Title: Pictures of You
Rating: PG(TV-acceptable swearing)
Author:Palaskar ([email protected])
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all related characters are property of Joss Whedon, the WB Network, 20th Century Fox, Kuzui, Sanddollar, and Mutant Enemy. No infrigement is intended. I'm just trying to win a prize here.
Summary: Alexander Harris shows someone a picture album. Alternate timeline.
Distribution: Yes, sure. Just email me first.
Author's Note: This takes place in a alternate timeline. Remember that!

Pictures of You
by Palaskar (palaskar@ix,netcom.com)

I find the photo album lying on Alex's desk.

I open it, expecting pictures of him and his family. And that's what I get, in a certain kind of way. Pictures of Alex and Cor and Jesse as kids, with this cute-as-a-button redhead. I suppose Alex's friends have always been his family.

"Hey Alex," I ask, "Who's that girl?" I point to the redhead in the first picture. They must've all been about five or so. They're standing on the Sunnydale courthouse steps; the redhead looks happy but confused; Cor looks depressed, leaning on Jesse's shoulder, who's trying to comfort her; Alex has this forced smile.

Maybe I shouldn't have brought this up, now that I think about it.

"Oh..." Alex's voice trails off. "That's Rosie." I look at him, waiting for an explanation.

Maybe I've misstepped. "Look, I can understand if you don't want to talk about it," I say.

"No, no," he says. "You ought to know about her." He takes the photo album out of my hands, sets it down on the desk. "That's a picture of Rosie's family after the big court settlement with Cor's family."

Doesn't sound good. "What...happened?" I ask tonelessly.

"See, it was all a mistake, really. Cor was only five, we all were. Cor had started an argument with Rosie..."

"Delicate, artistic Cordelia Chase?" I ask. "You jest."

"She wasn't always nice, you know," Alex says. "She used to be pretty outspoken. Anyway, she had gotten into this nasty banter with Rosie, and she ended up repeating one of her dad's...less savory comments about Jews." Alex explains. "Rosie was Jewish, and well, she just sorta...snapped. Next thing we knew, we had to keep her from pounding Cor into the dirt." He shook his head. "But it didn't end there. Rosie's mom was there, and she made a big issue of it, sued Cor's family for everything they were worth. Cor's parents ended up getting divorced --"

"Well, that explains a lot," I comment offhandedly. "Not that that's bad," I add. No reason to make my relationship with Alex any tenser. I mean, Alex going out with the girl his dead best friend had professed his undying love for had to rate at least an eight on the uncomfortableness scale all by itself. Add this and what I just said to -my- best friend hitting on said girl, and well, I start to look a bit on the cold side. Which I am not, despite appearances to the contrary.

"Yeah, well, Jesse and I were there for her. Mostly Jesse, though. See -- just turn the page. It'll explain things better."

I see a photo of Alex and Jesse and Cor again, at a birthday party. Rosie's there too, threatening Alex with a...balloon animal? Freaky.

"My seventh birthday party," Alex explains. "Turns out, to my eternal regret, that Rosie and I were born on the same day. So Ma Harris, genius that she is, invites her. She thought it would cute." Alex shakes his head again. "Nooooo, she couldn't stop with the drunken, half-deaf clown. She had to bring HER into the act." He pauses to drift into reverie. "You know, every year afterward, on my birthday, Rosie'd get ahold of 'Killer Klowns from Outer Space' and force me to watch it."

He snaps out of it, and you can almost hear the bitterness, the regret of it. "Yeah, those were the wonder years," Alex mutters, turning a couple of pages.

"See a pattern developing?" he asks rhetorically.

I look at the photo. It's just Rosie and Alex. They look to be about thirteen or so. Alex is gawky but hadn't hit his growth spurt yet; Rosie's not just cute now, but pretty, with her hands --

"Um, why are her hands in your pants?" I ask. Maybe I shouldn't have.

"She was searching for loose change," Alex explains. "Every day when I was in grade school, I'd have to walk past her house to get to there, and every day she'd take my lunch money. She claimed she needed it for the latest edition of Scientific American, or worse, one of her kooky experiments. And then she'd take photos of us!" Alex shakes his head yet again. "Cor claimed it was because she was secretly in love with me. I told her back then that that was the craziest way of showing it." Alex looks down at the rug. "But y'know, I think Cor was right."

Alex flips past a number of pages, overshoots the mark a bit, then turns back to the last photo.

"This is it," he says.

I look at the picture. Rosie's wearing some sort of VR rig, and she's lying in a pentacle, complete with candles. There's a stab wound where her heart ought to be. I can't get over how beautiful she looks in the picture, alive in spite of dying, with a slight smile caressing her face as she holds Alex's hand.

I don't expect him to talk, but he does.

"See, Rosie was all enthusiatic about her new 'invention.' We were all pretty skeptical, 'cause Rosie's stuff tended to blow up or short-circut. Not that that ever stopped her....This thing, it was -supposed- to be this fast-learning gizmo, let you scan books directly into your brain," he explains. "But ya just can't keep that wacky Hellmouth down, y'know? Giles had left a grimoire with a demon in it lying around, and Rosie downloaded it right into her head."

"Well, Buffy, me and Cor had to stop her. Him. Moloch. Them." He sighs. I've never heard him do that. "Anyway, we got Ms. Calendar and Giles to rig us a pentagram, but I don't know, we must've made a mistake somewhere, because she -- it was going to escape. And Buffy had to stop that. No matter what the cost," he says, and I notice he isn't looking at me anymore, again. "Because the world is more important that just one person. Or group of people."

He slams the album shut.

"It was the damnedest thing," he says. "She was lying there, dying, and she's still ordering me around -- 'Xander! C'mere!' -- that was her pet name for me, I hated it, still do -- 'C'mere!' she said. And then her voice started to go a bit, so I had to lean in, and she told me her real name."

I don't know quite what to say, or what to do. "So Rosie wasn't her real name?" I ask, cautious, curious, sad.

"No, that was just what we all called her, because her last name was Rosenberg," Alex says. "Her first name, her -real- name was Willow." He's looking at the rug again. "Crazy name, huh?"

Willow. I roll the taste of it about it my head. It's kinda sweet, like the barest taste of some confection. "I like it," I say. "I think we would have gotten along, Willow and I."

"Yeah, you would," Alex says. He looks up, motions to g