Jayeless

30 Days of Buffy: Day 8
Favourite Romance: Xander/Anya

Willow/Tara is a close runner-up, but that one got a bit disturbing with the memory wipes and all :( Xander and Anya ended in THE MOST SPECTACULARLY HEARTBREAKING FASHION OF ALL TIME (fu writers fu fu fu) but looking back on the good times…

Anya, as we remember from day 3, spent a thousand years as a vengeance demon, casting malicious spells on shitty men who definitely deserved it. Then one day, her power source was destroyed and she was suddenly human. She latched onto Xander, seducing him in a manner perhaps not very dignified but definitely after my own heart:

Anya: I like you. You’re funny, and you’re nicely shaped. And frankly, it’s ludicrous to have these interlocking bodies and not… interlock. Please remove your clothing now.

…but this began a three-year relationship (which is fucking eternity by Buffyverse standards!) which you could say “civilised” Xander (i.e. made him not really a sexist pig any more), as well as giving Anya a sense of purpose in her new life. And things were nice for a while.

Here I basically have another quote for this one to express why I love them so much:

Anya: If you ever decide to go, I want a warning. You know, big flashing red lights, and-and-and one of those clocks that counts down like a bomb in a movie? And there’s a whole bunch of, of colored wires, and I’m not sure which is the right one to cut, but I guess the green one, and then at the last second ‘No! The red one!’ and then click, it stops with three-tenths of a second left, but then you don’t leave. Like that, okay?

Tragically, this is not what happened. Xander proposed marriage when he thought it might be the end of the world, and then when it wasn’t, he kind of freaked. I think he really wanted to marry Anya, but he was terrified of duplicating his own parents’ dysfunctional, acrimonious marriage. Still, the way the show dealt with this was bad and Hell’s Bells is the single most heartbreaking episode ever and I really don’t think it’s even in character for Xander so fuck you, writers. Again.

But neither of them ever entered into a new relationship by the season seven finale, and I’m sure they were still in love by then, albeit unable to get back together because what had happened was just too painful. That finale cemented the fact that they never would, with Anya’s tragic death. Then you have the terrible moment where Xander’s told she died saving Andrew’s life, and he smiles sadly and says:

Xander: That’s my girl. Always doing the stupid thing.

(again, caps from buffyverse caps… it’s a great Tumblr ok)