The No-Kill List.

A distraught Xander was hasty to verify with his brown eyes that Buffy was still alive. He rushed to school earlier than normal on an empty stomach, and though sweaty, he waited with patience he didn’t have for Mrs. Summers to drop Buffy off. Plagued by insidious doubt, the irritated teenager couldn’t stand still. His need to know for certain she was alive compelled him to pace the entrance of the school anxiously, drawing curious stares from the mob of students filing through the entrance.

After ten nerve-wracking minutes, Xander wondered if she got by him somehow and rushed down the sidewalk left of the entrance. Crippled with indecision, he ran back and finally caught sight of her golden blonde hair walking toward the entrance. He weaved through the crowd, and with no regard for his physical well-being, he hugged the super-strong slayer from behind as he called out, “Buffy!”

“Wha-” she hollered, craning her neck to the frantic Xander behind her.

Flattening his cheek to the top of her silky blonde head, Xander gratefully hollered, “You’re okay! You’re alive,” unfazed by the plethora of students walking around them and watching in amusement.

“Uh, last I checked, yeah,” Buffy hesitantly voiced, returning a quick hug before effortlessly removing his zealous hands. Slightly calmer, Xander backed away as she cautiously asked her anxious friend, “are you alright?”

“Uuuuuh,” Xander hummed before quickly asserting, “bad dream! Bad! I mean, like, total nightmare. I thought something really bad happened to you. But you’re here and you’re fine. So everything is fine. We’re all fine.”

“Ooh kay,” Buffy slowly accepted with growing concern for her friend. She patted him on the shoulder, coaxing him forward as she said, “Come on. Giles said Halloween is as problem-free as they come and I mean to enjoy it.”

Xander didn’t stop his blonde crush to mention Ethan’s Janus curse or the time loop. He should’ve, but he simply nodded and gratefully walked beside her throughout the school day. He didn’t even mind hearing the same responses to the same questions he’s heard multiple times by now. In his mind, all that mattered was that she was alive and laughing with her friends.

After school, Xander continued the loop like normal, only he wore a cowboy costume complete with a vest, hat, and a toy gun in a plastic holster. Though he succeeded in saving 18th century Buffy’s life when that horned demon came near them, he couldn’t save Cordelia. The Cowboy wasn’t nearly as deadly once he ran out of bullets. Cowboy-Xander ran out of Buffy’s home to save Cordelia but couldn’t stop the child-turned-demon from grabbing her shoulder from behind and punching entirely through her body, reddening its arm from fist to elbow in gelatinous dripping blood. Without bullets, he became a man with a one pound paperweight.

From within the Cowboy, Xander wanted to throw up at the sight of the girl he’s known since kindergarten being brutally murdered that way. Her eyes were a haunting mixture of terror, shock, and agony. The Cowboy up-chucked the bile in his stomach as the five-foot monster swiftly removed its blood-red arm from Cordelia’s torso and dropped her like a sack of potatoes. His heart was racing in his ears as Xander watched the light in her beautiful eyes disappear, taking a sliver of his sanity with her before everything went black. He found himself in his bed once again, and it was the morning of the same day.

Xander was devastated. As much as he hated Cordelia, he couldn’t ignore that she was a large part of his life. They’ve had so many classes together since kindergarten and no one ever traded insults with him better than she did. She may be wildly irritating and insufferable, but he could appreciate a good comeback.

Getting out of bed, Xander chuckled when he recalled he was stuck in a time loop, and like Buffy, Cordelia was likely still alive. He ignored his morning wood, as he didn’t think he could masturbate after witnessing such a gruesome murder. During his morning routine to get ready for the monotony of school, Xander pondered why he looped again.

‘That was just like Buffy,’ he thought curiously. He couldn’t say why that detail was important, but something in him thought it was. Smacking his head in frustration, he mentally chastised, ‘God, why couldn’t I have a brain like Willow!’

Regardless, Xander pilfered some money from his slumbering parents and went to Ethan’s bright and early to buy a costume he thought might help him. Perusing the aisle for more complete outfits, Xander found a boxer’s costume with a nice robe and gloves, a steampunk costume, an English Prince costume, a firefighter’s outfit, a carnival ringmaster’s outfit, a sailor, an exterminator, and a Hunter with a plastic bow and arrow.

To challenge the Janus curse and the time prison he was in, Xander chose the Hunter. The possibility this costume could be the deciding factor in escaping the time loop got him excited. Sadly, the hopeful teen learned that once the Hunter was out of arrows, he became as useless as the Cowboy. When they were hiding in Buffy’s house and Angel needed help to fend off the group of demons breaking in, Xander ran out of arrows and wasn’t quick enough to stop one demon from snapping the vampire’s neck. Eighteenth-century Buffy screamed at the grisly murder before passing out. When Angel died, Xander looped back like he had with Buffy and Cordelia.

After taking several moments to compose himself, he headed straight to Ethan’s and bought the exterminator costume, complete with a yellow plastic cylinder that had a black skull on it and the word Poison under it. Buffy was murdered yet again, jumped by a demon neither Willow nor Xander could stop. And worse yet, the Exterminator ran away. Though he didn’t mind missing Buffy’s death, yet again, he hated how much of a coward he felt as he ran.

After making certain Buffy was alive and oblivious to her death last night, Xander went to Ethan’s in the following loop. He placed both palms sternly on the countertop and demanded, “I want the strongest costume you have!”

Ethan looked at the youngster a moment before answering with his patron’s smile, “Apologies, young man, but as it is the day of Halloween, I’m afraid everything we have left is currently on the shelves.”

Xander could feel something dark and cold move a little closer to him, like a nearby stalker he simply couldn’t see. Shaking his head with growing worry, Xander simply decided to try all the costumes. The only exceptions were the monsters, animals, demons, and vampires, which was two-thirds of the store. Doctor-Xander tried to save someone who was hit by a car that lost control and Buffy died before swiftly being looped back. Pirate-Xander only cared to loot and vandalize a home while Buffy died somewhere and then he’d loop back. Boxer-Xander miraculously saved Buffy and Cordelia with his impressive punching power, but he couldn’t save Angel from the much stranger demons raiding Buffy’s home, and the teenager looped back.

Xander grew more and more nervous with every costume change. The Prince, the Steam Punk Guy, the Firefighter, the Sailor, or many other costumes, Xander was forced to see Buffy die, Cordelia die, Angel die, or die himself, and with every death, he grew less and less shocked. He stayed in his room for longer periods of solitude every time he had to witness one of his friends die because he was losing hope. Staring up at the stained ceiling from his bed, he was having more thoughts of life never returning to normal again, and it was genuinely depressing.

When Xander didn’t wear a costume from Ethan’s, he tried to get Giles involved early. He thought all he needed to do was let the curse activate, then end it early. He rushed to Giles in the library twenty minutes after the curse began and told him he thought it was the British man named Ethan Rayne. Giles barely even questioned it and the pair immediately left the library, passing Ms. Calendar as they ran down the hall. She called out, asking if everything was fine, but they didn’t stop. Upon reflection, Xander thought they should’ve since the roads to Ethan’s during the worst of the curse were treacherous.

Giles stopped his car when a woman was running from a short demon, likely a child that was changed into the costume. The heroic librarian batted the impish demon away from the frightened woman with a baseball bat he kept in the back seat. However, a much larger demon, likely a real one, snuck up behind Giles and put him in a chokehold before suffocating him to death. When Xander woke up in his bed, he felt vomit rise from his weakened stomach at Giles’ death and rushed to the bathroom to heave up yellow bile.

He didn’t feel nauseous and throw up simply because he cared for the man—though he cared about Giles—but because the young teen who’s known the good-natured man for over a year just watched. He didn’t call out, ‘behind you!’ He didn’t jump the demon before it got Giles. Xander simply watched, then immediately restarted the moment Giles died. Like with Buffy and the others, Xander knew Giles wasn’t really gone, but he wondered how numb he was getting to all of this.

Begrudgingly, Xander thought of a way to test Willow. She’d always been able to escape death, gruesome or otherwise, since she always wore the ghost costume and nothing could touch her. Convincing her to wear another costume wouldn’t be a problem, however, the thought of actively leading her to slaughter made Xander feverish and chronically on the verge of puking. It took a dozen loops of others dying before a desperate Xander found the nerve to convince Willow to wear a surgeon’s outfit. Xander was walking beside her when the curse began, and just like him when he wore a Doctor’s outfit, Willow wanted to help an injured victim.

As there are plenty of monsters and mayhem on the streets, it didn’t take long for a sharp-toothed red demon with horns to attack them. As it charged them head first, evidently attempting to impale either of them with the sharp horns on its head, a flustered and frantic Xander knew in his soul he couldn’t simply stand by and watch her, of all people, be murdered. Xander pushed her out of the way, but a horn pierced his flabby flesh above his right hip bone and tore off a huge chunk of flesh.

His blood-curdling screams flooded the night sky as much as his blood pooled around him. The veins in his neck and forehead popped as he screamed out into the chaos of the night. It always felt a million times worse when he was wounded outside of a costume. He vaguely wondered why it hurt so much without wearing a cursed costume, but the worst pain imaginable dumbed him down so much, Xander thought he needed to put back the lump of torn-off flesh to be fine again. His shaky hands tried to reach over for it, but his body spasmed in writhing agony.

Doctor-Willow rushed to his side to help treat him, but despite the fiery throbbing flaring from his wounded side, Xander wasn’t overly concerned. Looking at her frantic face, he was proud he hadn’t allowed his best friend to be killed to prove anything. He’d be returning to that morning, anyway. Sadly, he wouldn’t go without being forced to witness the demon charge back and impale Willow through the heart with its long horn. The horror and surprise etched on her pale face as specks of blood taint the soft ivory of her skin will be an image Xander won’t soon forget. His best friend died instantly, and he looped back with that horrific image in his eyes.

Xander woke up in his bed and rushed to the bathroom to throw up. He didn’t go to school or Ethan’s that day and learned that he could survive the entire day with no one dying. Then he recalled his long trip to Texas, which made him feel idiotic for not putting that information together. His guilt-ridden brain then tortured him with the memories of staging his best friend’s death, making him want to crawl into a hole and die. No one called him that day, or if they did, no one in the Harris household picked up the phone and Xander promptly looped back at 3 AM.

Staring up at the yellowish, water-stained ceiling he now loathes, the distraught teenager lethargically recognized the following rules from his smelly bed. If Buffy, Willow, Giles, Angel, or Cordelia died, he automatically loops back. If he dies, he automatically loops back. If no one died and he made it to 3 AM, he looped back. There was no distance…

Xander’s eyes widened at the hopeful difference a commercial airplane could make. He didn’t have the passport for a plane ticket to China, but he could buy the earliest flight to the farthest destination and go farther than any car could much faster. Xander stole his parent’s credit card and bought a one-way flight to New York. He borrowed their car without permission to get to the airport, and seven hours later, he was in New York City. Looking out the window of the metro bus, it felt surreal being on the opposite end of the country on a whim, and he felt confident he escaped the time loop.

He walked around the concrete jungle, taking in the sights. Once he made it to 3:01 in the morning, Xander celebrated to the high heavens. He couldn’t afford to buy a celebratory hot dog, pizza, or anything, but he danced around the popular Times Square for thirty exhilarating minutes before calming down and wondering how he was going to get back to Sunnydale.

“I can’t believe all it took was flying to the other side of the country,” he bellowed with a burst of hoarse laughter. For the next two and a half hours, Xander was growing hungrier, colder, and sleepier. He dreaded having to call his parents and confess to everything he’s done. Stealing their car, charging seven hundred dollars on their credit card, and to top it off, needing more money to get back… Xander thought maybe he should just live out the rest of his life in New York. At six in the morning, his hunger and his worry magically disappeared when he woke up in the dirty bed of his dirty room.

“AAHHH, come on,” he yelled in frustration. Realizing what had happened, he cursed, “damn you Eastern Standard Time!”

Feeling like he was losing his mind, Xander pulled at his ear-length hair until his scalp hurt and screamed as hard as he could until his face was red and thick veins extended from his neck. Eventually, he needed to breathe and slumped back in bed, panting with a hoarse throat. When he settled down half an hour later, he returned to his mental list of rules.

“If any of my friends die or if I die, I go back,” he began again, speaking to himself like a homeless man. “If no one dies, I loop at three. And no matter how far I go, I still loop back!” He had to laugh at his predicament as he realized, “You, my friend, are screwed a million ways from Sunday.” It wasn’t quite the crazy laugh, but he felt himself getting closer.

Xander accepted hate into his heart. He wasn’t a hateful person, but without the checks and balances of natural law, order, and consequences, Xander let the malice in. Leaning on the detestable energy even gave him ideas to entertain himself with. Recalling Ethan’s words of needing a break, Xander prepared for the one person’s death he wouldn’t mind witnessing in the slightest. Early in the morning of the following loop, he hid weapons in the factory where Spike would often find the vulnerable 18th-century Buffy, and when she was free of the spell, Xander immediately helped Buffy by attacking Spike when he least expected it. The teenager had to do this several times because he couldn’t deny the blond vampire knew how to fight his way to survival.

With enough loops and persistence, Xander finally equipped Buffy and Angel with the right weapons at the right time. Angel stabbed Spike’s leg a second before the blonde slayer staked the blond vampire through the chest. Spike looked confused by the sharpened wood protruding out of his chest, unable to accept his true death, and Xander was thirsting for that crumbling of grey ash before the vampire died. Buffy pulled the stake out and the entire ordeal gave the time-imprisoned teen the odd sense of relief he’d been craving. Or at least, it did until he saw black, heard his alarm, felt his boner, and realized he looped back.

Looking around his pigsty room in abject horror and disbelief, Xander yelled, “Oh, you have GOT to be kidding me! Him! REALLY? Like, how? In what fucking planet!”

After a few premature loops where Buffy or Angel staked the blond bastard, a furious Xander was forced to amend his rules to include Spike on his no-kill list. The questions of why the evil blond got to live only added nausea to the unfair plight of his time imprisonment.

A sullen Xander can’t even guess how many times he’s looped, but he’s memorized everything everyone around him was going to say. He even snooped on others like Ms. Calendar in the computer class grading papers, Principal Snyder personally making students write lines on a chalkboard in detention, and hung out with Amy, just to experience anything different. That’s how he was keeping himself from drowning in insanity; by feeling something new with every loop.

After enough loops, Xander learned not to appear too smart. He would answer questions that his teachers would direct to him. He’d answer questions that were addressed to other teens in the class. He would answer questions he’d heard hundreds of times between kids in the hallways; answers he had no right knowing.

“He wouldn’t,” Clair told her best friend. “You’re wrong.”

“She’s not,” Xander casually said, stopping mid-walk. “Scott did it with Harmony. Heard her bragging about it myself.” Clair ran away crying and her best friend gave him a nasty look before following. Xander genuinely wondered how much he should care.

At some point, Xander began asking Giles and Willow questions about time, or magic & curses that involved time. He’d ask, “Is time travel possible with magic? Can a curse make you relive time over and over again? What’s powerful enough to affect time across the entire planet?”

Their initial answers only humored his curiosity, but with every loop, Xander seemed to know more than they believed he should. He would then counter by saying, “and I already know that time travel is possible with magic, but not on a global or dimensional scale. And I know curses can make you relive past traumas over and over, but I mean specifically the flow of time itself, like repeating the same day over and over. And you said that nothing was strong enough to affect time on all realities, in every plane of existence, across all dimensions, but there has to be something, right? None of this stuff just appeared out of nowhere. Some demon lord or God or whatever created time, right? You have to know.”

Suddenly, knowing far more than he’s ever let on made everyone suspicious of him. Once, Buffy even tied him down, fearing he was a clone or possessed again, and got Giles, Willow, and Ms. Calendar to exorcise whatever might’ve been possessing him. Of course, Giles cleared him of supernatural ailments, and after that embarrassing ordeal, Xander learned to ask hypothetical questions in following loops.

After defeating Ethan again, Xander called Willow that night and asked her, “What would you do if, hypothetically speaking, you kept repeating the same day, like in Groundhog’s Day? But you could also be anybody you wanted in order to try and stop it?”

He heard her hum over the phone and could easily picture her tilting her head and bracing her red lips together. He could feel her excitement over the brain tease when she gasped at a thought and cheerfully answered, “I know exactly who I’d be. The world’s greatest detective.”

Having already tried that with Ethan, Xander mundanely commented, “Nah, he hates Batman.”

“Not Batman, silly,” she said with a giggle. “I’d be Sherlock Holmes.”