Patroness Kate Bolin Anya's apartment is dark and almost oppressing, filled with heavy draperies and thick incense. Every time Xander enters it, he shivers slightly, and he's not sure if it's in fear or ecstasy, and he's also not sure if it has something to do with the almost unconscious resemblance the apartment has to her labia, velvet folds consuming him whole. He thinks that, maybe, it's why they always have sex in his apartment, because her apartment reminds him of too many things. It's hard to hold an erection when surrounded by the artifacts of over a thousand years' worth of wandering, silver and shiny and always verging on threatening to young men across the globe. When he holds her tightly, her body nestled against hers, he tries to forget the centuries of rage she played with, tries to forget that he was the reason she was in Sunnydale to begin with, and tries to forget how hollow it feels sometimes, how hollow it is to love someone who came only to destroy him. And yet how fitting it also feels. Never-amount-to- anything Harris, madly in love with his ex's method of revenge, loving his own destruction. Not that she's focused on destruction anymore, of course. She has a job, and a man, and eventually marriage and children and a small house on a side street and then a nursing home and a elegant coffin in a high-class funeral home. She has Xander, not vengeance. But when Xander holds her at night, his mind focuses on the vengeance. On those late nights when sleep is a million miles away and she whispers dead languages in her sleep, his mind runs through the past, what must have occurred -- he's certain of it. Of the few days Cordelia and Anya spent together, plotting revenge against him. How it must have slowly tumbled further and further into heavy breathing and whispered chants. Did it start with talking over school lunches? Discussions on cosmetics and beauty treatments slowly leading into discussions on boyfriends and ex- boyfriends, and the trouble they can cause? Did Cordelia's carefully bandaged wound start to ache? Did Anya place her hand over it? Did Anya kiss it better? Did Anya kiss Cordelia? Did they do more? That's the scene that plays over and over in Xander's mind, haunting him on sleepless nights. Anya and Cordelia curled up in each other's arms -- every moan, every caught breath a curse upon his name, making love on silk sheets and photos of Xander and Cordelia's relationship. Was the necklace a love token? Was it given after another night of gentle yet angry sex, careful careful, don't rip the stitches, but I'm so angry I need you I need to forget him sex? Did she love Cordelia? Did Cordelia love her? Is Xander just a replacement? A replacement for the centuries of loving women bent on revenge? Did Anya make her way through the world with her arms around women, praying to her in whispered chants of repressed rage? Saint Anyanka, protect us. Blessed Anyanka, save us. Take these creatures from us and make us whole again. Love us, Our Patroness, and in your arms, we find our revenge. He hears another whispered curse in another dead language, and Xander's arms tighten around Anya's body, in the vain hope that his love will make a difference. Saint Anyanka, protect this love and keep her from her ancient ways. Saint Anyanka, Patroness of scorned women, made flesh and form in her lover's arms, save them from themselves.