The Wishes We Don't Speak

Title: The Wishes We Don’t Speak
Series: Loonier Still
Author: Jinni (jinni@tthfanfic.com)
Rated: Pg13
Pairing: Xander/Luna
Disclaimer: All things BtVS belong to Joss Whedon, et al. All things HP belong to JK Rowling, et al.
Distribution: The normal places.
Author’s Notes: Sixth in the Loonier Still series.
Summary:

~*~*~

They’d arranged to go out, something that Xander was growing more and more happy with by the moment, as he watched the wonder spread over Luna’s features. She’d never had a chance to explore the muggle world, much less a shopping mall filled with muggles and muggle artifacts, as she liked to call them. With a pen behind her ear and a small pad of paper in her hand, she made notes as they wandered from store to store. Things to send to her father for an article on muggle living. A lifestyle piece, she kept saying.

Seeing her this happy was refreshing. All of that time being cooped up in one house or another, having to make due with only the occasional walk around the block for fresh air, had been slowly killing her spirit. He could see it. Giles could see it. Everyone could see it, there just hadn’t been much of anything they could do.

And then Willow had come up with a solution. A way for her to be out and about for a couple hours, no more, without giving away her position. Just a charm, nothing more. It had to be charged in some sort of brew for an entire cycle of the moon, which meant that they wouldn’t be going out every week, but every little bit was a godsend.

He looked over at Luna as she pushed her pen behind her ear. There was a smudge of ink on her cheek and she knew it. He’d told her the second he saw it, nearly twenty minutes before, but she didn’t really seem to care.

There was something about her that was so childlike… so naïve and innocent… She was a little off and she knew it, but she didn’t care one ounce what other people thought of her.

And he… loved her for it.

“Xander-mine?”

“Yeah, Luna?”

“Can we go in there?”

He looked in the direction she was pointing, nodding absently. Love wasn’t something that he’d been looking for that day that he’d traveled all the way to Hogwarts to pick her up. Love was too dangerous in the world he lived in – of Hellmouths and apocalypses, demons and worse. Loving someone only meant that you had one more person that you could lose.

Yet… he’d gone and done it anyway. Fallen head over heels for the batty little witch, despite all efforts to the contrary.

He shoved his hands in his pockets as he patiently followed behind her through the bookstore. Sandy blonde hair swung just below the delicate curve of her butt, obscuring whatever words were on the back of her shirt. Something witchy, he was almost sure of it, since Willow and her had laughed like hyenas when the red head had given it to her. The jeans she wore were tight against her flesh, showing off hips that were a wide, but not overly large. Shapely, he guessed was the word… even though that sorta denoted heavy, which Luna definitely was –not-.

She was beautiful, in an otherworldly kinda spooky way.

Which fit in perfectly with his freaky screwed up life.

And, oh, she was a witch, meaning she could so completely protect herself… when her powers weren’t restricted because some Dark Lord was after her. That was a bonus, the powers part. He wouldn’t have to worry about her getting hurt living on the Hellmouth…

Xander stopped short, smacking his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Stupid, stupid,” he muttered, heart sinking.

Here he was, thinking about how perfect Luna was… about why she was just the kind of girl he’d always wanted in his life…

And she wasn’t even really –in- his life. She’d be leaving as soon as this Dark Lord business got sorted out back way over there in England. She’d fly off into the sunset and he’d never see her again.

He looked over at her again, unable to stop the smile that crossed his lips, however, briefly, as he watched her reading the magazine in her hand.

Upside down.

“Luna – right side up when we’re in public, okay?”

“Of course, Alexander.” She smiled dreamily, flipping the magazine over; though now he noted that she started with the back of the magazine, turning page by page toward the front.

That was his girl, quite the contrary to normal one.

“Ahhh,” he groaned softly. She was not his girl. That was just one of those stupid wishes again.

He wished that she was his.

He wished that they could have something more than just this lukewarm relationship.

He wished that she could stay here, in Sunnydale, and never return to where she’d come from.

But she wasn’t his… or, she was… just not in that permanent way that he wanted.

And they couldn’t have anything more than a lukewarm relationship, for the same reason.

And, lastly, she couldn’t stay in Sunnydale because she already had a home, a life, friends and family that she would need to get back to.

The more he thought about it, the more he realized how freaking impossible this whole relationship thing was. He could love her all he wanted, touch her and make himself feel like he was on top of the world. In those moments everything would be okay.

Those moments always ended, though. No matter how hard he tried to make them last.

Thus the reason he kept his mouth shut, never mentioning what he was thinking or feeling. He held her hand and kissed her lips with all the reverence that he knew she deserved. In his heart he called her his, just as she called him hers… But she didn’t know what she was saying when she said it out loud. She lived in that wonderful world where reality didn’t exist until the last second, when it came crashing down on her.

Which it hadn’t… yet.

He –did- live in reality, though. And, in reality, there just wasn’t a future with Luna Lovegood.

And wishing for it to be different wasn’t going to change that.

Not to mention the dangers of wishing on the Hellmouth, he reminded himself. With his luck he’d wish that she’d stay in Sunnydale and, you know, she would – but as a tree or something. Or permanently chained to a house. Something freaky-weird like that.

“Something wrong?”

He shook his head, forcing himself to smile as she took up another magazine from the shelf. This time he didn’t correct her when she read it upside down. Let people stare… personally, he thought it was cute.

~*~End Ficlet~*~