FicWad

Life is funny.

Of course, it didn't exactly look funny to Anya when she was facing the end of the world. It wasn't anything she hadn't dealt with before, but it had never really become a laugh riot. It seemed to get worse every year, but they beat it. Even as she slipped away, she knew they would win.

The waiting line to get into the afterlife wasn't really funny. Anya wasn't sure how long she'd waited, but she had complained that it "felt like a year" by the time her number was finally called and she could finally get her heavenly robes. It wasn't that she was embarrassed by her body like some people were, but it was damn cold in... wherever she was.

"Is this Heaven?" she asked when the receptionist - who looked strangely like one of those girls from Sunnydale High that she had met when following Cordelia around - as she shrugged the white, loose-fittting garment on.

The receptionist gave her an annoyed look that answered nothing and pointed her out one of the doors. It led to a long, dark hall with a light at its end. With nowhere else to go, she followed it.

On the other end, she found herself immediately in someone's arms.

"I'm so sorry," the familiar voice of Tara whispered in her ear. "You were so brave."

Anya looked over her shoulder. There was a beautiful field spread out before her, a sparkling lake in its center and mountains and forests beyond. Dozens of dazed-looking people in white were wandering around, some looking up at the bright, sunless sky, others hugging, smiling, crying, and some simply making their way off into the distance.

"I didn't want any of you to get hurt," Tara said, and Anya heard her voice hitch slightly. "But I did miss you all."

"You missed me?" It was strange to think that Tara could have missed her. They barely knew each other in life. Tara was so shy, Anya was so... different. They had barely ever interacted with each other.

Tara pulled back, looking her in the eyes. Her face was streaked with tears. "Of course I did. You - all of you - you were my /family/. I cared about you guys more than anyone else on Earth."

"Were you waiting for Willow?" Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe Tara was just taking whatever she could get.

Tara shook her head, regaining her composure slightly. "No. Willow is going to live a long and beautiful life without me. I've made sure of it."

"How?" Anya had nothing but questions. Luckily, Tara seemed completely willing to answer.

"I've rubbed shoulders with a few of the higher-ups." Tara wiped at her eyes and smiled. "And they were thankful that I taught Willow magic. Without her..."

Anya nodded. Without Willow, without Willow's power, they would have been dead from the start. Even if she had almost destroyed them, once.

It almost seemed kind of funny, now.

"Where are we?" Anya asked, looking all around. The light she'd past through was still there, an archway of flat, freestanding, shimmering light. "Is this Heaven?"

"I'm not completely sure, but I've been here two years now and I haven't been burned or tortured. And they have really good shrimp."

"Must be Heaven."

---

They didn't go far from the light. Anya couldn't bring herself to part with it; it was hard to accept that she was really dead, even after a year of sitting in waiting room limbo, even after seeing Tara. She wasn't ready to let go.

They sat at the edge of the water, their toes digging into the smooth, fine sand. The lake was almost perfectly round, and silvery fish-like things darted around the water. Anya was pretty sure that if she tried to grab one, her hand would slip through it just like the water.

"So all dogs don't go to Heaven? I can't believe movies can lie like that."

"I think the dogs just go through a different door," Tara explained. "When we go a little further away, there's all sorts of animals. I saw the cat I had as a little girl once, but she was running around with all her little kitty friends. She was happy, and I let her be. I don't know where the insects go, though."

"And the shrimp?"

"Well, I don't think the food they serve really comes from any kind of meat. I'm... not really sure what it is. We don't need to eat anymore, anyway."

They sat in silence for a few minutes as Anya considered that. If she didn't need to eat, maybe she couldn't get fat anymore, either. She could have all the shrimp she wanted... "Is Xander going to live for a long time?" she asked suddenly, but Tara didn't seem surprised.

"I don't know."

"If he... when Willow gets here, is she going to be old? I mean, is she going to be all grey and wrinkly?"

Tara shrugged. "When we come here, we look as we did when we were happiest in life."

"She was happy with you." She'd made that apparent enough when she tried to destroy the world in her despair.

"She has someone else." Anya couldn't help but be thankful that she didn't have to break that news. "She might be happier with Kennedy, or when she's sixty years old she might be with someone else, or on her own, and be happier than ever."

"And it doesn't hurt? To think that she might love someone else, or love someone more - that doesn't bother you?"

Tara turned to the ex-demon, looking her in the eyes very seriously. "Of course it does. It's the only pain I feel anymore. More than anything, though, I want her to be happy. It would make me happy to know that she was happy, even if it wasn't with me."

Anya considered that. She thought of Xander, and for the first time since her death thought about how it might make her feel if he fell in love with someone else, if someone else fell in love with him.

It didn't make her as jealous or angry as she thought it might have.

She pulled at the fabric of her robe, hiking it up over her knees. There - on her right knee, there was a scar. She had only gotten it after becoming human again, after meeting Xander. After falling in love with Xander.

She let it drop, then stood up, brushing the sand off her legs. It didn't stick to her like sand used to. She wondered if she would ever be dirty again.

"Let's go," she said, offering Tara a hand. She was ready.

---

Trekking through the mountains and trees wasn't tiring. Anya did feel herself growing more tired as time went on, but only slightly, and not in the exhausted way she would have felt hours before if she were still alive. Tara told her that they would need sleep, but it would be brief and recharge them for a long time. Anya might need a little more, since she'd been in a waiting room for a year.

"What do you do around here, anyway?"

"They have carnivals," Tara answered, "and art and books and movies. I can still do magic, but now it comes so much easier. Mostly, though, I wait. I was waiting, anyway."

Anya was glad she wasn't alone. She didn't feel the need to wait so long as she had Tara's company. "Are you going to wait for Willow?"

"I'll always be waiting for Willow, Anya. She made me happier than I ever was at any other time in my life."

"So you're going to go sit around and wait for her to die? That's all this is - a waiting game?"

Tara shook her head, stopping for a moment. The trees around them were hardly, sparse, but the lower branches were widely spaces and there was no underbrush; walking was very easy, and their vision was unobscured for a fairly long distance for a forest. Anya could easily see the doe and fawn that walked before them, unafraid. "I told you there were other animals here."

"I don't get it," Anya said, pushing on past her and ignoring the deer. "You're waiting for Willow, but you're not waiting for her?"

"Nothing will make me happier than seeing Willow again, but she's not putting her life on hold just to wait to see me again, and I can't do that, either. I have to be prepared for the possibility that Willow won't be mine anymore." She followed Anya, coming up behind her quickly. "Do you understand?"

"I suppose," Anya said, and they walked on.

---

"What is this?"

They had walked far beyond the trees. It had been bare for a while, desert-like but without the sand, heat, or desperate feeling of being unable to track one's travels. Tara had led the way and Anya had followed, trusting her to take them where they needed to be. They arrived at the edge of a long pool, filled with something not quite like water. Other people - people of all ages, and Anya wondered whether the children had died young or had simply been happiest in their youth - stood at it's edge, peering in. Some smiled as tears ran down their faces; others watched with expressions of worry, never severe enough to make whatever they were worried about seem very important.

Others laughed.

"We just call it 'the Window' up here," Tara said, walking to the pool's edge. It was raised up on stones, coming to her waist, and she dipped her fingers in. The pool, which had seemed to Anya to be white and cloudy before, cleared where her fingers touched it, and Anya gasped quietly when she saw an image appear within it.

"Xander," she whispered, leaning closer.

"In the pool, you can see the world - our world, anyway, I don't know if it works for other dimensions and stuff - and life. Anything you want to see." They watched Xander, and it was just like old times: the room was different, one neither of them knew, but it was vaguely reminiscent of the living room Buffy's house in Sunnydale. Xander had a box in his hand, which he slowly unloaded - a board game. After a moment Dawn joined him, helping him to set out cards and pieces. Anya couldn't hear them, but she knew - she knew, like one knows how to breathe - exactly what they were saying.

"It's been too long, hasn't it, kiddo?"

"If you think you're a little rusty, I can go easy on you."

"Oh, no, don't even think about it. My eyepatch has given me pirate-like powers that will give me an edge. I'll steal your chips, knock you off the board, and plunder your booty."

"Plunder my booty? Xander, I didn't know you felt that way. What would Buffy say?"

"Please don't tell Buffy about my unfortunate wording."

"He's happy." Anya was glad to know it.

"He is," Tara agreed, and then dipped her fingers into the Window again. "And I want to show you some things."

Anya watched as Tara showed her the world. She saw a little girl drop her cookie on the floor, only to pick it up and eat it anyway when her mother wasn't looking. She saw a woman cry after her sleazy boyfriend dumped her, unable to realize that the man serving her coffee was going to be her husband and make her far happier. She saw a man struggle to become a doctor and fail over and over again, just to make his parents happy. She saw men and women struggle to feed and protect their families, but still find the time and will to smile at each other every day.

"It all seemed so important when we were alive, didn't it?" Tara was smiling, as though it was silly to think of life, like it was an awkward teenage phase she'd gone through instead of... well, her life.

"And I used to be worried about money and wrinkles," Anya muttered.

Tara's eyes sparkled with something like joy as she dipped her fingers into the Window again, and two old women came into view, laughing with each other and making those around them laugh as they went about their days. They didn't have anything in particular to be happy about - no more than the other people their age who moped and sighed, the ones they passed on the streets, anyway - but they found it within themselves anyway.

Anya couldn't help but laugh with them.

---

They sat at the Window for what Anya was sure was days, laughing until they should have been breathless if they still needed air. They watched life move on without them, but nothing about that thought saddened them.

"I never realized how stupid most of life is," Anya said, wiping tears from her eyes. She laughed again as she watched a man struggle to figure out which tie to wear to an interview, not realizing he was going to be rejected anyway when the employer recognized him as the man who'd gotten his daughter pregnant. It should have been horrible, but Anya could only barely remember why, and couldn't care at all. The child was going to grow up well, anyway. "It's all one big comedy."

Tara nodded, laughing with her. "It all seemed so important at the time."

"Thank you for this." It was genuine, but Anya couldn't help but think it wasn't enough. Without warning, she leaned toward Tara, brushing a kiss against the corner of her mouth.

When she moved back, she noticed that Tara wasn't blushing or ashamed, as she was sure she would have been in life. Instead, she followed Anya, raising one hand to tilt her head slightly. They kissed again, gentle and chaste.

"What about Willow?" Anya asked, moving away again. She didn't feel bad for what she had done, but she wanted to know how to move from where they were - would they need to stay in stasis, or was death really not an end at all?

"What about Willow?" Tara repeated, as though there was no worry whatsoever. As though she hadn't had a girlfriend when she died.

"What will you do when she does die?" If Anya had been in her place, she would have pushed herself aside the moment her lover showed any chance of wanting her more then anyone else.

"What will you do when Xander arrives?" Tara was still smiling, still almost on the verge of laughter. "We don't need to stop loving until they come back, Anya. I know what you feel for him, and I won't be hurt if you two belong together just as much in death as you do in life."

Anya nodded, and there were no more protests from her when Tara tilted her head again, turning them towards each other.

Anya wasn't surprised when she felt the other woman's tongue on her lower lip, but she had to ask one more thing, even if it wouldn't make a difference in how she acted.

"So the whole lesbian thing - that's okay?"

"Oh, no," Tara said, her voice serious. "They just made an exception for me."

"They did?"

"I was kidding." She leaned in to kiss Anya again, and conversation stopped.

When she felt Tara's hand cup her breast and run down her stomach to her inner thigh, she felt something like a giggle rise up in her but escape as a moan. It didn't matter to her or to the witch that there were other people all around them, and it didn't seem to matter to the other people, either. Most of them didn't even seem to notice. Without hesitation, she shifted, spreading her legs slightly.

Tara's hand found its way inside Anya's robe, and as it touched her skin, Anya's head fell back. The other woman's fingers seemed to send sparks of pleasure through her, even though they were still only on her thigh. It wasn't just like sex, though; the touch itself felt like a laugh, and any stress she might have had left from life was gone from it, any tension worked out immediately.

Tara's fingers moved slowly, very gentle, and each movement made Anya feel like she was gasping for air she didn't need and filing her lungs with it. Her body rocked against the feeling, needing more, and Tara gave it to her, kissing her neck, licking at the last inch of skin not covered by the robe. "Tara," Anya pleaded, and Tara's free hand, which had been resting against the other side of her neck, rubbed its way down her body, sending little laughter-thrills through all of her until it came all the way down to join the other hand.

Anya shuddered, feeling the release of orgasm, though it seemed much less urgent, much less violent, but no less passionate than it had in life. Her thighs and Tara's fingers were wet and slick, but neither of them minded.

"Tara," Anya said again when she had ridden out the last of her orgasm, quietly. "I'm - I'm not used to it, but I could-"

"Later," Tara said, and dipped her hands into the pool. Anya saw images of herself in the throes of orgasm - some of them from when she had been with Xander, some of them from other random bed partners, and a few from only moments before - flash by. When Tara lifted her hands, they were clean. "Let's go."

"Where to, now?"

Tara gave her a smile that let her know it didn't really matter where they went. "We can go get some shrimp for you to try, and then I can take you to this place - it's like a hotel, but without any money involved. They have the most comfortable mattresses you've ever slept on."

Anya wasn't sure if she meant sleep or /fuck/, but it didn't really matter. They would get to both, in time.

It was funny to think of how she would have missed it with all her life worries.

Death wasn't so bad after all.