Season 6, pre-"Older and Far Away"

Xander rubs his fingers over the last rosette then leans in close, working the small blade along the edge.

He breathes in the fragrance of wood. Some part of him, he thinks, knew he'd found his calling back in shop class when he learned that this scent spoke to some quiet place deep inside him. Strange how the wood doesn't release its richest perfume unless you torture it. Cut it down, cut it up, kill the living thing to create something. Sometimes it's something beautiful, meant to last an age. Sometimes it's a Wal-Mart hutch.

He hopes Buffy likes it.

Flashback: Season 2

Funny how the woodshop epiphany took a while to translate from class to real life.

One day, dragging yet another broken table to the curb for Joyce, he'd been seized with a feeling for the thick legs. He'd unscrewed them from the shattered table top, cut them into manageable pieces in woodshop, and during idle moments he whittled them into stakes.

That Christmas Xander presented Buffy with a half-dozen and a pair each to the rest of the Scoobies. They were the first gifts he'd ever made that weren't stupid clay ashtrays.

The first that ever earned him hugs.

Season 6, pre-"Older and Far Away"

He runs his hand over the smooth surface, then raises the lid to look inside. Nothing in these compartments, but this chest already holds so much.

The grief of last summer. Amazing how readily that flows through his hands all these months later. His sorrow at the suffering they caused her, and his guilt that he's still glad to have her back. Love. Lots of that.

Anya appears in the doorway. "It's beautiful." She comes to stand with him. "You need to stop, before you ruin it."

"I know."

This work's kept him sane. How does he let it go?

Flashback: Season 5, "Out of My Mind"

He was deep into the zen of it when Giles mentioned how the work was going. The breath of dust released by the saw, the feel of woodgrain beneath callused hands. Still absorbed, Xander made an easy joke. (Funny how he could always do that, even with his brain otherwise occupied.) Added, "Yeah, carpentry is pretty cool."

Two hours later Giles's comment penetrated his skull.

I'm very impressed.

Walking with Anya past the movie theater, he stopped in his tracks, hand pressed to the sudden ache in his chest.

This was the wish he'd never had the nerve to make.

Season 6, "Older and Far Away"

"Ahn, stop --"

She's in full-blown panic mode, sweeping books off Dawn's shelves, looking for anything that will break the spell binding them to Buffy's house. She seizes Dawn's jewelry box, upends it.

Xander made her that box.

The summer Buffy was -- gone. They'd tried to make that birthday bearable for Dawn. He'd wanted to give her something special, something made with his own hands.

Funny how something given freely can remain so empty.

Funny how it has to be filled with things stolen from her friends.

He wonders what this says about everything else he's tried to give her.

Season 7, "Never Leave Me"

Xander slips the hammer back into his toolbelt, regards the blank sheet of plywood covering the window like a bandage over a blinded eye.

There's no pleasure in this kind of carpentry, nothing that appeals to his senses or his satisfaction in making something beautiful. It's not even like this will keep them safe. Any determined juvenile delinquent could get past it, much less a demon or Bringer.

He's done far too much of this kind of work lately.

"Nice job, Xander," Buffy says as she passes through.

He brushes his fingers over the rough surface. Feels nothing but tired.

Five years after "Chosen" -- Spokane

It's been dead in him for years, his feel for wood. Xander keeps it buried with his grief, his guilt, his dreams. He manages a supermarket, goes to the rooms, watches television. Keeps to himself.

After a morning meeting, impulse takes him into the guitar shop downtown. He crouches before an acoustic, his hand hovering over intricate inlay.

"Don't be bashful. I made it to play."

"I can't." Xander stares in wonder at the shopkeeper. "You make these?"

"Used to." He holds up gnarled hands. "Arthritis."

Moisture gathers beneath the eyepatch. "Would you teach me?"

"To play?"

"To make them."