Illegitimi non carborundum

Title: Jesse
rating:PG-ish
summary:Xander wonders why he never got a visit from the First
Disclaimer: You know the drill. It’s Joss’s, not mine.
author's note: This fic is old originally posted in March of 2004 on my fanfiction account and now reposted here. I think it was my first BtVS story



He’s jealous of them sometimes, really he is. Despite all the heartbreak and anguish everyone’s going through because of the First he half wishes that he could see it for himself.

It wasn’t fair.

Willow got to talk to what she thought was Tara.

Andrew had seen Warren and Jonathon.

Faith had talked to the Mayor. He had trouble seeing him as anything but the big bad, but to Faith, he was her father figure.

Dawn saw Joyce.

Hell, even Wood saw his mom.

And poor old reliable Xander got his eye gouged out.

Now who got the short end of this deal?

He wished that he could have seen Jesse just once. He just wants to tell him sorry for staking him. It didn’t matter that it wouldn’t have been real, he just had to get it out.

But it seemed to him that he had two major chapters in his life. It was divided by a trade-off between Jesse and the vampire slayage. Neither of those two were allowed to interfere with the other.

At least that was how he had it figured. Buffy forgot about Jesse within a week. Cordelia in about thirty minutes. It took Willow almost a year.

Xander didn’t forget things that easy. Jesse had been his best friend since they were in diapers, since before he even met Willow. You can’t just forget your best friend like that.

It had hit him in a seeming random fashion, one minute he’d been going about his routine and then, bang! Something would set it off and he’d be missing Jesse again.

He looked over Buffy’s shoulder at Marcie’s yearbook, the page littered with the phrase, ‘Have a good summer.’ He only spots his own signature after Buffy points it out to him. He was stuck on the one reading ‘Jesse McNally’

He didn’t just write ‘have a good summer.’

Willow stood in front of him, choking out her words, “Cordelia! Remember? The, the 'We Hate Cordelia' club, of which you are the treasurer.”

Sorry Wills, but Jesse was the treasurer before he had the teenage attack of hormones and decided he liked her. Xander always figured that it would have been Jesse going out with Cordy had he still been around.

“I don’t like vampires, I’m gonna take a stand and say they’re not good.”

He’d had a hell of a time accepting either Angel or Spike. Spike more so than Angel because as much as he didn’t want to admit it, Spike had started changing without the soul. He couldn’t help but wonder if maybe Jesse could have changed too. If maybe, deep down, Jesse was still the kid he’d grown up with.

Because, if there was even a chance of that, Xander would have had to consider himself a murder.

He needed some information, there was a transfer in today and Jesse supposedly had the dirt, “So tell!”

Jesse looked blankly at him, “Tell what?”

”What's the sitch, what do ya know about her?”

Jesse shrugged in response, “New girl!”

Buffy Summers. She had walked in a in a week closed off one part of his life and introduced him to the darker side of Sunnydale. The next day, Jesse was gone.

He loved Buffy like a sister, really, he did, but in his mind he could never help thinking that she had just marched in and taken Jesse’s place. She’d saved his life dozens of times but he’s never quite forgiven her. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to.

Maybe that’s part of the reason he went along with kicking Buffy out. It was the nagging voice in the back of his head saying that maybe getting rid of her would make things go back to the way it used to be.

Just Xander, Jesse and Willow.

He could never say that out loud, of course, because Xander was the jokester. If he ever started to talk like that, the rest of the Scoobies would figure that there must be an apocalypse brewing.

Besides, it could never go back now.

Jesse smirked at with his demonic visage. He didn’t even look much like Jesse anymore. “Okay... Let's deal with this. Jesse was an excruciating loser who couldn't get a date with anyone in the sighted community! Look at me. I'm a new man!”

A new man… that’s what he’d called himself.

Xander was fighting for the old one.