes went in and had gotten infected so many times. Another humiliating thing I had to relearn, basic bodily functions. I felt like a baby. I acted like one, too.

Especially when I met Jesse again. I didn’t process that he’d died, convinced it was all some insane nightmare, until he hugged me, and his body was cold. I had some flashback to cold and pain and falling and I recoiled, terrified. He reacted to the sudden surprise by going into vampface, and atrophied muscles or not, it took Faith and two orderlies to restrain me as I screamed and thrashed and tried to get away. Yet more scars from the stuff I ripped out while struggling. The one from the catheter was particularly attractive (he says sarcastically)…

So, heavily sedated, I met him again, and it was a strange surreal dream. I finally got it, and felt like an ass for managing to hurt the feelings of a dead vampire, who happened to have been my best friend. I later found out, when he was feeling particularly guilty, that my reaction had made sense to him, as Willow hadn’t been the only one visiting me during my long sleep. He’d been by at night, considering me to be his private stash. Sometimes he would talk, other times he would bite and run. He felt so guilty that he’d never told the others about it, but I felt better knowing that I’d been there for him. At least I was good for something, I could still produce blood anyway, and every time he fed off of me, it was some cheerleader that got to live to cheer another day. So the ‘dreams’ of cold and stuff, they now made sense. I’m gonna tell myself that the warm and floaty dreams of goodness were when Willow came by and held my hand and told me about her day at school. The visitors had to log in ‘though, and she wasn’t listed that much. I try to convince myself that it was guilt, since she was the one who put me there, with that axe-to-the-head ‘get away from him, you bitch!’ thing, and not that she was simply moving on and had more important things going on in her life, than visiting some dumbass who nearly got everyone killed, and ended up comatose, which was probably the only reason he wasn’t still around screwing everything up.

They introduced me to the new sheriff-in-town, Faith, and that was another trauma, learning that Kendra was dead, too and that we were on Slayer number three. I got to meet Jonathan, after Miss Calender did a spell involving his yearbook photo and some NASTY tasting potion. He was invisible, forgotten in high school and only with magic could we even see him. Nice guy. I know what it’s like to be forgotten. I’m surprised they didn’t come in to find an empty bed one day and just end up throwing me out with the dirty sheets. Oh wait, there’s that ‘pathetic me’ thing again. I am the poster-child for self-absorption sometimes…

Amy was a rat this week, but I let her run all over me and tickle me with her whiskers while I lay in Willows bed, trying to learn how to not piss myself. A month went by, and I could walk, and my drama got pushed to the side, as Miss Calender and Miss Post finally figured out how to de-rat Amy. She was now going through the same sort of re-somethingorother as I was, having to get her GED and learn about how the world had changed while she was gone. Jesse helped us both there, he’d been conscious during his ‘time away,’ but he’d still needed to learn how to adjust. Even Faith knew the score, since having to come to a new school and a new life kinda fit with what we were going through. So we were a gang, Faith and Willow and Jesse and Jonathan and Amy and me, with Miss Calender and Miss Post looking over us indulgently. And we didn’t comment on the Watcher / Teacher things going on behind our backs, which we all knew about, since Miss Post was about as sneaky as a rhinoceros, and Miss Calender was deliberately unsubtle, probably to embarrass her ‘girlfriend,’ but we chose to ignore it and let them have their games. All in all, it was good to see some romance in the air.

We were quite the mob on patrol, and Jesse and Faith made an impressive team, while I tended to hide behind Amy, who could make her hands go on fire. Nobody knew if she could do anything with that fire, but vampires wouldn’t go anywhere near her to find out. Cool deal, for me, hiding behind the useful people. Even Willow, with her snappy high-tech repeating laser-sight window-cleaning crossbow, managed to rack up some dustage, and the vampires never knew where Jonathan was until they were already staining the grass. Good times. That lasted about two months.

We were investigating some sort of disturbance at the dump when we met the Toth demon, with his magic staff thingie. It had managed to toss Jesse into a big pile of trash, and I was standing over Amy, all protective-like, and completely useless, since she’d been knocked out doing something useful, when the demon lined up a shot on Faith. I couldn’t get to her, I couldn’t get to the demon. All I could get was in the way. A skill I apparently had mastered. I got in the way and it felt like I was being ripped in half. The world was red-hot pain, and it hurt like a thousand hurty things hurting as hard as they could. I felt like if I could just reach Toth, if I could grab that staff, I could turn it off and make the pain go away. But that’s all I remember.

The rest I had to be told by Jesse, since Willow won’t talk to me, not about real stuff. She treats me like an appliance, just whips my shirt off and fiddles around under my skin, adjusting things. Sometimes I go blind, sometimes I fall over, sometimes I forget stuff. She doesn’t seem to care that I don’t like that. She saw that I could cry once, and she said ‘that’s stupid, it’ll just rust’ and turned that off.

Jesse gets that I had to know what happened, so he told me all about it. Everyone saw me hit by the beam and get thrown back into a pile of trash. The demon ran off, apparently its weapon needed to recharge or something. They helped me up, unaware that there were now two of me, split in half by the Toth stick, and the second me woke up a few minutes later to see an ‘evil robot double’ of himself walking away with his friends. Apparently I followed myself, and came to the conclusion that the demon had somehow impersonated me to get at the Slayer from inside her little gang. Dork-me finally got Willow alone and explained things, and when she went to call for help, the other me showed up and they fought. It turns out that paranoid dork-me wasn’t as good a fighter as ‘evil robot double’ me, and while defending himself the ‘evil robot’ version of me planted a knife in the heart of the ‘dork’ version of me. Willow heard the scuffle and came back in time to see the other me sinking to the floor, with blood coming from his chest, to slump over a second me, with a knife in his heart. Jesse is pretty sure that at least one of me died in her arms, although he showed up a few minutes after. He didn’t say anything about it, but from the look of guilt, I know that he regretted seeing 20 pints of Xander-juice going to waste decorating the floor of Willows dorm room. Typical Jesse, feeling bad for something like that. That soul Miss Calender gave him seems to come with an extra helping of guilt, sometimes. As with the rest of my life, I regret my blood being wasted. I regret that Willow had to see that. I regret that I never got to show her anything good, and that she must have nothing but nightmares of the time she spent with me.

When I woke up next, I was in a basement, surrounded by technical whoosits and what looked like severed body parts. Turns out they were mechanical arms and stuff, and I wasn’t me, I was some of those parts. A weirdo named Warren Mears, some kid who had apparently cleaned out Ted’s old U-Store-It and stumbled on some prime robot-making-stuff, had been commissioned to make a mechanical me. It wasn’t Willow either. It turns out Jesse hadn’t been the only vampire to visit me while I was napping. Another vampire had felt me die, and the love-spell being unraveled, and her mind snapped (okay, it was already pretty snapped, but it twanged a few more times) and she somehow managed to remain obsessively in love with me. Maybe it was a spell. Maybe it was a shiny new psychosis to add to the collection. Maybe I was a shiny new doll to add to her collection. So I, not-at-all-affectionately known as the ‘XanderBot,’ became the cuddle-monkey of Drusilla, poster-child for dysfunctionally insane soulless psychopaths.

That lasted about two weeks, as she lost interest and discarded me (and by ‘discarded,’ I mean ‘pushed off a cliff’). Apparently I lacked something that she wanted in her appliances. Jesse found me, and Miss Calender got me mostly working. It took a lot of convincing, I am told, but Willow finally agreed to see what was ‘wrong’ with me. Lots of things. I had been programmed to love Drusilla, and I was useless, moping over my ‘dark princess.’ That got programmed away, and I feel empty without that purpose, lost and unloved, although I’ll never tell Willow that, since she’ll just program that away, too and I’ll be shiny happy XanderBot, not needing or missing love or friends or any of that warm living stuff that she doesn’t think I deserve, since I’m ‘not really him, just a thing made to look like him by that sick bitch.’

So now we patrol, just like before, only Amy hides behind me now, since I ‘can’t be hurt.’ Actually I can, but Willow says that I am expendable, and while Jesse doesn’t agree with her, and I don’t think Faith does either, I do. I’ve already gotten more chances than I deserve. Kendra didn’t get this many times around the block. Neither did Buffy.