Heart and Hand (Inspiration and Action)
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You're my hero." I fell in love with Buffy and Xander in the very first episode that I ever saw. That was the Pack, back during its first summer airing. I fell in love with the two of them and with the show itself. But my love for those two characters has driven my love for the show in many ways, and even symbolizes my love. Just as I see BtVS as a show about possibility and trying to reach potential, I see the friendship between Buffy and Xander laden with possibility. Buffy and Xander continually challenge each other to grow and climb closer to what they could be. And just as the show ends with an open road, so does the Buffy and Xander relationship -- they're both alive and they both still care about each other, which is all I needed. Buffy Summers started out as a simple overturning of a cliché -- she was the blonde who walked into an alley and kicked the ass of the monster who jumped her. Over a period of seven years, the audience gets to see the depths of her humanity and the true horror that lies in any prophecy and in any fight. Xander Harris is a normal guy. He has no supernatural strength, no magic, and no mass stores of knowledge about the occult. What he does have is a hell of a lot of heart and enough faith to stop the mountains from crumbling. When Xander first saw Buffy Summers, she knocked him off his feet -- literally, as just the sight of her caused him to run his skateboard into a railing, and figuratively, as we see in his Buffy-focused view for most of the episode. He falls in lust, puts her on a pedestal, and spends years trying to keep her on it. In the end, he does figure out that she can be his hero and still make mistakes. He loves Buffy, but he also admires her. More than that, he's always willing to stand up to her if he thinks that she's wrong. Buffy's relationship with Xander is a little less complicated. She thinks of him as a friend, though she has, on occasion, shown flashes of attraction. Xander is, in many ways, her touchstone to 'normality', as she expresses after he leaves Anya at the altar -- they were her 'light at the end of the tunnel'. If Xander got it right, so could she. She was Xander's hero, but he was often her inspiration. In the end, they both always got it over and became friendly again soon after the air was clear. They don't give up on each other. B. Seven Years of Bondage In the first season, the relationship between Buffy and Xander is fairly simple -- he has a crush on her from the very start, while she works fairly hard at creating a friendship only between them.
From The Witch -- Buffy herself develops an interest in dark, cryptic, and brooding -- Angel, who ends up being her first 'immortal' boyfriend. A trio is created with Buffy, Xander and Xander's childhood friend, Willow, whom Buffy had already established an immediate rapport with. Though at first it does seem like Xander's feelings for Buffy are a crush, just lust at first sight, it doesn't take long before it's apparent that Xander's feelings run more deeply than that. As early as Teacher's Pet (the fourth episode), some part of Xander already knows that he loves her. This is reaffirmed in Nightmares, when Xander says that he's still attracted to a Buffy that's been artificially vamped out -- something that he doesn't feel when he later (season six) thinks about his fiancée with a demonic face. At the end of this season, Xander asks Buffy out, and she turns him down as gently as possible.
From Prophecy Girl -- He's miserable and mad, and he's also the only person to go after her when he's found out that she's going to her prophesied death. In fact, he's the one who enlists her love interest into helping him save her, and Xander is the one to bring Buffy back to life, thus fulfilling yet overturning the prophecy about her death.
Xander: "Buffy, she's gone to fight the Master." Second season starts out with a bang when Buffy acts out in pain and grief -- hurting Angel, Xander, and Willow all in one fell swoop when she asks Xander to dance. She makes it deliberately and cruelly erotic, teasing him and then leaving him alone on the dance floor -- Xander's desire to dance with her fulfilled in the most painful way possible. And Xander's the one who is able to confront her, after Willow and the others have been stolen by vampires.
From When She Was Bad -- Despite his anger here, he's also the one who understands later when she feels the need to smash the bones of the vampire who almost killed her friends. The Buffy/Angel relationship hits its peak and the plot twist occurs, Buffy's boyfriend Angel becoming the evil and twisted Angelus after their lovemaking leaves him without a soul, leaving Buffy and Xander in a position to become even closer friends. One moment in particular happens in Phases -- a vampire sent by Angel attacks and Buffy is momentarily overcome. Xander stakes the vampire and Buffy and Xander share a hug of comfort that last just a little bit too long, leaving Xander to say, "Oh, no, my life's not too complicated." Xander stumbles into a relationship with Cordelia and suddenly, a new facet of the Buffy/Xander friendship develops -- just as he is jealous of her love interests, she consistently downplays the importance of his and is quick to say that she thinks that Xander deserves better.
From Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered -- When a lust spell causes every woman in the area (except Cordelia) to fall 'in love' with him, we once again see the depth of Xander's love for Buffy.
Buffy: "Alone at last." At the end of second season, Xander lies to Buffy, chooses the fate over the world over her right to know the truth. In the third season, Buffy concentrates on Angel, while Xander finds himself momentarily overcome with a newfound attraction to Willow. Their affair destroys his relationship with Cordelia, but he ends third season as a 'key' player and as somewhat satisfied in himself. Fourth season is Xander's lost year, but even while he founders about trying to find his place in the world, we're continually hit with reminders of how important his friendship is to Buffy. In the very first episode of the season, Buffy is lost and foundering herself, wondering how she can ever make it in college. Xander's been off on his 'road trip' and she's obviously very happy and surprised when she sees him at their old high school hangout, the Bronze. And after some mutual greeting and teasing, they move on to actual inspiration.
From The Freshman -- He develops a relationship with Anya, the ex-demon that attempted to curse him for betraying Cordelia with Willow, while Buffy begins her attempt to date a 'normal guy' -- one doomed to failure, as she unknowingly picks an undercover government demon fighter, Riley. Even in their limited time together in fourth season, there are moments where Xander's devotion to Buffy shines through everything else.
From Where the Wild Things Are -- The final episode of fourth season, Restless, is a dream episode. Buffy is one of the central figures in Xander's dream, and Xander is the only one of the other dreamers to appear in Buffy's dream at all. In Xander's dream, Buffy called him 'big brother', and it's something that he again, always, questions. In Buffy's dream, Xander is leaving, going up a flight of stairs, and she leaves her mother trapped in a wall in order to follow him. Through-out fifth season, Xander's relationship with Anya seems solid, even while Buffy's relationship with Riley falls apart and Spike, a vampire of Angel's line, begins to stalk her and try to convince her to love him. One big development of fifth season is the introduction of Dawn, Buffy's sister and energy made flesh. The big Buffy/Xander episode of the season is I Was Made To Love You, which is the episode before Buffy's mom dies, which is where everything starts to break apart for Buffy.
From I Was Made to Love You --
And then, after the climax of the episode, Buffy watches as Xander repairs the damage caused by the week's fights -- In sixth season, Buffy and Xander confront the worst parts of themselves. Buffy died in the season five finale and in the season six opener, Xander and Willow head up a plan to bring her back, bringing Anya and Tara along with them. She's dead and they can't accept it, can't live in a world without her.
From After Life -- Buffy herself is bitter about being brought back for quite some time. She hates herself and hates the people that she loves for bringing her back to an existence that is painful and exhausting. In Dead Things, her self-hate reaches a climax when she beats Spike, with whom she has been conducting a secret sexual relationship, to a bloody pulp. After realizing the full horror of what she has done, she breaks off the damaging relationship and starts the slow road to recovery. In Hell's Bells, Xander leaves Anya at the altar out of fear of hurting her. Yeah, that works out well. In the completely not at all way. Anya and Spike end up sharing a moment together, trying to move on, and when they're caught post-act, the truth of Buffy's involvement with Spike comes out. Where the news that his ex-fiancée had slept with something he considered to be pure evil caused him to try to kill Spike in a rage, the news that his hero had done the same left him depressed and lost, and he walks away from the scene.
From Entropy -- Buffy tries to reach out to him and he rebuffs her in pain, explaining why her choice to sleep with Spike hurt more than Anya's.
From Seeing Red -- Later in the episode, he goes to her house to apologize and it is coded by Willow's girlfriend, Tara, as 'making up', a clear reference to Willow and Tara doing just that in the previous episode and romanticizing what otherwise might have been a pure friendship moment.
Xander: "These last few weeks..." Then, mere seconds later, one of the antagonists of the season, Warren, bursts into Buffy's backyard with a gun, setting off a chain of events that ends with Willow trying to destroy the world. In seventh season, with Willow off in England for the first couple of episodes, Buffy and Xander have created their own new trio with Buffy's kid sister Dawn. In Lessons, we see one of my favorite moments of the series, when Buffy checks the time by grabbing Xander's arm and looking at his watch, instead of finding the kitchen clock or just asking Xander -- it's such a wonderfully casual gesture.
From Lessons -- The 'family' vibe dims a bit as the season progresses, but Xander is the one person who believes in Buffy's abilities without question, the one who inspires Buffy at a low moment.
From Dirty Girls -- It's Xander who is injured by the monster of the episode, because only something as horrific as losing an eye could even momentarily shake his confidence in following her lead. After he's been injured, she's obviously distraught, still not thinking clearly.
From Empty Places, Caleb, the man who attacked Xander, has shown up while she's holding an older picture of the three original Scoobies, tenderly touching the image of Xander's face and looking very close to tears. They start fighting and we get this fierce exchange -- Xander is the one that Buffy goes to when she wants someone to take Dawn to safety.
From End of Days -- Xander provides key emotional motivation for Buffy throughout the season. When they part before the last battle, they squeeze hands for a moment and back away from each other, holding each other's eyes until the last possible moment. C. End of Days The Buffy and Xander relationship is what drew me to the show. To me, their friendship always felt like it was the most equal -- they gave each other shit, but they were always willing to apologize, to clear the air and start over again. In many ways, they're a lot alike. They're both often impulsive. They fight best when they lead with their hearts. Emotion is both their greatest strength and greatest weakness. In the end, they see each other clearly and have share a huge amount of faith and trust -- Xander is the person that Buffy will trust with Dawn, her greatest treasure. Buffy's no longer on a pedestal, but she's still Xander's hero. Something that I've always found interesting is hearing Spike/Buffy or Wes/Lilah being referred to as 'slash-like' pairings. And it is true that the dynamics of those relationships are similar to that of many antagonistic slash pairings (though with, one should note, actual sex in canon, which makes it rather less like slash). Buffy/Xander always struck me as much like the traditional 'partners' slash (such as the original, Kirk/Spock, and like Jack and Daniel, Angel and Wes, Blair and Jim), a friendship that treads closely on the line between friendship and something different. The things that I find appealing about Jack and Daniel are very similar to what I find appealing about Buffy and Xander. Another thing I adore about the Buffy/Xander friendship is how it consistently overturns gender assumption -- Buffy is the one who tries to keep Xander out of the fight, while he's the supporter, the 'comfortador'. They're also a matched set, which is why they work so well together. And for my own personal amusement, together, they make up one complete Christ figure -- she's got the coming back from the dead covered and he's a carpenter. She's supernatural while he's completely natural -- his foundation helps her reach further than she could otherwise. He helps her fly. D. Places To Go
B/X Fanfiction sites: Lori Bush has some interesting Buffy/Xander stories. The Buffy/Xander section of Buffonia Public Library hosts around 185 stories.
More general BtVS Sites: The Sunnydale Slayers -- a comprehensive and funny review site.
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