Child fics are all the rage and I admit that I love them myself. However, I pride myself in taking an overdone idea and making it unique. So here’s my take on a child Xander in the Anita Blake world fic.

Chapter one

His world had gone to shit.

That was the only way Xander could explain it.

Everyone was dead. Buffy. Willow. Tara. Giles. Everyone.

Xander was all alone.

If Xander thought hard enough he could pinpoint the exact event, the catalyst, to this shitty lonely world. It began with Joyce. Joyce died from a brain aneurysm and Buffy and Dawn were left alone. Buffy did her damnest to take care of Dawn and even with everybody’s help it wasn’t enough. Even so they pulled through and things got better for a while, but it seemed to be the calm before the storm.

Glory came to town.

Buffy died.

Everyone began to deteriorate. Little Dawnie was overwrought with grief and Spike and the Scoobys weren’t enough for her after a while. Dawn killed herself on the tower Buffy jumped from. Perhaps she thought it was symbolic, and ironic? Xander just thought it was stupid. Dawn made Buffy’s sacrifice all for naught. Sure, the world was not drawn into hell, but Dawn was dead. Dawn was gone.

Spike couldn’t handle it. In the footsteps of Buffy and Dawn he dusted himself right on that tower. Xander had found his pile of dust two days later.

Without Dawn to focus on Giles drank himself into a stupor every night. He couldn’t handle his grief. Joyce, the love of his life, was dead. His slayer, Buffy, was dead and his charge, Dawn, was now gone. Giles fell so far into the bottle it was impossible to drag him out. Two months after Dawn committed suicide Giles was taken to the hospital with a severe case of alcohol poisoning.

Giles didn’t make it.

Soon it was down to Willow and Xander. They had each other, but it proved to not be enough. Xander tried his hardest for Willow. He loved her as best as he could and toward the end he even became her lover, but it just wasn’t enough. Without Giles’ guidance Willow delved into the magical arts. She didn’t care about Xander’s worries, she didn’t care about the damage the magic was going to her body and eventually she stopped caring about herself altogether.

Xander didn’t know where the idea had come from, but Willow had gotten the idea that Buffy was stranded in hell. Xander tried to talk her out of it he really did. Where else would Buffy go besides heaven? Yeah, she had made some bad decisions, but she had still fought the good fight. She had given her life for her family and for the world. In Xander’s book that made her very much qualified for a ticket to the pearly gates.

But Willow wouldn’t listen. No matter what Xander said she wouldn’t listen.

Three months and a half months after Buffy’s death Willow attempted a spell to bring Buffy back to life. She failed, and paid with her life. Xander damn near drowned in misery when they lowered her body into the ground. Everyone was gone. He was alone and he didn’t know how to handle it.

So he tried to fix it. Xander delved into Willow’s spell books like a man who had nothing to live for. He knew that Willow had been overcome by magic, but he knew he would not make the same mistake. He had one goal, and then he was off the stuff forever.

Xander didn’t want to bring everyone back. He wanted to go back.

Xander was going to travel back in time and fix all of this. He was going to go back to the day (or maybe the week before) Buffy came to Sunnydale. He was going to save Jesse, and Tara, and maybe even dust Angel. Everything would be perfect because he knew everything that was going to happen in the future. He would become an asset to the team, everyone would live, and they would all live happily ever after. The end.

But…it wasn’t the end. Something went wrong with Xander’s spell. Something went horribly wrong. Xander didn’t go back to the past, but he managed to turn back the hands of time on himself.

Becoming a six year old was not part of the plan. Being picked up by social services was not part of the plan. Getting adopted by a bipolar, and possibly crazy, hermaphrodite werehyena was definitely not part of the plan.

Time travel.

Friend saving.

Awesome life.

Those were all major parts of the plan, but now that it had failed spectacularly and he was stuck in st. Louis…well quite frankly Xander didn’t know what the hell he was going to do.

But he did know one thing. He was going to do what the other Scooby’s had failed at. He was going to take every blow that life gave him.

He was going to survive.

And he was going to make his life worth living again.