__Things That Were Left Behind__
By Beadtific



Buffy had finished her soup, half the huge bowl of yogurt - which turned out to be rich, very *not* low fat and incredible – her roll, half of Willow's, two pears, some cheese and a chocolate truffle. She sat, looking kind of dazed, one hand on her belly and the other resting on Giles' arm.

"Fell better now?" Willow asked, happy that there was a little more color in Buffy's face. Her eyes still looked bruised, and the skin under them still a little chapped, but she was looking a lot less spooky.

"I had too much nog," Buffy groaned, using a Scooby shorthand for over-indulgence. Willow had coined it during a Christmas dinner at Revello Drive, when the combined efforts of the Summers women had spurred everyone to feats of overeating.

"And here it is only May," Willow smirked. Buffy cocked an eyebrow at her red haired friend.

"Feeling a little smug I was persuaded to eat, are we?"

"You exceeded the parameters of what *I* set for you, so, I don't think I can take complete credit. And the coven kitchen did its bit, too."

"Yeah," Buffy agreed, still glassy-eyed. Then she shifted in her chair and looked over at her lover. "So," she said softly, "where do you want me to start?"

"Why don't we start with how you feel right now? You keep rubbing your chest. Does it hurt?"

Buffy looked a little surprised, and glanced down at her chest. Sure enough, her fist was curled over the spot where the Bond had manifested. "Would you look at that? Do I do that all the time?"

"Not all the time, but enough to notice. Does it feel funny?"

"Well, it's certainly not right… it doesn't hurt so much as feel sort of dead and unmoving. It never changes." Her breath caught. "When it got cut, I think that a little of what Giles' was feeling sorta got left." Buffy took a deep breath, willing the tears to subside, and Willow tried to steel herself to probe her friend's feelings.

"What got left, Buff?"

Buffy picked at the blanket on the bed. "Guilt, lots of guilt, worry, and fear. He was really scared. And the oddest little bit of hope." The last bit was a whisper. Buffy sniffed and looked up at Willow with a painful smile. "If not for that, I think I would be totally in crazy Buffyland."

"Why do you think he felt like that?" Buffy rolled her eyes a little.

"Well, Dr. Willow, we were messing around when we knew better, and something went wrong. According to the First Slayer dream, our Bond had almost doubled in size. We were both wigged by that." Buffy paused, trying to figure out how to explain what happened. "I don't even know how to explain how *she* showed up."

"Just walk me through it, okay? Who knows what might be a clue?"

Buffy stood and took Giles' hand, blushing and trying to figure out how to explain that night. She thought a moment, kissed his cheek and whispered to him, "Forgive me, sweetie, but if this'll bring you back to me, I have to." She turned back to Willow with a resolute look.

"So, we first noticed something was a little different when we both passed out during sex." Willow gulped. Buffy went on to explain the blackouts, Giles' self-induced bruised head, their shared experiences of pain, the difficulty of keeping strong emotions from leaking through the Bond, the warning against intercourse, Giles' nightmare and the flare of desire between them that night which had been too encompassing to deny.

This last part was the hardest for Buffy, and even in the safety of telling her best friend, she felt naked. "Um, so we were kind of working around the whole no-touching thing, and it was going …really well. The last thing I remember is that I was trying…to keep quiet, so I bit my lip. Giles leaned over and kissed me, and the doubling thing happened again, even though we weren’t…you know. And it was really, really strong. It was like being hit with this huge wave, and I think I blacked out before I, uh, finished."

Willow narrowed her eyes a moment, and Buffy shifted uncomfortably. "Why do you think it doubled if you weren't together? Did it start before or after Giles kissed you? Or did it start because of the Bond?"

Buffy snorted, "Oh the Bond got us into it, but it was the kiss that brought on the doubling."

"How hard had you bitten your lip?"

Buffy touched her lip remembering, "Hard enough to bleed." Willow straightend up in her seat and looked excited. "What?"

"Did Giles bite his lip?"

Buffy's eyes slid over to her lover. "I don't know." She frowned, then looked pleadingly at her friend. "Do we have to root around in his mouth? That doesn't seem right."

Willow looked around the room for a chart, notes, or something that would allow them to preserve Giles' dignity. "Hang on a minute, let me go see if Angela has a something in the next room." She went into the sitting room/nurses' supply station. A clipboard with papers lay on the desk right near the phone. She rolled her eyes at herself; she'd been too preoccupied to notice it before.

Flipping to the first entry, she found the notes describing Giles' condition, wincing at the clinical "evidence of ejaculation" and skimmed over that part as best she could. She found a tiny list of injuries, a fading knot on his skull, and, there it was, a bloody contusion inside his mouth – self-inflicted, by the evidence of tooth marks inside his lip. Willow was a little astonished that witches would have overlooked a possible exchange of blood. She scrambled around looking for a clipboard of notes on Buffy. Finding it, she flipped the pages and noted that Angela *had* noticed Buffy's bitten lip, but slayer healing had kicked in to the point it didn't look as fresh as Giles', and all that remained was a little puffiness, and the thin line of closed flesh. Willow smiled triumphantly. "The game's afoot," she whispered to herself, as she walked back into Giles' room with a spring in her step.

Buffy was curled in the bed again, holding Giles and humming softly. "His heart rate went up. I think he's having a bad dream or something," she said, softly. Willow smiled, and swallowed her excitement while Buffy comforted her lover. She busied herself by getting the lunch things out of the way as quietly as possible, carrying the dirty dishes into the sitting room/office and putting the remaining yogurt, pears and cheese in the tiny office refrigerator. The redhead frowned at the phone a moment, then picked it up. There was a speed dial button labeled "Angela," and Willow figured she couldn't have gotten an easier break than that. She pressed it.

"Hey, Angela? It's Willow. Listen, um, I think there's a strong possibility that Buffy and Giles added a little blood bond to their big Bond the night of… the night they conked out. Both of them had bitten their lips, you know, accidentally, in the heat of the…well, you know, moment, and then Giles kissed Buffy. She says things didn't go all kablooey until the kiss, so I think that's what might have caused the overloady thing, rather than, um, normal, um, intercourse. Which they didn't do, that night at least." She gave a shaky little laugh. "Sorry, they're my friends, and Giles is like an extra dad. Actually *my* dad is the extra dad and Giles is the real one. Emotionally. Not that, you know, that he and my mom, you know. He was still in England and everything when I was nothing but a twinkle in the eye. Not that I wouldn't want him to be. Biologically. Goddess, I'm babbling. I just mean, I can think about it all clinically, but when I try to talk about them having s-sex, my mouth gets all tangled up."

"It's all right Willow." Angela paused to pick her way through Willow's torrent of words. "Oh dear," Angela said worriedly, "I did notice an old injury on Buffy's lip, but I'm afraid I was so rattled I didn't think that she heals at a different rate. That's probably why she's up and about now, isn't it? I'm such a stupid cow. Although that's good news that suggests Rupert might come out of it on his own."

"Maybe, and really how many slayers have ya treated?" Willow said trying to buck her up.

"It's really no excuse," Angela replied, still berating herself. "I should have noticed. The blood would explain a lot about why the Bond wounds in both of them were so much larger than they had been earlier in the evening."

"The blood acted as a catalyst or something?"

"Yes, that might account for it, instead of activating a lesser bond, as most blood bond offerings do, it would increase the size of an existing one."

"Is there any indication that lesser bond still exists?"

"I'm afraid not, Willow, however the Bond was severed, it was a clean cut. Have you spoken to Buffy about how the severing may have occurred? "

"No, I was clearing the lunch things away and Giles' heart rate went up. Buffy's singing to him right now."

There was a rustling noise. "Ah yes, I noticed, and she's brought him back down again, I see. We did an EEG on him earlier and he had brainwaves consistent with dreaming."

"But he doesn't wake up from the dream."

"Mysteriously not."

"I'm going to go work on that."

"Do let me know what I can do to help, Willow."

"Thanks, Angela. Hey, listen, just to bounce something off you; what's the one thing that was missing when you heard about Buffy and Giles forming a Bond?"

"Oh, that they'd not built a bit of protection into it, which is incredibly dangerous, but understandable given that it happened by accident. We were going to try to see if we could overlay some protection on to it before all this happened."

"Good, that's what I thought, too. Not the overlay bit, but the protection thing. Do you think someone could look into what protections we should build into a Bond? Especially one that could become this powerful?"

"You're not thinking of having them re-form one? By all rights they should be dead, either by how much could be transferred through that large a Bond, or the shock of it's severing." Angela sounded shocked.

"I don't know, Angela, but ask yourself, how *do* two people form a Bond, by accident, and consecrate it with a union of the God and Goddess without protection spells or an invocation? And live through a severing of a bond the size of a dessert plate?"

"What are you saying, Willow?"

"It's all pretty big mojo. I'm saying maybe that Buffy and Giles are supposed to be Bonded, somebody big *wants* them Bonded, and we may need to be in a position to put it back and make it safe."

"If this Bonding was meant to be, why did whatever power that bestowed it, allow it to be severed?"

"I don't know, yet. Maybe they formed it too early, and it was never intended to be unprotected. Maybe Giles and Buff missed some signs that could have let them do it safely. But could you get somebody looking at any prophesies about Bonded slayers? Do any still exist?"

"I'll ask Cecilia, our archivist. Don't get your hopes up, though. Except for Veronica's family papers, we don't have much on Bonded pairs."

"Thanks, Angela."

"No, dear, you're outstripping me at my own job, I should thank you."

"Well, I do have this magic power that enables me to talk to one of the patients."

Angela laughed, "The friendship factor is not one I'd downplay."

"Thanks."

"I'll slip in the sitting room and tap on the door when I have some information."

"Thanks, and could you do me one last favor and get my cell phone out of my room? It's in my bag. I'm expecting a phone call, and I shouldn't have left it."

"Will do, Willow." And Angela rang off.

Willow calmed herself again, this time in order not to bounce into the next room like a red-headed Tigger. With any luck, after she confirmed a few things about the First Slayer dream, she thought she might have an idea of how they could get Giles back. And Buffy was right; that tiny little bit of hope he'd left behind was making a big difference.

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