They had won the day, Giles supposed, at rather little cost--and yet he felt a weight on his heart, as if he'd lost someone he held very dear.

Ridiculous, old man, he chided himself. The library had been, after all, only a room. The books had been saved, and even now cartons of them filled his flat almost to the bursting point. It was only a room, and a badly-designed one at that--foolish, really, to build a library on two levels, forcing one to run up and down stairs all day. He hadn't minded, except last summer, after...

Giles struggled to pull his thoughts back into line. Angel was gone. He hadn't minded, leave it at that. Willow had told him that the previous librarian, Mr. Abernathy, a true ancient, had found the design very difficult indeed.

All their losses, all the fear and sadness they'd encountered there, and still the library had been their place, their home from home. Giles wasn't yet able to imagine his life without it, though he supposed he must.

He mourned, even though he knew he ought to be happy. Those he loved best, his "kids," had come through unscathed: Willow and Xander, Oz--and, yes, even Cordelia. How quiet the world would be without Cordelia, without them all.

Another thing he couldn't get used to--the thought that he would not see them every day. Cordelia, he knew, intended to leave that very week for Los Angeles. Oz, having survived, planned to spend the summer touring with his band, and Willow had wanted, very much, to go with him. There, however, her frequently-absent parents had drawn the line. Willow, as the youngest of the group, would not be eighteen until beginning of September, and her father had apparently refused to allow his under-age daughter to set out on such an adventure, much to Willow's distress.

Perhaps it was a sign of approaching old age that Giles found he agreed with Ira Rosenberg's point of view--though he would never, of course (not being an utter fool) express such an opinion to Willow herself. Selfishly, he found himself rather glad she'd been forced to stay. For Buffy's sake, and for his own. In many ways, young as she was, Willow was his closest friend here in the States, and he hated for even a day to go by without her company.

Xander had been oddly quiet, lately, about his summer plans. A few weeks before, he'd been reading Jack Kerouac, talking with enthusiasm about the lure of the open road. Now Giles didn't even know if the boy would be attending college or finding employment--here in Sunnydale, or elsewhere. He hadn't liked to pry. Beneath Xander's exterior of jokes and careless self-deprecation, lay a core of something else that Giles himself recognized only too well--that inner anger, that hatred of oneself. Being eighteen, Xander lacked the ability to look ten years down the line and see that if he merely kept his head above water and didn't do anything remarkably foolish, he'd come out all right in the end. He knew that Xander's home life was more or less a battlefield, and that he'd felt cast adrift by Willow's deep absorption with Oz. Xander wanted to leave home, but perhaps felt too unsure of himself as yet to cut all ties. Perhaps they should talk--really talk, man to man, not merely trade gibes.

And Buffy--her plan had worked. She hadn't been harmed. Even weakened by the blood loss, thrown offstride by all that drama with Angel, she'd come through. Her boldness and her bravery filled him, as always, with speechless admiration, even as he worried about the events with Faith. When she was more herself, they would need to talk as well--not as Watcher to Slayer, not any more, but because he loved her, and because there were things he understood, in his experience, that the others did not. He didn't want her, ever, to feel alone. He wanted her to know that, heart and soul, he still belonged to her.

Enough, Giles ordered himself. Buffy wouldn't want any such thing. Why should she? Giles suspected he was actually older than her father, by a year or so. And talk of Xander being foolish--Buffy didn't need him to act the lovelorn fool. She needed him to supply weapons, read musty books, and offer advice. Nothing else. She'd treat him with affection, when she remembered, but at times Giles wondered if she even thought of them as friends. He guessed at some of the events that occurred since he'd been replaced as her Watcher, guessed with fair accuracy, he supposed, but that official tie broken, Buffy had pulled away a bit. She hadn't liked to tell him of the things she'd done.

Stupid, he chided himself. Foolish. And again, Why should she?

Glancing back over his shoulder, Giles could see the five of them walk away. He supposed, as he'd told Buffy he intended, that he ought to go check on Wesley.

Bloody Wesley, Giles thought, not entirely without affection. Even he had not been that ill-prepared. He'd have been quite well prepared, in fact, if he hadn't spent the previous twenty years repressing great parts of his nature so very thoroughly. Ripper as an entity separate from himself was gone--if he had ever existed--but ever since Angelus...since that night, small facets of his nature had begun to emerge, making Giles a bit sharper, a bit harder, more passionate in his nature--less stuffy, less a textbook with arms, as Buffy might say.

He knew the potential for violence that lurked only shallowly beneath his skin. He knew the magic he could call on--not the simple spells, orderly as cookbook recipes, that he'd worked in front of his young friends--but a deep, Wild Magic that this location called out to him to express. He'd used a bit of it the night the Hellmouth opened for the second time. Buffy had seen, and been impressed, but afterward he'd felt a little sick at what he'd done, and terrified, as well--even knowing where it might lead, the act of giving that magic a voice had felt so bloody good.

He was glad he hadn't needed to rely upon it as his contingency plan, had Buffy's strategy not worked.

Giles knew where such impulses led. The Ripper that came out on Band Candy night, Ripper at sixteen, was only a dim representation of what was to be--shallow, petulant, vain, a selfish boy out for a good time. Ripper at twenty-one, refined in the fire of Ethan Rayne's influence, had been something else entirely. Buffy wasn't the first person Giles had loved with sapphire eyes and golden hair--he loved her for herself, not for her uncanny resemblance to poor, lost Randall James Sinclair (who in his essential nature had been far closer to Willow), but he was also quite perceptive enough to glimpse the irony. That similarity in looks served as a warning: Giles knew himself, and that knowledge told him that to give in once meant to give in again, the way an alcoholic can't ever take just that one drink, lest much the same results follow: loss, and grief, and the destruction of all one has worked for, and all one loves.

Even today, somewhere inside him, Randall never stopped screaming.

God, Giles told himself, Enough of that, as well.

He rubbed his eyes, tiredness washing over him. Bloody Wesley. No Wild Magic in Wesley, or tame magic either. No calling even to be a Watcher, really, although Giles supposed the younger man meant well. He'd have been wonderfully suited to librarianship, less so to the business of fighting actual demons. Five seconds in front of the vampire army and he'd been trampled like a grape. His injuries were quite painful, no doubt, but did he really need to whimper quite so strenuously?

He passed a stretcher that bore a small burden, covered over all in white, another similarly shrouded, long, silken hair hanging down below the sheet. Their losses, not so entirely insignificant after all. On a third stretcher, quite a large boy lay weeping, trying not to make any sound. Giles paused, speaking softly, "Larry, how are you?"

"It hurts," the boy answered, in a strained, small voice, squirming against the straps that bound him to a backboard as if there was no way for him to get comfortable. "Mr. Giles, it hurts so bad."

"Try to hold still now," the EMT said.

Carefully, Giles took the boy's hand. He didn't know Larry well, but the boy seemed so obviously distressed, so much in need of comfort. "Yes," he said. "Do try not to move. I know it's very difficult."

The boy's large fingers bit into his palm. Giles spoke to him softly, calmingly, and Larry began to relax just a little.

"You wanna ride along?" the technician asked him. "You're one of the teachers, right? Probably know most of these kids?"

"Yes, I was on the faculty," Giles answered. Sunnydale High hadn't been a large school. Over time, he'd learned many of the students' names, mostly from hearing his own kids talk. Larry had once been spoken of as a tormentor--a big, rough boy, one of the lords of the school. What did they call them? Yes, a "jock"--that was it. Larry had been instrumental in helping to plant the fertilizer bombs that would destroy Mayor Wilkins. Now he held on to Giles's hand with desperation, as one might cling to anything, in a stormy sea, that would keep one afloat. "And yes, I think I ought to."

Larry's eyes, even blurred with tears, held a look of gratitude. Inside the ambulance, the technicians continued to do their work, and Giles stroked Larry's cheek, the boy's hands now taken up by medical equipment, most of his head engulfed by a restraint. Giles continued to talk of nothing in particular. Larry's eyes drifted shut, though tears still leaked out beneath the sandy lashes. He understood enough of the medical talk to know the boy's injuries were truly dreadful--there was blood, a great deal of it, and shattered bone. Larry might never be able to walk again, though actually the fact that he continued to feel pain could be taken as a good sign.

At the hospital, one of the nurses asked him if he was Larry's father, but the Chief Resident called him by name. "Mr. Giles, we don't normally see you standing."

"Unscathed this time," he answered.

"This isn't one of your usual kids."

"This is Larry...ah...Larry." Giles realized that he'd never known the boy's last name.

"We'll take good care of you, Larry. I'm Dr. Valentine. We're gonna take a quick look and then send you upstairs to surgery, and Mr. Giles can come see you after that, okay?"

Larry's lips moved. Giles touched him one last time, and wished the boy, quietly, "Godspeed," before he was whisked away.

The Casualty Ward--no Emergency Room, he reminded himself (funny, really, how the vocabulary of his old life lingered)--had begun to fill. He moved amongst the young patients, some walking wounded, some in agony, some only too still, giving comfort and encouragement where he could. They were frightened, in pain, obviously suffering the shock of what they'd done, and what they'd seen. For two-and-a-half years he'd been distant from them, a solitary figure shut away in a room they only visited when they had to collect their new books at the start of each quarter.

Now, oddly, he felt very close to them all, and they seemed almost embarrassingly glad to see him, absurdly grateful for adult comfort. Giles knew that he had done what was needed, but he wished, fervently, that he'd been able to fight alongside them. They were brave, so terribly brave, and he discovered, in a strange way, that he loved them. Their names, now, came clearly into his head. He promised to look in on them again, and to call their parents.

He could still hear Wesley, down the corridor, and found himself oddly annoyed. The Watcher had been left alone behind a curtain, far more severe casualties to be attended to immediately. Giles drew back the drape, saying, "Wesley, listen."

His words caught the younger man off guard. "To what?"

"Exactly." The sound of weeping came to Giles clearly, and a few soft moans. "They are barely more than children, only seventeen and eighteen years old, and what do you hear from them? Only this."

Wesley had lost his glasses, and his clear blue eyes looked up at Giles, oddly vulnerable. Giles lowered himself into the chair at the younger man's bedside, truly too exhausted to stand any longer.

"You need to learn to be quiet. Buffy would respect you better for it."

"As she respects you?" The Watcher gave a small laugh, then immediately pressed a hand to his ribs. "She doesn't respect you, man. She uses you when it's convenient, then does whatever the bloody hell she wants."

"I know," Giles answered, aware that the look he returned to Wesley was one of Ripper's looks, for the younger man averted his gaze at once. "I know her better than you can possibly imagine. That doesn't matter. I'm here to watch over her as best I can, not for her to watch over me."

For long moments, Wesley lay silent, then at last he said, "It all came out the way it was meant to: the demon destroyed, the Slayer living. The useless fool of a Watcher trampled over like a bloody throw rug."

Giles laughed softly. "Do you know what Xander gave me last year at Christmas? A bicycle helmet. I haven't a bicycle."

"The point being?" Wesley sounded irritated.

"The point being I've been hit on the head and knocked unconscious so many bloody times they all quite expect me to, in Cordelia's words, 'wake up in a coma.'"

"Wake up in...?" Wesley stopped, frowning.

"Yes, quite. But that's Cordelia, isn't it?"

The Watcher's frown faded slightly. "Weren't you somewhat...irked? By Xander's gift, I meant."

"Rather touched, really, though one must keep up the appearance of gruffness--for I understood that, in his own way, Xander intended the gift to say that he cared about me, and didn't want me to be hurt. We have become family to each other, you see." Giles paused, watching Wesley's face: the young man looked tired, in pain, and desperately unhappy. "It isn't easy for us to let others in."

"Especially those who try to enter so rudely, and with such blatant disregard for the feelings of all concerned." Wesley fell back on his pillow, shutting his eyes. "I come off as an awful prig, don't I? Naive, full of myself, prim, insensitive, a howling coward. All the best of the bloody British Empire."

"As the children say, 'don't beat yourself up.' I might have helped you here, and I didn't--in my own way, I was just as insensitive. I might have smoothed your path with Buffy a bit more--"

"You tried," Wesley said.

"Not so much as I should have. Had I showed you more respect, the children, to some extent, would have followed my lead."

"I was sent here to kill her," Wesley said bluntly. "Not in a direct way, of course. You know how we work. Not even through deviousness, or indirection. My uncle--"

"This would be Quentin Travers." Giles felt his face tighten.

Wesley, nodded, then gave a grimace of pain. "He so much as told me. I was to 'be myself.' Just that. Be myself. Which was intended to annoy you so much that you would back away. I was to rely on the Council's authority to make my orders law, which in turn would merely irritate Buffy."

"True enough," Giles agreed. "To date, they haven't done a great deal to command her respect, especially in the light of Cruciamentum."

"I watched the tapes," Wesley told him suddenly.

Giles found himself blushing, and said lightly, "I hope they excised the nude scenes."

The younger man looked faintly shocked.

"They put lenses in one's bedroom. One must still shower and change clothes occasionally." He found himself glancing at Wesley's trim physique, visible enough through the thin cotton hospital gown. At thirty he'd also had that perfectly flat stomach, but time had marched on, and the truth was, no matter how he trained, no matter how often he simply forgot to eat, he was forty-five years old and spent the bulk of his days sitting in a chair and reading. Chances were he'd never again know the joy of perfect muscle definition. As Willow had said before the prom, upon seeing him in his tuxedo, "Giles, you look really nice in clothes." And later, sharing with him the second-to-the-last dance, during which some of the other girls also danced with their chaperoning fathers, she'd stretched up far as she could on her little toes to whisper, God bless her, "You look way better in your tux than Angel does in his."

For she knew, or course, his wise young witch, the true depths of his love for Buffy. She knew, and yet would carry the secret as he needed her to, just as he carried it himself. She'd readily have foregone her own dance with him, had Buffy not been closely and passionately twined in Angel's arms, the most beautiful Giles had ever seen her in that lovely pink gown. Willow's small hand in his, her cheek resting lightly on his chest, had at least been some consolation that--in whatever way--he was loved.

"Mr. Giles?" Wesley said, and Giles realized that, for a long time, he must have been silent.

"What? Oh, sorry. And since I've already said the word, I do wish to apologize. For all of it."

"I should like to apologize, as well," Wesley responded formally, then added. "I intend to resign from the Watchers."

"Easier said than done," Giles told him. "Believe me, I tried. They keep hauling one back--until one's sacked, and even then they don't merely leave one alone to live one's life."

"But we aren't the same, are we--you're special, chosen, as Buffy was chosen, while I'm just some prat sent out to cock up a messy job no one else wanted."

"Wesley..."

"No, that's more or less what my Handler told me. That most of us are insignificant. We're sent out, we get killed, or we get our Slayers killed. I lost Faith, and I drove Buffy away from the Council."

A realization dawned. "I'd forgotten you were one of Em's kids--er--Candidates. She told me about you, but I hadn't connected."

"Nothing flattering, I'd imagine," Wesley responded, with astounding bitterness.

"It was back during the first year of your training, just before I left England. She said she'd a frail one, a prim one with a title, and a girl with the most alarming hair, and that she quite liked you all." Giles couldn't help but smile a little. "And you, I imagine, are the prim one with the title. Have you a title, Wesley?"

"Not that I'd care to share--my father's having a rare time drinking himself to an early grave, and the money's all gone, so he dies the estate will get eaten up by death duties, manor and all, and I'll be the Duke of Sod All. I've a bit of a trust fund from my mother's father, who'd money but no class--and that keeps me in suits and pays my expenses."

"I wondered how you lived--the Council not being notoriously generous. My family never had much money to start with, only heaps of arcane knowledge and the most dreadful sense of responsibility, which I'm afraid I only shared intermittently, and not at all during my youth. Em's family, you know, has pots of money, and a great old heap of stones down in Cornwall, near the sea. Did you know they're the only peers in England who pass their title down the female line? They did something of a vaguely appalling nature for the Virgin Queen, and were so rewarded."

"Then perhaps I should marry her," Wesley answered, no less bitter, and sounding tired, now, as well.

Giles rose, looking down at him. "Wesley, what is it?"

"Yet another thing I wanted that you've beaten me to. Maybe I can make a life for myself, picking up your leavings."

Giles didn't understand, but a nurse had entered, and he knew the time had come for him to depart. He touched Wesley's shoulder lightly.

"Be well," he said, and left to begin his calls to the families of the injured children.

* * * * *

Not wanting to spend the night alone in her empty house, Buffy returned to Angel's instead, knowing absolutely for certain that was probably one of the worst mistakes she could make. Of all the haunted places in Sunnydale, without her lover there, the mansion on Crawford Street had to be the worst.

There, on one wall, hung the chains. Knocked up against the base of the fireplace was the steel water-jug she'd crushed with her bare hand while the man--creature--demon--she loved writhed and snarled and sucked out her heart's blood until everything came undone and the whole universe whirled around her. There, right at her feet, spread the dark-brown, cloud-shaped stain of her own blood. It could have been anything, spilled coffee, chocolate syrup--but Buffy knew what the stain was--once, it had been inside of her.

She'd wanted Angel to do it, to drink from her and be healed, to take all her strength for his own. She'd begged him with tears in her eyes, and in the end stuck him with all her considerable strength, until the face she loved went away, and that other, terrifying face came out in its place.

Buffy had always been able to divide the two, or told herself that she could: Angelus did this, Angel did that--but she hadn't been able to kill Angelus, had always seen Angel inside him, no matter what he did, no matter how he hurt all the people around her that she told herself she loved, even though she knew that really Angel filled up her whole heart until only little scraps were left around the edges to love anyone else--even her mom, even Willow. Sure, she'd fought him. The two of them had kicked and punched and talked around and around the matter, tossing off sharp, hurtful jokes, until Jenny Calendar was dead, and Giles--well, she didn't exactly like to admit, but he wasn't the same Giles anymore, was he?

She'd never come to the point of asking him exactly what happened, or Xander, either, though Xander knew, and maybe Willow too.

It all came down to this: she hadn't been able to stand seeing Angel die. It didn't matter that he was already dead, or that she knew he'd influenced her in all sorts of bad little ways: conceal this, lie about that--he hadn't made her do any of it. It had all been her choice. When she found out about the cure, it had all seemed so easy: give Faith to him and save him, or give her own life for his. Save him, at any cost. Save Angel, her love. Isn't that what you did for the one you loved, laid down your life for him? You weren't supposed to ask if it worked both ways.

Her brain kept trying to go to bad places, and she kept hauling it back again--she didn't need to have those pictures playing on continuous loop in her head, or to think about what, soul or not, Angel really was--or that what finally nearly killed her hadn't been the Master, or some slimy demon--not even Mayor Dick Wilkins III--but the brightest star in her sky.

Now that it was all over with, except for the wreckage and the dead, she didn't know anymore. She didn't know anything. Not about herself, not about him. The tiredness pushed in on her, and she really did just want to sleep the summer away.

Buffy found herself wandering into the bedroom, sliding in between sheets that smelled of Angel's fever, which still wasn't even a normal, human smell. He wouldn't be back, she knew that. Bits and pieces of his belongings were gone, the crucial things. He'd left the rest behind, discarded them the way a snake sheds an unneeded layer of skin. Traveling light, except for that big, brooding conscience he seemed to carry everywhere, that never appeared to do him any real good.

It struck Buffy, suddenly, that even though he'd been around for a long time, and had a vampire's physical strength, he was still weak in a lot of ways--she'd been drawn to that flaw, that vulnerability. She was going to be the one to make him happy--and she had. Yeah, for that one moment, she had. She'd been exactly like all the stupid women on TV or in movies, the ones that made her and her mom boo and throw popcorn at the screen. She'd been exactly like that girl, Debbie, Scott Hope's friend, who got killed by her boyfriend Pete--Buffy remembered how abrupt she'd been with Debbie, how smug. At the time, she hadn't believed anyone could be that dumb--to cover up for her boyfriend when he hit her, to protect him even after she watched him change into a monster--all in the name of love.

Shivering, Buffy curled into a little ball, exactly at the center of Angel's bed, and pulled the quilt all the way over her, letting everything wash in: all the grief, all the pain, the loss and tension and triumph, every bit of it rushing through her in a flood of tears so violent they were nearly like sickness, a dangerous tide to ride out on, even if it only carried her into sleep.

Buffy dreamed she was tearing through the library, looking for something important, but she didn't know what it was. She peered behind the counter, under the study table, up into the stacks. She had to hurry, because she didn't have much time--she needed to find whatever it was right then, before Angel came to take her away.

When she slammed back down the steps, panting and scared, Willow was sitting cross-legged on the table, wearing her long red-velvet dress with the witch-symbols on it, a big red book open on her lap. "What? No joy?" Willow asked. She looked mysterious, and beautiful.

Buffy shook her head. "What's that you have? A Book of Ascension?"

Willow gave her little Mona Lisa smile. "No, silly, that's over. We don't need it now. This is something I just found, and I think you should find one too."

"Don't you think I'm trying?" Buffy answered angrily. "I don't know where to look!"

"Look here." Willow's hands drifted over the pages, as if she was reading the words by touch.

"Where? In the library?"

Again, Willow smiled. "Take off your blindfold."

Buffy raised her hands and found that there was a scarf tied over her eyes, just like the one Giles had tied on her right before Band Candy night, to test her awareness of things she couldn't see. "I don't know, is this gonna help?"

"I think it might."

"So I need to look here? In the library."

"It's always been here; you've seen it every day," Willow told her.

"But where?"

Willow closed the book gently, hugging its cover to her chest. Buffy could see the title--it was called The Road to Oz. She could remember her mom reading that one to her when she was little, but her copy had a house on the cover shaped like a great big pumpkin, with a pumpkin-headed man peeking out the door. Willow's didn't. Maybe it was another book entirely. "I'd ask Giles if I were you," her friend told her. "He'll know."

Buffy felt herself bubbling with joy. "Why didn't I think of that? Ask the answer guy!" She ran to the door of Giles's office, but not only wasn't he there, all the pictures and statue-things were gone as well, leaving the room sad, bare and a little dusty. She cried out, pressing her hands to her mouth. "Oh, Will!"

"Is he gone, then?" Willow stood just behind her, in the doorway. "I guess he couldn't wait forever. Well, at least you still have Angel. That's what's important. True love."

"How can you say that, Will? Angel left me."

"No, Buff," the dream-Willow told her gently. "You're still carrying him."

Then it was dark as the inside of a grave, and she could feel the terrible weight, as if she didn't have Slayer-strength at all, too much for her to hold up on her own. It pressed down on her, pushing her farther and farther down, and though she could see the soft, pale glow of Willow's hand reaching down to her, she couldn't reach back, or catch hold of anything at all.

She woke with one of those full-body jerks that jolted her so far out of sleep Buffy knew she couldn't go down again. She couldn't catch hold of her dream, and she'd no idea how much time had passed, minutes, hours, or days. The heavy curtains that covered Angel's windows allowed in no light: she couldn't tell if it was morning or evening.

Her back ached, and her throat felt so dry the thirst was like fire. She stumbled into the bathroom, bent her head down into the sink and drank straight from the tap, not even noticing the flat, metallic taste of the water until her stomach felt swollen and heavy.

Buffy straightened. If there'd been a mirror over the vanity, she knew she would have looked like a ghost. Any other man's bathroom would have had not only the mirror, but shaving-stuff: razors, foam, maybe even a little bit of stubble still collected around the entrance to the drain. Not in Angel's. Except for the perfect 'do on his head, the vampire was hairless, his skin even smoother than her own. Smooth and cold and--her thoughts betrayed her again--dead.

She flashed back to the end of her dream, then to the real heaviness of Angel's body on her own, not caring, as he drank, how he crushed her, the pain in her spine as he pressed her into the cold stone floor, the horrible burning pain in her neck, the brutal animal sounds he'd made echoing in her ears.

Without her even knowing it was about to happen, Buffy leaned down over the sink and threw up all the water she'd drunk, the same way she had the night she went out to hunt Faith.

"Oh, God." Buffy scrubbed at her mouth with the back of her hand. "Oh, God!" A tidal wave of misery made her huddle down between the vanity and the shower stall, her hot cheek pressed to the cool, bubbled glass, losing herself in a whole new rush of tears, that went on and on until she was sure there couldn't be any more moisture left in her body.

As the tears wound down into jolts and shudders, a soft rap sounded at the door. Then silence, followed by another knock. Shakily, Buffy climbed to her feet, already knowing who stood outside. Not him. Not her Angel.

"Hey," Willow said quietly when the door opened. Little lines of concern showed up around her eyes; her nose wrinkled at the smell of sickness in the room.

"Hey, Will."

"I kinda thought I'd find you here. And--" Willow glanced into her friend's eyes. "I guess I did."

"I guess." Buffy pushed her hands back through her tangled hair. She felt smoky, sweaty and icky in every way it was possible to feel, she just hadn't been aware of it until that moment.

Willow gazed at her in sympathy. "And to think we always wondered what came after High School."

Tears threatened again; Buffy felt her lower lip tremble. Willow put her arms around her, hugging her close despite her state of extreme grubbiness. "You'll think this is funny, but I was just dreaming about you. Well, not exactly about you, I guess. But with you, and you were giving me advice."

"What are friends for?" Willow gave that same Mona Lisa smile she'd had in Buffy's dream. "Big ol' cliche, but you're not alone here, you know?"

"I know. I guess..." Buffy let out a gust of breath. "I just wanted to be..."

"I hear you," her friend said, letting Buffy out to arm's-length. "And I also hear that if you get into a shower and let water fall on you, instead of sitting all alone beside the stall, you get shiny clean and people like you better." Willow picked up the paper grocery bag that sat beside her right foot. "Ask me what best friends are for?"

Buffy rubbed at her stinging eyes. "What?"

"Bringing clean clothes, and taking you out to breakfast, even if it is 3:00 PM."

"I don't know..." Buffy made a face.

"Coffee anyway. Or juice. My relatives sent me beaucoup bucks for Graduation, and I'm feelin' generous." Willow's kind smile faded a little. "This isn't a good place for you to be. Not alone. Not ever."

Buffy opened the bag, looking down on the sundress and sweater Willow had brought her. "Is it sunny outside?"

"Sunny and warm."

"Where's Oz?"

"In the van. He says take our time. Or--" Willow blushed a little. "It can just be you and me, if you want."

"I thought you two had been surgically joined at the hip."

Willow blushed deeper. "I don't...wanna make you feel bad."

"You don't." Buffy searched through the linen closet for a towel, and it struck her as funny, suddenly, that a vampire would even have a linen closet--but she didn't laugh. "Never. You have every right to be happy--you have a great honey, and you're not..." She clutched the towel to her chest. It was dark red--like wine, not like blood. Blood wasn't ever that color. "I'm just like that girl Debbie, aren't I? That's what I was thinking."

"No!" Willow shook her head vehemently. "No! I mean... Just no. Love's important. You do things for people you love."

"Even stupid things."

"Sometimes," Willow said, and hugged her close again. "Sometimes even stupid things--but sometimes smart things too."

* * * * *

Though he'd long since intended to go home, Giles had been at the hospital all night and well into the day. The hospital staff, appreciating his help, had put him alone in a small room with a telephone and the Sunnydale directory, and he'd made call after call, talking to the injured children's families until he was hoarse. Still, fully a third of those children's parents, even some of those to whom he'd already spoken, had yet to arrive.

Why, he wondered, did the mothers and fathers of Sunnydale appear to love their children so little? Even Willow's mum and dad, blessed with such a wonderful daughter, provided her with material goods, but only intermittent care. Was it that they, like parents of other places and other times, expected their offspring to die young, and so did not make the deep emotional connection that was ususal? They couldn't all be like his own family: his father too burdened by duty to truly act in that capacity; his mother too flighty and self-absorbed. Nothing flighty about Willow's mum--she was like a force of nature, something hard and unstoppable. Like a rockslide, perhaps.

A glance at his watch told Giles it was almost one in the afternoon. Nearly a full day since the Ascension. Nearly two full turns of the clock since his library had been destroyed. From half-past ten on he'd sat with Larry, talking of random things: his own boyhood in Salisbury, the parts that bore repeating anyway; his work, during his twenties and thirties, as an archeologist. From time to time he'd stopped speaking, and the boy's weak grip had tightened on his hand. Perhaps Larry needed the sound of a human voice to anchor him into life.

At one-thirty Jonathan--the small, timid boy who'd presented Buffy with her Class Protector award--arrived. Giles had spoken with him the previous evening, when he'd been tearful, trembling, in pain. A great bruise marked Jonathan's forehead and he bore one arm in a sling, yet otherwise, by light of day, he seemed nearly elated.

Jonathan laid a hand on Giles's sleeve; he was quite a small boy--shorter, even, than Oz--with kind brown eyes. "Why don't you go home, Mr. Giles? You look really tired."

He surprised Giles, then, by bending to press his lips sweetly to the grey cheek of the injured boy. At the prom, hadn't he danced with that tall, attractive girl? One oughtn't to make assumptions, he reminded himself--perhaps the girl had been a relative, or a close friend. Or perhaps this was a brother's kiss.

"It's okay, Larry," Jonathan whispered. "I'm here."

Giles touched Jonathan's shoulder in return, then made his way silently from the room. He'd every intention of looking in once on Wesley, then going home to his own bed. He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept.

The younger man lay sleeping, one leg elevated on pillows, a brace about his neck. Giles backed silently from the room, not wanting to wake him, and collided in the doorway with a immovable human body. Instinct made him whirl, defenses at the ready.

To his utter amazement, the obstacle blocking his path proved to be none other than Moira Bannister-St. Ives, the last person in the world he expected to see in that place, or at that time. Though why it came as such a surprise he couldn't be sure: only natural that the Council should send someone to deal with Wesley and Faith. Moira, after all, had been Wesley's Handler.

"I-I thought you were in England," he stammered.

Instinct prevailed again: old habits died hard. In plain sight of the bed, they caught hold of one another tightly, the briefcase falling from Moira's hand as she raised her arms around his neck. Perhaps tiredness and his sense of unbalance governed his acts, but Giles found his hands on her firm, well-shaped bum, her hips pulled in close to his. Their lips touched, fiercely, remembering passion, and then their tongues got involved as well. Tasting her, feeling the strength of her body under his hands, he nearly lost himself--until he recalled where he was.

Em pulled away. "Good God, Rupert!"

"Good God indeed." He touched her lips, tidying a bit of lipstick that had got smudged. Smiling, Em brought out her handkerchief, wiping Giles's own mouth.

"Summer Fire," she laughed. "A good shade on you--but I don't think we want your kids to wonder if you've begun a new life as a cross-dresser."

"No danger of that, Em. They firmly believe I wear tweed pajamas to bed, and that I am, if fact, the dullest man alive."

"Wrong on two counts, as we both know." Her green eyes danced. "How's Buffy? How are the others?"

"No casualties among the 'Scooby Gang.'" He paused, noticing her laugh. "Do you actually know what a Scooby Gang is?"

"Scooby Doo is an animated Great Dane, who shares adventures with a group of young people as they investigate mysteries of a quasi-supernatural nature. If you'd like, I could tell you to which of the young people each of your own Scooby Gang members corresponds."

"No, no. Quite unnecessary."

Em laughed again. "By all means, Rupert, you must avoid popular culture at any cost. The road to hell is paved with Saturday morning cartoons."

"I believe it might well be," Giles answered with mock alarm, then sobered. "Not all of the students were so lucky. I've been doing what little I can--in loco parentis, as it were."

"You're a good man, Rupert," she said, giving him a second, more tender kiss upon the cheek. "I'd like to sit a bit with Wesley. See you later, though?" Em produced a card, as if by sleight of hand. "Call me, when you've had some sleep. You look done in."

"I shall." He glanced at the card, which bore her name without the title, and the telephone number for her digital phone. "I am."

"Soon, then." She moved into the room, shutting the door behind her.

"I don't think..." he began, then shrugged. Em would do as she would, and it wasn't for him to stop her. He turned again, and for the second time that day, collided with a beautiful woman--who also caught him in a fierce kiss, to which he, in his surprise, responded--until he realized that the woman who kissed him with such fire was actually Cordelia Chase.

Smiling, she stepped back, and said, "C'mon, Giles. You need tea. I need coffee."

Still trying to catch his breath, Giles could only nod. It wasn't until they stood alone in the lift that he could manage to recover his wits enough to ask. "What was that about?"

"Science," Cordelia answered. "An experiment."

"Do I closely resemble a white rat?"

"No." His companion grinned. "Right now you resemble an old guy on a serious lack-of-sleep jag. Which is just about right, since that's what you are."

"Thank you," he said drily, as the lift doors opened, then, "I'm not old."

"You get that little sleep, it makes you look old. Kinda faded, or like when the maid doesn't sort your laundry right, and your dad's black sock gets in with your white things? Like that."

Giles had no idea what she meant to say--but that was Cordelia.

"Eight hours a night. Sleep deprivation's for losers."

"Which I am. Or so someone informed me."

Cordelia gave him a look, and suddenly her bravado crumbled. Her firm arms flew round his waist, and she was crying into his shirt. "Hold me. Just hold me."

He did, stroking her silken hair, rubbing her shoulders, the two of them thoroughly blocking the doors to the cafeteria, heedless of the people trying to exit or enter. Cordelia didn't take long to weep herself out--she was a strong girl always. Even lying injured in a hospital bed of her own, a few months past, she hadn't liked to cry in front of him, and yet she had, begging him not to tell anyone.

"I won't tell," he assured her this time, as well.

"Yeah, like the whole world hasn't already seen us." Cordelia shook her head. "Come in, sit down. I'll get us breakfast, but you're paying."

Giles let her lead him to a small table by the window. In daylight, one could still see a pall of smoke or dust overhanging the ruins of Sunnydale High.

"Giles. Money." She nudged his shoulder. He surrendered his wallet without comment.

Giles leaned against the window, watching the breeze pull the smoke into streamers, the sun warm on his face. He felt like a cat about to fall asleep on a bright windowsill.

Moments later, Cordelia returned with a cup of coffee for herself, a cup of tea for him. "Earl Grey, with milk, the way you like it," she said.

Giles smiled his thanks.

"I got myself a fruit salad. At least five a day for better health."

"I've heard that."

"They're cooking yours, because I bet you haven't eaten for hours, or days, or whatever. You shouldn't let your bloodsugar crash like that. Take care of yourself. You'll live longer. Unless, like, a demon kills you, or a vampire sucks your blood or something."

Cordelia pulled the lid from the bowl of mixed fruit, leafing idly through his wallet. "Hey, your driver's license picture turned out nice. And somebody gave you a Gold VISA? Did you lie about your income, or something?"

"No, I did not," Giles said laughing. Such a relief to sit with tactless Cordelia, so full of life, after so many hours amongst the wounded. He sipped his tea, watching her pretty face.

"You have pictures in your wallet. I never thought you'd have pictures." She pulled them out of the protective plastic, to see them better. "Hey, you have a picture of yourself in your wallet, and who's the babe? Did your hair used to be red? Why's it darker now--is that some sort of Grecian Formula haircolor thing?"

"You're mistaken," Giles told her, knowing which photograph she'd found. "That's my son Sebastian and his wife Celeste. Look at the date on the back."

Cordelia looked, frowning slightly. "He looks about Wesley's age. How could he be Wesley's age--are you way older than we think you are?"

"How old do you think I am?"

"I don't know." Cordelia shrugged. "Middle forties?"

Giles nodded.

Cordelia, never a stupid girl despite her manner, did the math. She looked troubled, curious but not wanting to ask--rare for her.

"He was raised by some very nice people called Delacoeur. He's an Anglican priest. The woman you saw in the corridor is his mother."

Cordelia slipped the picture back into his wallet, obviously seeking safer ground. "Hey, here we are--all of us, even me."

"Naturally even you, Cordelia."

"And Ms. Calendar," the girl continued. "And here's one of a bunch of stuffy British people."

"My colleagues from the British Museum." He couldn't say, really, why he'd even kept that picture--but he had. Those people had mattered to him, and still did, though perhaps they'd never meet again.

"You looked happy. Were you happy?"

"I was, I suppose." Giles glanced up as a woman delivered his breakfast: scrambled eggs, whole wheat toast with no butter, of which Cordelia immediately stole a slice. The eggs tasted bland, but he knew better than to add salt with this particular young woman present, and so he settled for a sprinkle of pepper.

"I feel..." Cordelia dabbed her perfect mouth with a paper napkin. "Like I'm already homesick, when I haven't even left yet. I keep wanting to hug Willow. And if Xander asked me to marry him right now, I'd say yes without a minute's hesitation. This is not normal."

"I felt exactly the same way directly before I left England." Giles touched her hand. "But it turned out all right. I was just thinking what a strong person you are. Wherever you go, you'll do well."

Abruptly, her eyes flooded, and she hastily blotted them with the napkin, before the tears could smudge her mascara. "Don't say stuff like that," she told him fiercely. "Just...don't."

"Whyever not?" Giles asked her.

"Because it's nice, and I always said mean things to you, and then I'll be sad, and I already have so many serious thoughts my brain's about to explode."

"I said a few mean things to you as well, now and then, and for that I'm sorry. Such words were uncalled for."

"Giles, they were totally called for. I'm a bitch. I know that. And you're a nice man, and not bad looking in an old-guy sort of way--and even caught off guard, you kiss way better than anyone else ever, except maybe Xander. You should give Wesley lessons."

"I'm not entirely certain he'd enjoy that."

Cordelia laughed and got to her feet, pushing Giles's now-disorganized wallet in his direction. "Look, I'm gonna go see Wesley, 'cause that's the nice thing to do, and then I have to go home and pack."

"Call me when you've settled," Giles told her. "Let me know how you're doing. I may be gone for a bit, but I'll always collect my messages."

"You mean that?" She put her hand on his shoulder and bent down, tears still brightening her eyes as she gave him, this time, a sweet, daughterly kiss. "I'm gonna miss you, old guy."

Giles rose--because one did, in the presence of a lady--and squeezed her hand. "Take care, Cordelia. Remember what you've learned--Sunnydale isn't the only place that has dangers." Unable, for some reason, to resist, he took her in his arms once more, and held her, just for a moment. "And I will miss you, Cordelia."

"Oh, great, tell me that!" she tossed over her shoulder, already heading briskly away, her high heels clicking on the tile. "Now I'm gonna have to redo my makeup."

Alone, Giles finished his breakfast. The smoke, by this time, had nearly cleared, revealing only too plainly the pile of rubble that marked the site of their battle.

Buffy, Willow and Oz ended up at one of those places that specialized in gooey appetizers, huge burgers, and the kind of big fruity drinks that came with funny straws--a restaurant located right across the street from Sunnydale General Hospital. Maybe so you could go straight to the ER after all that cholesterol blocked your arteries.

Buffy hadn't thought she was hungry--she'd actually expected the sight and smell of food to make her queasy--but the minute the three of them stepped through the doors her stomach began to growl so loudly the noise could probably be heard through the entire restaurant. Talk about total embarrassment.

They had to wait a long time for their table. There hadn't been a lot of early risers in Sunnydale that morning, and apparently nobody had the energy to cook for themselves. While they were still squeezed up together on the long padded bench, watching the tropical fish in the foyer fishtank flit aimlessly around their pretend underwater world, Xander and Cordelia came through the door--Cordy forging in first and letting the door fly back in Xander's face. Each of them wore a different strange look: Xander's almost giddy, Cordelia's unusually sober.

Willow waved them over, and an awkward moment of silence fell, only broken when a hostess, in khaki shorts and polo shirt, came to lead them to a big table on the sun porch.

Buffy brushed the fronds of an encroaching fern out her face and let the others order. Before long they had a table full of laden plates, and a round of virgin strawberry margaritas served in glasses the size of serving bowls.

Xander sucked down half his drink at one go, then gave a sigh of contentment. Cordelia looked at him and shook her head. "Just when I think there's hope for you--there isn't."

"Why, thank you for your kind words, Miss Chase," he answered in a bad, fake British accent that still managed to sound strangely like Wesley's.

Cordelia glanced down into her glass--she looked different, Buffy thought, almost nervous, like she wasn't sure she had a right to be there at all.

"It's okay, Cor," Buffy told her quietly.

"How pathetic am I?" the other girl blurted out suddenly. "I got up this morning and I couldn't think where to go. I mean, school's all over--not that that's so much a bad--my mom and dad are living in a one-bedroom apartment, and I have to sleep on the hide-a-bed. Me. On a hide-a-bed."

Any other time it might have been funny, but they all shook their heads sympathetically.

"So all I could think of to do..." She twisted the strap on her purse, scowling at the unmarked high-quality leather. "The only place I could think to go was the library. How sad is that? And I actually walked all the way there..." Cordelia's voice trailed off. "I. Walked."

"Cordy, the library isn't there now," Willow told her gently.

"Don't you think I know that?" Cordelia laughed at herself, but she didn't sound happy. "But for a little while I was kinda hoping that was a dream, you know? So I went."

"What did you find?" Oz asked.

"What do you expect? A big mess. And I stepped in something icky. Dead demon-slime, maybe. And when I wiped it off my shoe wasn't shiny anymore. So I wondered where Giles lived now that he didn't have the library to hang out in anymore? I can't believe how much I wanted to talk to Giles. God, like I said, pathetic much?"

"What did you need to talk to Giles about?" Buffy asked. "The slime-stuff? 'Cause I could ask, if I see him, maybe."

"What do you mean, 'maybe,' Buff?" Xander picked up a big, dripping, bacon-studded potato skin and engulfed it in one go--reminding Buffy of the way Mayor Wilkins had engulfed Principal Snyder. "You and the G-man, you're like that." He crossed his greasy fingers to indicate the "that."

"No, I don't need to anymore," Cordelia said. "I mean, I saw him at the hospital. With Wesley and the Watcher-lady."

"What Watcher-lady?" Suddenly worried, Buffy returned her own potato skin to her plate. "What was she there for? Is Giles okay?"

"I guess. I dunno." Cordelia started munching carrot sticks. "Nobody said. Only the two of them were in the hallway when I came out of the elevator, and I'm telling you, if I'd known Giles could kiss like that, I'd have passed on Wesley and gone straight to..." She glanced up, noticing their looks. "What? I'm just saying. They were old friends, or something. And this one was not a Gwendolyn Post. Nice tailoring."

Willow looked at Buffy, her lips opening as if she wanted to say something, then closing again. "Giles doesn't kiss people," she murmured at last. "Not since Jenny."

"Will..." Xander started.

"Well, he kissed this lady, and the angle was bad, but he maybe had his hands on her butt, and you couldn't have slipped a dollar bill between them. He had such a funny look on his face when she'd gone I tried him right then and there. I don't think he knew what hit him."

"Cordelia!" Buffy snapped.

"I just had to, and it was..." She noticed Buffy's look. "Not icky. Sweet and nice and...like if I were in love with him--which I'm not, 'cause that would be weird--pretty damn sexy. We went down to the cafeteria and we had kind of a nice talk, 'cause I wanted to say sorry about calling him a loser, and goodbye and all that." Cordelia took a potato skin off the serving plate, looked at it a minute and handed it to Xander instead. "I found out Giles never hated me, and I never hated him either--though he did tick me off with that toadstone thing--which is pretty funny if you think about it. And he gave me the sweetest hug. So, I'll miss him when he's back in England, and I'm in L.A."

"What are you talking about?" Buffy asked sharply. "Giles isn't going to England."

"Uh, when did you want to take off for L.A., Cor?" Oz said, obviously trying to change the subject.

"Oz is driving Cordy down," Willow, the peacemaker, added. "'Cause he and Devon had to go. To do stuff. Before the tour. And I'm coming too. For fun."

"I don't know," Cordelia answered. "After the funerals, I guess."

They sat quiet for a few minutes before Xander raised his glass. "To Larry," he said, with unusual seriousness.

"But Larry's not dead," Willow responded. Xander gave her a look.

They all drank.

"To Harmony," Cordelia said.

They drank again.

"You'll look at me funny," Buffy told her friends. "But, I guess, to Snyder?"

They did look at her funny, but after a minute, they drank to Snyder too.

* * * * *

In his sleep, he often visited that place when he felt most helpless, or overwhelmed--when he was struggling against the nearly unbearable desire to lash out with lovely, soul-freeing violence. That was something Buffy didn't realize, and that he hoped she never would discover: it wasn't just Ripper; Rupert liked to fight, always had done. At school, and at Oxford, he'd played rugby, which nearly amounted to the same thing--a game like American football without any of the protective padding. He'd trained with weapons, formally, and less formally, had quite a reputation, in his youth, as a street-fighter. He'd always enjoyed the way that a spot of violence shut off the worrying, guilt-stricken part of his brain--and since Sunnydale provided a never-ending stream of evil creatures that must, at any rate, be defeated, he was able to indulge that particular taste with very few pangs of conscience.

What Giles hated, utterly, was to be out of control. His dreams of The Factory often included Angelus's cruel face, his mocking, taunting voice. Buffy had never understood how difficult it was for him even to share breathing space with Angel--though of course the vampire did not breathe, not really--that even to look at Angel's somber visage, or to hear the subdued tone in which he spoke, kept alive the torturous memories of unstoppable loss and complete humiliation.

And so, it surprised him to dream of The Factory, and not have Angelus appear.

He walked silently through the darkness, hearing the ghosts of voices, words he could not quite make out. In younger days he'd seen ghosts quite clearly, but now rarely did--he certainly never saw Jenny, but then, why should he? She'd been a practical woman, not one to cling to a life she must have known only too clearly that she'd left behind. His own stupid assumptions at the spirit manifestation of James Stanley and Grace Newman more than a year before had been only that--the foolish, disordered thoughts of a grieving mind.

In dreams, however, the ghosts appeared again. A little girl in a white dress drifted before him, luminous in the inky room, where the filmy curtains of Drusilla's bed still stirred softly in a phantom wind. The child picked up Drusilla's half-burnt dolls, laying them carefully, in a row, on the stained mattress.

"What are you doing?" Giles asked her, with curiosity.

"The dollies all got spoilt," she answered, her eyes meeting his, the colour of snow in moonlight. Giles knew her at once, though he hadn't seen her for many, many years.

"Yes, they certainly did. How are you, Clarice?"

She covered her mouth with her hands, giggling a little, then answered. "I'm dead, Rupert. You know that."

"Yes, dearest."

She'd only been three months at school when their father came for her--and for Marianna, their elder sister--in the night. An emergency, he'd told the headmistress. Imperative that the girls return home at once. Only a day, at any rate, before the school broke up for the Winter Holidays. They must come now. Their mother...

The creature that wore their father's face had manufactured tears, and the headmistress patted his cold, unliving hand before she'd hastened away to fetch the sleeping sisters from their beds.

Rupert thought of them, Clarice and Marianna, lying somewhere out in the country alone. He thought of their pale eyes, so much like own, staring up into the December-bare branches of a weeping willow tree.

It was not, after all, a white dress that Clarice wore, but her little flannel nightgown.

Clarice wriggled up onto the bed, touching the mattress beside her with an ethereal hand. "Come sit beside me, Rupert, do."

He sat, and Clarice leaned against his arm. She'd been his favorite, always. Marianna, the eldest, had been bossy in the way that only a twelve-year-old could be: a girl who stated her opinions in no uncertain terms, and when crossed, was not above resorting to physical violence. She'd been a devil at games, Giles recalled, and had trained him better in the art of resisting pain than the Watchers ever could--when he was nine and Marianna was eleven, she'd broken his nose with her field hockey stick, then whacked him another one, even harder, for blubbing. And he'd loved her. Loved both of them.

One of his earliest, sweetest memories involved leaning over Clarice in her little cot, touching her nearly-transparent fingers and toes, watching the perfect bow of her mouth open. He couldn't, given the difference in their ages, have been more than three or four at the time.

"You got old, Rupert," Clarice told him. "You look exactly like our dad."

Giles smiled, knowing what she said was true: that he no doubt appeared old to her eternally childish eyes, and that he now resembled their father at the time of his death even more uncannily that his own son, Sebastian, resembled him. "I know," he told her quietly.

"What is this place? How did it get burnt?"

"It's an old factory. I burnt it."

"One oughtn't burn things, Rupert. Did you get into trouble?"

"I was already in trouble, love. Burning this factory made it no worse."

"You sound like dad, too." Clarice crawled up into his lap. Instinctively, Giles held her: she weighed nothing, and her body felt cool and insubstantial, like water and moonlight. Her dark head rested without pressure against his chest. "Why did you let yourself get old?"

"It just, eventually...happened," he answered.

"Well, it shouldn't." Clarice glanced up, speaking to him with a seven-year-old's sternness. "If you can make yourself young again, then you can get what you want, but if you go about acting like an old man, you never shall."

"Clarice, you don't understand," he told her.

"She's very pretty, isn't she?" his sister responded, proving, in fact, that she understood very well indeed. "Prettier than mum, even. Marianna and I quite like her."

"Have you been watching, then?"

"That's what we are, in our family. That's what we do." She slipped out of his arms, down from the bed, reaching out a hand to lead him. "Come now. Quickly. Before the bad girls get here."

Every step Giles took made Clarice and The Factory fade a bit more, until he was lying sprawled on the sofa in his own flat, the shadow of a mountain of books cast across his face, the dream--or vision, whatever it had been--still clear in his mind.

Wishful thinking, he told himself. Nothing you can do will take away twenty-seven years, even if you wanted it to.

Still, when he went upstairs to shower and change clothes, Giles did not dress himself in his usual tweed, or even the open-necked shirt and jacket he'd begun, still with some reluctance, to adopt more recently. Instead, he chose another sort of apparel entirely.

Buffy sat on the bench beneath the gnarled oak tree and waited for Giles to come--she'd decided he would be drawn to this place, the same way she had been. After all, he'd practically lived here for the past three years--ten o'clock, eleven, even midnight, if she'd wanted him, she'd known to try the library instead of his home. He'd be there, working on something for her, to keep her safe.

He said you didn't need a Watcher anymore. Cordy's words echoed in her head. Cordy said she'd called Giles a big loser, still hanging around after he was fired by the Council. What if he'd taken that to heart?--he did, sometimes, take things to heart, not that he'd ever say anything. He didn't brood, like Angel, and he was the opposite of selfish--but he had a lot of time alone, to think about stuff, and she knew he still missed home.

What if, like Cordy said, he really was planning to go? What if he really, really thought she didn't need him? And not that he'd been fired or anything, but she kind of wondered if a librarian still had a job after he'd armed all the students to kill their commencement speaker, and blown up his own library. He might have problems with immigration, Willow had said, and she'd looked worried.

It was funny--although she always thought of Giles as English--how could she not?--she forgot what that meant. It was more a quality, like saying Willow was a red-head, or Oz was a musician, or Cordy was spoiled. She forgot what it really meant, that he was from another place, and only had the right to stay here as long as the government said it was okay--and forget for a minute planting bombs (they were really quite a pair, weren't they?--he'd blown up a library, she'd burned down a gym, keep the two of them away from school property). The government didn't like it if you were a foreigner and didn't have a job.

She didn't know what his plans were, that's what it boiled down to. She hadn't asked, hadn't thought about it, hadn't--if she wanted to tell the truth--even cared.

What had that guy from the Council, Travers, said? That Giles would be dealt with, if he interfered. Well, it had been her decision to quit, but he'd backed her up. That was interfering, all right. And what better way to deal with him than forcing him to leave her? The Council hadn't thought twice about dragging Faith off to England, and she was an American citizen. With Giles, all they'd have to do was push a few papers and he'd be on the next plane out of there--and maybe that's what he wanted anyway. Maybe he was already gone, and that's why she couldn't find him. Maybe he hadn't been allowed to, or maybe he just hadn't been able to say goodbye.

She thought of him at the Prom, looking so proud of her, the proudness just shining out of him. He'd looked adorable in his tux, she had to admit, and for a minute, standing there with her Class Protector award in her hands, Giles smiling down on her, she'd thought of asking him to dance. She wished she had. It would have been nice to feel his arms around her. They hardly ever touched except in the course of training--but whenever he did, in real life, he was always so gentle, like she wasn't the Slayer, like she was something precious, or made of glass. Even when they trained, she suspected that he held back, that she always won so easily because, although he wanted her to learn, he was terrified of hurting her.

"I'll do anything to win back your trust," Giles had told her, the night of that horrible test, and he'd proved that, hadn't he? That he'd do anything for her: take care of Angel, go back to the mansion--for a minute, as they crossed the threshold, he'd had the strangest look on his face, one she'd never seen before, and didn't understand--even back her up when she told the Council to go to Hell. She didn't know much about the Council, just that they hadn't been a whole heaping lot of help, but Giles did. She guessed he knew how they'd handle the news, and it wouldn't be good, but he'd stuck with her anyway.

It was getting toward sunset, the sky all golden, red and bruised-purple. The school looked so different, the grounds like an explosion at a folding chair factory, all the windows blown out and the library just a big pile of rubble, broken concrete, jags of wood, splinters of tile. While Buffy watched, a man came poking around the edges. She pulled back into the shadow of the oak, so that he wouldn't notice her. She only saw him from behind: he was tall, dressed in jeans and a blue polo shirt, and the way he moved was powerful, confident. An unconscious part of her mind registered: nice shoulders, really nice butt--but she still didn't want to be seen, or to talk to a stranger. She wanted Giles.

After a while, the man left. By that time, night had fallen all the way.

Buffy decided she'd stop home for her jacket and supplies, then go on patrol. She didn't expect much action, not after the previous day's blowout, but it was better to be sure. She'd swing by Giles's place again; he might easily have come home in the time she'd been waiting. For sure, he was too smart to be hanging around here at night. Maybe he'd even left a message on her answering machine, to tell her where he'd be. She needed to see him.

At her house on Revello Drive, her mom still wasn't home, but then she wouldn't be, not until morning. She'd set up some sort of buying trip for the gallery after Buffy told her to get out of town. The only message on the recorder was from her dad, saying, "Oh, honey, I'm sorry--was your Graduation this weekend?" She pushed the erase button without listening to the rest of what her dad had to say, muttering, "Giles, Giles, where are you?" She called his number, got the machine and left a message--maybe he was just screening his calls.

With her jacket on and a duffel of weapons, she took off. Giles's place was dark, but she tried knocking anyway, quietly at first, then louder. Finally, loud enough to wake the dead. There still wasn't any answer.

"Fine," she muttered, and stomped away, down the stairs. She marched all around Sunnydale's twelve graveyards and didn't see a thing. Big old fat waste of time. The Bronze was closed for the next two nights, and when she stopped by Willow's house she found Oz's van parked out front, with weird sounds coming from the inside.

Buffy had to smile a little at that: the sounds weren't really so weird; she knew what they meant.

She crossed the street to Xander's, and almost knocked, but she could hear yelling, then Xander's voice sounding high and anguished. "Dad! Please, Dad!" and the noise of breaking glass. Xander came bombing out the door, right past her, not even noticing she was there.

"Xand?" Buffy called, but her friend kept going. She'd suspected, for awhile, the kind of things that went on at his house, even though Xander never talked about them. In the old days, before Oz, he'd have gone over to Willow's. He'd have gone to The Bronze, or to the library, to hang out with Giles until he fell asleep with his face in a book--she knew that, because lots of times she'd come in to report after a weird patrol and find Xander there with his head on the table, a book scooted out just beyond him, so it wouldn't get scrunched or drooled on, and a blanket draped around Xander's shoulders. Giles would take her into his office, and they'd talk quietly so as not to disturb him.

There wasn't anything else to do, and so she went home. When she woke up in the morning, her mom was there, and the house smelled of waffles.

"Good morning, sleepyhead!" Joyce called to her, with a sweet, bright mom-smile. "I can still say morning since its--" She glanced at her watch. "Five minutes 'til noon."

"When did you get in?" Buffy slid up onto one of the bar stools at the counter and her mom handed her a glass of fresh-squeezed juice.

"Just after nine. I peeked in on you, but you were still deep in dreamland." Joyce's forehead wrinkled a little. "I've just been reading in the paper. Oh, honey!"

"Can I see?" She glanced at the lead story: typical Sunnydale Gazette. It said that Mayor Richard Wilkins III had been tragically killed, along with Sunnydale High Principal Ralph Snyder and several of the student body, including Harmony Kendall, daughter of prominent local businessman Samuel Kendall, when a leaking gas pipe exploded beneath the school library. No mention of the mayor turning into a sixty-foot snake, who then ate Principal Snyder. No mention of a pitched battle, students versus vampires, or of Harmony having all the blood sucked from her body. No mention of the mild-mannered school librarian planting fertilizer bombs and blowing up his own library, thereby splattering said demon serpent to kingdom come.

"That wasn't really what happened, was it?" Joyce said, clinging to her coffee as if for warmth and comfort, instead of to drink.

Buffy shook her head, and told her. The whole truth, even the part about Angel. She had the hardest time saying what she'd done to Faith, and even then she couldn't go into the details. That was awful, and wrong. Faith was dangerous, crazy, and she had to be stopped, but not the way Buffy had done it, and not for those reasons.

Joyce got a look that was lost and sad. She kept going back and forth to the waffle-iron, making waffles and stacking them on a plate, like she wanted to fix comfort food for the world. She didn't say anything until Buffy finished.

"Poor Faith," she said then, shaking her head. "What will become of her?"

"Cordy said Wes told her they sent his boss over, from the Watchers' Council. He was nervous about it, about seeing her--'cause she's one of the bigwigs, and really tough, I guess. I felt kinda bad for him, but I'm not going back to them."

"Is that wise, Buffy? You might need..."

"I don't think they're the good guys, Mom. Giles says it's like playing chess to them, sometimes. They don't mind sacrificing a pawn. That would be me."

"I got that," Joyce answered.

"Can I actually have one of those waffles? 'Cause I'm kinda hungry, and you look like you're saving them for the starving children in India."

Joyce gave a sad little laugh and fixed one of the waffles just the way Buffy liked it when she was feeling bad, with lots of butter and maple syrup. She poured her daughter another glass of juice. "If you've had blood loss, you need to drink extra liquids. I'm going to be pushing them for the next few days, except--" Joyce blushed a little. "I have to go out of town again. Can you forgive me?"

"What, you've joined the Rosenberg Travel Club?"

Her mother looked at her, confused.

"Sorry. Bad joke. Yes, I'll be okay. Buffy's a big girl, she can take care of herself."

"I'd bring you with me, but--"

"I know, I know. Your daughter's Hellmouth girl. Honestly, Mom, don't worry. I'll be good, I'll drink my juice, I won't have any parties. Anything else?"

"Everyone's all right, aren't they? Willow, and Xander, and...umn, Mr. Giles."

"Umn, Mr. Giles is fine, Mom--at least he was last time I saw him, which was a couple days ago. You know, if you like him, why don't you just say something?"

"Of course I like him. He's a lovely man, very..."

"British."

"Well, yes, British. And...and nice."

"And not a robot," Buffy teased, "Which makes a good change for you. Maybe you two could find another police car, have a romantic weekend?"

Joyce blushed furiously. "I can't believe he told you about that!"

"He didn't. Remember that time I could read people's minds?" She leaned across the counter and tapped her index finger against her mom's forehead.

"Oh!" Joyce went even redder.

"So I made an off-handed remark to Giles and he ran into a tree. Walking, not driving, which was good. It was all pretty funny." But it wasn't, really, the more she thought about it--sure it was fun to tease Giles, and to tease her mom, but she didn't really want them getting romantic. She didn't want them together.

Because he wasn't Joyce's; he was hers. Her Watcher. Her friend. Her...

"Mr. Giles respects me," Joyce was saying, "And he really is a nice man--when he isn't being a teenaged hoodlum--but I don't think you should make too much of it."

Buffy ate some waffle, waiting for her mom to go on.

"We talked, not very long ago. Before I went out of town, in fact. I wanted to know if I should actually go, if my being here would really hamper you. From the things he said, it seemed clear that he's...ah...involved with someone else. And Buffy--" Joyce blushed again. "I'm getting involved somewhere else too."

"That's great, Mom," she said, honestly surprised. "Can I meet him? I promise not to get drastic this time, and kill him, or throw him down the stairs--unless he actually is an evil demon or something."

Joyce laughed. "I learned my lesson there. No, I think it'll be all right, and I'll tell you more when I get back."

"Ooh, mom being mysterious! Is this a good or bad sign?"

"Good, I hope." Joyce spread strawberry jam on a waffle of her own. "I hope it's very good."
* * * * *

He might, had he possessed the inclination, have resumed his attempts at restoring some order to the cartons of books that currently occupied his flat--but, except for one or two brief forays into the outside world, Giles had struggled with that task since he'd returned from the ruins of the library early the previous evening, and quite frankly, he was not only fed up with the sight of books and boxes, but his back ached badly as well. He needed to actually sleep, or to get outside of these four walls again, walk, breathe some fresh air. Wesley and Cordelia had apparently been distracted during their emptying of the stacks, and volumes had been crowded in together with no apparent relation to their original positions on the library shelves. He hadn't even begun to locate and retrieve the most crucial, so that they, at least, might come easily to hand.

Barring the continuance of that useful work, Giles considered--as he showered off the smells of bookdust and old leather--that the sensible thing really would be to go to bed. Perhaps, in fact, to his bed this time. He ought to make the effort, as Cordelia had commanded, in her peremptory way, to get in a full eight hours sleep. Or four. Or two.

Not bloody likely--he hadn't even attempted to shut his eyes the night before.

He felt a great need to talk to someone face-to-face. Willow, by preference, who generally made at least an attempt to understand what he meant to say. Where would Willow come to him now? They'd always met and talked at the library--which made him, with yet another sharp pang, miss his old home-from-home all over again. Where could he meet Willow? He couldn't go to her, and she rarely visited his flat on her own.

Besides which, Giles reminded himself, It's Willow's last night before Oz's departure.

Poor girl, she certainly didn't need to spend these last hours listening to the ramblings of a middle-aged ex-librarian.

Perhaps Xander? Giles never liked to call Xander at home. The boy's father nearly always answered, and Giles could, at no time, exchange so much as a word with the man without being seized by the most fervent desire to beat him bloody.

Buffy needed to rest--she'd told him as much herself--and he mustn't disturb her. When she was ready, she would come to him. Giles shivered lightly, remembering the touch of her hand on his thigh, how even in the midst of all that tension, loss, destruction, it had nearly undone his resolve. She would come to him. She must. And he must, in turn, remember what they were to one another, and fight to control himself. If he had feelings, they ought to remain, by necessity, secret ones.

Unable to bear the confines of his flat any longer, Giles slipped keys and a bit of money into the pockets of his new jeans--he'd quite forgotten the comfort of casual clothing, and feared he might soon succumb to the temptation to dress in such a manner on a regular basis--and went on his way.

He wandered without aim through the peaceful-seeming streets of Sunnydale. Late-afternoon light cast a golden glow upon the stucco exteriors of the houses he passed, and gave a burnished warmth to their terra cotta roofs. Small rainbows hung in the air as sprinklers sprayed lazy steamers of water over the unnaturally green lawns. The breeze smelled of cut grass and, only faintly, of smoke.

Giles hadn't meant to head towards the school again, but found he could not help himself. There the odour of burning thickened, though most of the pall he'd glimpsed the previous morning had dispersed. Torn paper and bits of rubble still littered the ground, and again he noted the bloodstains, as well as hardening pools of some repugnant substance that might well have been the last remains of Mayor Richard Wilkins III.

Giles paced around the perimeter of what had once been his library, trying to recall the location of each familiar space: his office had been here, over there the steps to the upper level, there the rare books cage where Oz spent three nights out of each month. The boy had, at times, a tendency to flirt with disaster--Giles hoped that he would observe proper precautions "on the road," as it were.

Even knowing that this second visit was even more pointless than the first, that there was no hope of restoring what had been lost, Giles could not help but experience a wave of nostalgia. So many memories, for good and ill. He needed to leave here, to be with people, as he'd originally intended, and not allow himself to become enmeshed in the past.

Turning, he caught a flash of something bright from the corner of his eye, there underneath the trees. For a moment he considered investigating, but in the end did not. He found his steps carrying him toward the hospital.

Reduced to seeking out bloody Wesley's company, old man? he thought, and shook his head. As Cordelia would no doubt say, "pathetic, much?" But Moira, perhaps, might also be there, and she was always good for a bit of conversation--a decent argument, if nothing else.

He arrived to the sound of raised voices inside the young Watcher's room--but laughter, as well. Wesley's laughter, it appeared. Giles considered, and realized that he'd never before heard the younger man laugh: the tone of it seemed to share some of the quality of Wesley's rather unnerving screams.

"...Well, of course they did!" Moira was saying. "What do you think? She'd enormous stake in it; that's what drove her mad."

Giles rapped softly on the door before entering, catching his old friend with her hands gesticulating in the air, and fire in her dark-green eyes. "Who'd an enormous stake?" he asked.

"Oh, hullo, Rupert." Moira gave him her nearly feral smile. "Do come in."

Wesley had acquired, beneath the bruises, a slightly sour look, and Giles realized that his presence, at that place and at that moment, was not exactly appreciated by the younger man. He chose to blithely ignore the fact.

"How do you feel?" he asked mildly, taking a chair on the opposite side of the bed to Moira. "I say, Wesley, you're looking a bit black-and-blue round the edges."

"Well enough," Wesley responded, a touch resentfully. Well, he'd reason enough to be resentful, but he oughtn't ever to have come to Sunnydale in the first place, as Giles felt quite sure Moira had told him in no uncertain terms.

"We've been arguing about Hamlet," Moira said. "Wesley insists, quite wrongly, that Ophelia was utterly pure and chaste, which I think is drivel. I'm of the opinion that one doesn't go mad over someone with whom one has done no more than but exchange loveletters."

"And kissed," Wesley put in. "I never said they hadn't kissed. You're a teen-aged girl. You've a mad crush on a man of--oh, let's say--thirty or so..."

Giles couldn't help but smile.

"And I don't mean that!" Wesley snapped with sudden fury. "I'm speaking of Ophelia, a fictional character, not of Miss Chase, who at any rate..." He stopped, suddenly, lowering his eyes.

"At any rate?" Giles asked.

"At any rate," Wesley said, flushing, "Doesn't much care for me."

"Wesley?" Giles realized that his tone might be construed as dangerous--he felt oddly protective of the girl. Rather foolishly, he supposed, because if any young woman could take care of herself, that young woman would be Cordelia Chase. Still, he remembered her lying in her own hospital bed, those few months before, in a room just down the corridor. Stripped of her makeup and her fashionable clothes, she'd revealed to him her true face--that of a sad, betrayed, deeply hurt girl. Was this what made Cordelia, just yesterday morning, weep against his shirt? Some bit of churlishness on Wesley's part?

"What is it that you'd like to hear?" the young Watcher responded in clipped tones. "I haven't hurt her. I doubt that anyone could."

"You're wrong about that," Giles told him, in a more neutral tone.

"You'd like me to humiliate myself, wouldn't you? What shall I say? We attempted a kiss--two kisses. They went badly. I believe Miss Chase's exact words were, 'Wesley is...yuck. He kisses like a flounder.' What is a flounder?"

"A bottom-dwelling fish," Moira supplied. "Rather like a small turbot, I believe."

"Or a largish sole," Giles added, unable to help himself.

"And am I happier knowing this?" Wesley sank back against his pillows, staring at the ceiling. "There are no ways left in which I can make a fool out of myself. I suppose she only expressed interest in me, in the first place, to get her own back from that annoying boy."

"There may have been an element of that," Giles agreed. "Xander injured her quite badly." He glanced at Moira, who was occupied in watching the two of them with her usual intensity. "And, no, I've no interest whatsoever in seeing you humiliate yourself."

Wesley muttered something under his breath.

"Sorry. Didn't quite catch that."

"I believe," Moira said, "That he was stating something along the lines of 'you could've fooled me.' Much more properly, of course. This is our Wesley, after all." She ran her hand down the younger man's bare forearm, a soft, stroking caress. Giles felt his own skin tingle in response, knowing exactly how such a touch felt.

Wesley glared at the ceiling quite fiercely.

"It's clear to me that you need your rest, love," Moira told him. "I'll be back tomorrow, shall I?"

"If you like," Wesley muttered.

Moira rose, her hand still curled lightly around Wesley's, then bent to bestow upon him a deep but gentle kiss. "Hmn," she said, straightening. "Nothing even remotely fishy. Goodnight, dearest. Pleasant dreams."

Wesley had flushed quite dark, and his expression, to Giles's eyes, seemed to combine shame, anger and desire in equal parts. Giles felt sorry for him, and hoped that this was not one of Moira's ways of gaining the upper hand, but he waited until they'd stepped outside the door before saying a word.

"He's vulnerable, Em. Perhaps you ought to..."

His friend shot him a look. "Advice from the world's greatest expert on love?"

"Yes, yes, I know. I'm utterly miserable at it, aren't I?" Together, they made their way onto the crowded lift.

Moira never seemed to mind what she said, or where she said it. "Did you ever love me, Rupert?"

"Em, I do love you. Only..."

"I don't mean a friend's love, Rupert," she said thoughtfully. "I meant, what you felt for Randall. What you feel for Buffy now."

Though they hadn't yet reached the lobby level, quite a few of their fellow riders disembarked upon the opening of the doors.

"Perhaps...er...later?" Giles suggested.

"That's answer enough. If it's any consolation to your tender conscience, I never loved you either--in that way. I quite like Wesley, though. I rather suspect there's a fine man lurking in there somewhere, if I can chip off that brittle shell."

"I suspect you may be right," Giles agreed, shuddering lightly as Moira curled her fingers round his arm. Something about his friend made her slightest touch erotic--perhaps that was a bit of the strangeness and the magic passed down along her own family line, as a darker magic and an attractiveness to the wild, fearful things of the world traveled along his own. If Camelot had ever existed, it was Moira's ancestress, the stories said, who caused its fall.

"He's safer than you, Rupert, at any rate," she said, as if reading his thoughts--and to his great surprise. He'd never thought of Moira as a woman who craved safely, in love or anything else. "Can I come to your flat? Will you cook for me?"

Giles smiled, laughing a little. "Please, do invite yourself, Em--though I'll warn you: there's not a thing fit to eat in the house."

"That," she said, "Can be remedied."

It was getting ridiculous, Buffy decided. She and Willow had gone to visit Wesley at the hospital, and found him asleep. He'd slept the whole time they were there, in fact, which pretty much null and voided their act of kindness. She'd left increasingly cranky messages on Giles's answering machine, and circled by his place three times, each time finding him not home.

What if she'd had an emergency? How serious was Giles, really, about her not requiring a Watcher? She needed someone to read the stuffy books, and to hit until he fell down. She needed...she needed Giles, her Giles, just to be there. She decided to swing by his place one last time, and after that, he was on her shit list, he could come to her.

When Buffy got to Giles's apartment, there was a lady there, probably the same lady Cordelia had talked about, and Buffy knew at once where she had to be from--no one could be that tailored and not be with the Watcher's Council. She glanced at Giles's face, searching for signs of anger or tension, but there weren't any, not even that blanked-out expression he sometimes got when he was mad and holding it in. The apartment smelled good, like someone with some talent in that area had been cooking, and Giles looked close to relaxed, nearly happy.

That, in turn, made her tense. There was even music playing in the background, sophisticated, old-people music, the kind she'd had to listen to in Music Appreciation Class--Gershwin, or Cole Porter, one of those dead guys.

"I'm in the mood for love," sang someone who might have been Ella Fitzgerald.

Simply because you're near me.
And, because you're near me
I'm in the mood for love...

Yeah, that was how Giles looked. Maybe in the mood for something. She remembered what her mom had told her. Maybe she'd interrupted a little one-on-one between him and the Watcher-lady. Who he'd kissed, Cordy had said, and maybe even touched someplace Giles didn't have any business touching anyone.

Buffy flounced into the room, knowing she was acting like a child, and hating herself for it, but unable to fight down the weirdest feeling. She couldn't give the feeling a name, but if she thought about it at all, it almost felt like jealousy.

What is she doing here, Buffy thought. And why's Giles looking like the cat that ate the canary? She couldn't believe she'd thought that--the phrase was one of those hokey sayings her mom used, and it always made her picture Sylvester and Tweety. If Sylvester ever got to eat Tweety, that was.

Giles's place looked even darker than usual, and Buffy realized that was because of the nine hundred boxes stacked up against the back wall. The furniture had been moved around to accommodate the mountain of cartons, but all his stuff was still there, so it wasn't like he was moving, the boxes were probably just full of the anti-hell-sucking books that used to live in the library. Either Giles was going to have to get a new apartment, one with a lot more bookshelves, or come up with some other place to put them.

She glanced back at him and the Watcher-lady. The woman was tall--with her not-so-high heels on, only an inch of so shorter than Giles--which meant both of them loomed over Buffy herself. She had auburn hair, a darker shade than Will's, and green eyes, darker than Giles's, almost an emeraldy color. She was old--okay, not old old, but about Giles's age and, Buffy had to admit, pretty. Really, really pretty, in a Greek statue, don't-mess-with-me kind of way. Standing shoulder to shoulder, looking so comfortable together, they made what her mom would call an "attractive couple."

She hated the thought, hated it so much the first thing that came out of her mouth was totally rude. "What do you want here?"

Instead of taking offense, the Watcher-lady chuckled, and threw Giles an amused glance. At least not another Gwendolyn Post, then--not if she knew how to laugh. Giles looked a little embarrassed on Buffy's behalf.

"Moira," he said, letting good manners prevail, "I'd like you to meet Buffy Summers, the Slayer."

My Slayer, he used to say, Buffy thought. He didn't now. He was going to leave her, she knew he was. Maybe he and the Watcher-lady really were something coupley and he was going to go back to England with her. She almost missed Giles's next words.

"Buffy, this is Moira Bannister-St. Ives, Lady LeFaye."

"LeFaye? Like in Merlin?" Buffy said.

"It's a film they had, last year I think," Giles supplied. "With...er...Miranda Richardson. Perhaps."

The Watcher-lady laughed again. "You have to give him credit for that one, Buffy. I believe you and your friends have been a good influence."

Giles blushed. "Or a bad one."

The lady, Moira, touched his cheek, making his blush deepen. He looked cute that way, and Buffy realized that was she was feeling was definite jealousy. Definitely. She blushed too.

"Look, Rupert--" Moira picked up a small black bag. "I'm going to slip into something more comfortable." She had a low, sexy voice, that made the statement sound...well, exactly what it sounded like. "Then we'd best be off, I suppose?"

"Of course." He indicated the stairs. "Up there."

The Watcher-lady went. She moved fast; she obviously had a lot of energy.

Buffy sank down on the couch, feeling drained. She hoped the mountain of boxes wouldn't tumble down on her head. "I thought we..."

Giles sat beside her, only not exactly beside her. On the other end of the couch, and it was a fairly long couch. "Moira's going out with you tonight. I'd like very much for you to talk to her. Will you, as a favor to me?"

"Favor. Sure." Buffy stole a glance his way. Giles was leaning toward her, looking serious, and sweet. He really wanted this, whatever it meant. For some reason, that made her mad. "I told you I was through with the Council. I thought you backed me up on that--or was that just to piss Wesley off?"

"No," Giles answered softly, pulling back into his own corner. "I'll support you in all your decisions. Haven't I proven that to you yet?"

Giles went to the mansion. He took care of Angel. Where do you get off treating him this way? said her voice of reason, but she'd lost her ability to listen.

"Well, I thought so--but it's not like you haven't fooled me before."

Giles jerked as if he'd gotten an electric shock.

"Buffy," the Watcher-lady said, in a voice that made Buffy jerk too. She didn't even yell, but it was like being hit with a whip. Moira rested her hand lightly on Giles's shoulder. "I'll see you soon, Rupert, yes?"

He glanced up at her, another of his blank looks on his face, the one he used when he was hiding something that hurt. "Yes. Lovely." He looked at Buffy. "Be careful. And don't worry about Moira. She's able to handle herself." He walked them to the door.

"So, Mo--" Buffy said, as the door closed behind them. "You here to talk me back into the fold? 'Cause if you are, you're wasting your breath."

"Good Heavens, no. Although it may have dreadful consequences, it's clearly a choice that Helena and I ought to have made."

"Helena being?"

"My Slayer, now deceased." The Watcher-lady put her hand up to her neck, like it was a nervous habit. God knew, she had a big-ass scar there, one that had been hidden by the high collar of the tailored blouse she'd been dressed in before, but not by the tank top and hooded sweat-jacket she wore to go patrolling.

Buffy had a hard time tearing her eyes away. Moira looked like something had pretty much shredded her throat, and Buffy couldn't figure out how the woman had managed to survive, so instead of wondering, she turned on the juice, mostly just to see if the Watcher-lady could keep up. She did, and to Buffy's barely-concealed annoyance, seemed amused by it all.

"Why don't we slow down?" Moira suggested at last, after they'd done about five miles. She said it calmly, not even breathing hard.

"Had enough?" Buffy wanted her to breathe hard, wanted her to suffer.

"Would you like to see my Olympic medals? I've a pretty silver one from the '72 and a prettier gold from the '76. I've kept in training as best I could, since."

Despite herself, Buffy's interest was piqued. "What in?"

"Modern Pentathlon. That's the one in which one swims, runs, rides, fences and shoots. One might have thought I watched an excess of Errol Flynn films in my youth," Moira said, with a grin. "Oddly, when combined with a solid knowledge of Latin and Greek, it's all fairly useful to one's life as a Watcher."

"I'm pretty transparent, aren't I?"

"Mmn, fairly. But my Helena did nearly the same thing when first we met, so let's just call it a rite of proving oneself." Moira smiled at her, and Buffy found herself smiling back without meaning to--the lady had a magnetic personality. If they--the Council--had sent her over instead of Wussley, Buffy guessed that she'd have had problems holding her own--or maybe she'd still be working for them.

Moira seemed to read her mind. "Were you very cruel to poor Wes?"

"Me? Nah." Buffy thought for a moment. "Nah."

The Watcher shot her a look.

"Okay, yeah. Pretty cruel. Mostly in the joking department, as in he doesn't know how to take one."

"No, he doesn't."

"Giles does."

"Mmn. Perhaps."

"What does that mean?" Buffy glared at her.

"A joke meant seriously ceases to be a joke. A random comment, made in passing, can wound as well as the best-aimed arrow."

"What is this, Kung Fu, The Legend Continues? What do you know about anything, Mo?"

"Look out!"

Buffy whirled. She'd let three vamps sneak up nearly behind her, and one of them was the size of a linebacker. Without thinking, she went into action--dislocated the first one's knee, punched his jaw, staked him. The second one gave her more trouble. He was tall and thin, with a longer reach than her own, and she couldn't get close enough to his heart. Just when she'd finally wore him down to that point, a ton of dust showered down on her. Coughing, she finished her opponent quickly.

"I wasn't going to interfere," Moira said, tucking a stake into the thigh pocket of her cargo pants, "But you seemed occupied."

"You have this whole little Emma Peel vibe going on here, don't you?" Buffy leaned over, trying to shake the dust out of her hair. "Yuck. I hate this."

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah, fine. All in a night's work, yadda yadda." She glanced at the Watcher-lady. Moira looked pale, fine little tremors running up her arms and along her shoulders. She wasn't like Wes, the way he'd get so scared it looked like he was going to pee himself. This was something different, something darker, that she didn't understand. It came to her suddenly, in a flash of rare insight: This is what Giles would be like, if anything happened to me. Moira hadn't been afraid of the vamps, she'd been afraid for Buffy herself.

"Hey," she said, with unexpected gentleness, touched by the Watcher's concern. "Let's sit down a minute, huh? Catch our breath?" Buffy put her hand on Moira's back, feeling the older woman shake. "It's okay," she told her. "I'm fine. I'm fine."

Since they'd reached the park, they took seats on the roundabout, a steel handhold between them. There were still dirty globs of wax on the platform, Buffy noticed, left over from the remembrance candles.

After a while, and a lot of deep breathing, the Watcher got her shakes under control. "Is this where your mother discovered the Hansel-and-Gretel demon?" she asked.

"Huh? Oh, yeah, that was here. How'd you know?"

Moira shot her a look; she seemed to have a quite a repetoire of them, the same way Giles did.

"Oh, duh. Giles's reports."

"One wonders--after this year--what the town, collectively, will tell itself?"

"I guess the same things it has all along. You ever been to a Hellmouth before?"

"I've been to a town entirely taken over by vampires. Potterville, it was called." The Watcher unzipped and shrugged out of her jacket, stretching up her long, muscled arms. Buffy blinked: more serious scar tissue there. She could see why Moira wore long sleeves and high collars.

"What happened?" Without meaning to, Buffy put her fingers on one of the worst places, four twisted pits sunk half an inch deep into the woman's forearm.

"That? Oh, teeth." Moira shrugged. "It doesn't actually hurt anymore."

"What does hurt?"

"This one." The older woman slapped a place on her hip. "Your old friend Spike." She made a clicking sound with her tongue. "Front to back, right on through."

"What?"

"A spike. A big nail. Ripped up my insides, wreaked havoc with the hip joint. Hurts like hell in cold weather." Moira shrugged again. "One gets used to it."

"Really, I meant, what happened in Potterville?"

"Something right up your alley: there were fifteen live people left. We got them out of town, then blew up the old fish-processing factory where the vampires slept. Adieu Potterville." The Watcher got quiet, rubbing the scars on her neck.

"That isn't all, though, right?"

"No," Moira said at last. "Someone had to stay with the charges, to be sure. It was meant to be me."

"But it wasn't."

"No."

"What happened?"

"You were called, Buffy. I was sent home." Moira started rubbing her hands down the thighs of her pants, like there was something nasty on them that she couldn't get clean. "Helena wasn't like you. She was clever, brave, resourceful in her way--but in the end, she still needed her Watcher. She couldn't think of another way."

"I still need my Watcher too," Buffy said. "But you've come to take him."

"Yes," the older woman answered.

"Does he want to go?"

"Yes, I think he wants it very much. I've never seen him so low."

"Well, he seems fine to me," Buffy muttered, jumping off the roundabout so hard that it rotated once, violently. "But what would I know?"

"You don't know him very well," Moira told her.

"Well, I guess that's true. He never mentioned you anyway. But the two of you probably...uh...started shagging like bunnies the minute you hit town. Don't think I didn't notice..." Buffy ground to a halt at the look of total confusion on the Watcher's face. "What?"

"Excuse me, Buffy, but why should you think I'd be having--ah, let's say relations with Wesley Wyndham-Price? Besides which, he's still in a very tender state, both physically and emotionally."

"Uh...Wesley?"

"Your Watcher. Well-groomed chap, bit of a prig, tendency to bleat under pressure?"

"Wesley."

"I was his trainer--what we call a Handler. I've come to look out for him while he's recovering, and then we'll see Faith back to England, where she will be put in care. Wesley will have enough hardships to face back home, poor lad."

"But you and Giles..."

"Ah." Realization dawned. "You thought..."

"You two seemed awfully comfy."

"Yes, we are. Were, many years ago, if you mean it that way. You're jealous, love, aren't you?"

"Not me. Just..." Buffy looked for something in the older woman's face, but didn't see it. What she saw instead bordered on sadness mixed with amusement. "Okay, let's say protective."

"I don't believe protective's what he needs."

"Do you love him?"

Moira smiled. "With the better part of my heart. Still sure it isn't jealousy?"

"That's my story and I'm sticking to it," Buffy answered, but she did feel jealous, so much it almost made her feel sick to her stomach. Moira was cool, she had to admit. And smart. And English. And the right age. Okay, so the scar tissue was a minus, but she suspected that maybe Giles had some scar tissue of his own, especially after last year, after Angel... Angelus...

Buffy found herself rubbing her own neck, at the spot where Angel had drunk from her, and all of a sudden she launched into telling this Watchers' Council lady, this stranger, all about herself and Angel, right up to how scary and horrible it had been, to have him take from her that way, and how it had killed a lot of what was between them, put a stake in the heart of her love--she'd seen him, soul or not, as he really was.

"The getting of wisdom's often a painful thing," Moira said, taking Buffy in her arms and stroking her hair. Not like a mom--for someone her age, Moira was probably the least-Momish person she'd ever met. Maybe like a big sister, or a friend, or maybe just like a Watcher, the kind of Watcher she'd been to her Slayer, Helena. She could sense that it did something to the older woman, just to hold a Slayer in her arms again.

"Aren't you going to give me the Council party line?" Buffy said at last, pulling away, and accepting the clean white handkerchief Moira handed her. "And don't you people believe in Kleenex--or contact lenses?"

"One must never wear contact lenses on patrol," the Watcher said.

"Not in the dress code?"

"Not practical. Even in normal life, the slightest bit of grit on a lens leaves one blind and in pain. Imagine, if you will, that great gout of dust that results from a staking."

"Wow, I never thought of it that way. I thought it was just a stuffy Watcher thing." Buffy shook her head. "Remind me to apologize to Giles for teasing him. He could have said."

"There you are," Moira answered, in a tone that meant, You know he wouldn't, don't you?

They walked the whole circuit of the twelve cemeteries, talking softly all the time, and didn't see another vamp. Around midnight Buffy escorted Moira to the Holiday Inn, and they hugged once more before parting. Despite what the older woman said, and didn't say, Buffy found herself more convinced than ever that Giles must want to go home. She'd always thought of the Scooby Gang as his only friends, and believed he didn't mind living in Sunnydale because--their nice weather aside, which he hated--all the people he loved most were there. Now she knew he had people who cared about just as much back in England--not just Moira, but others, too. That he'd had a job that didn't suck with the British Museum, one he could go back to any time, that he'd had a nicer apartment, and a decent car. Maybe even--and this part was fuzzy, Moira hadn't talked right to the point--he maybe even had a son back home?

It all made her dizzy. She'd never thought of Giles as a guy with a past, at least not one separate from the Watchers, or the Eyghon and Ethan crap. She'd never thought of him having family, friends, stuff he liked to do. Stuff he'd given up to be with her. She bugged him, now and then about having hobbies, getting a life, but the fact was he'd had a life, a quiet one, but pretty nice, until her. And she'd never seen it. She'd told herself she'd been preserving his privacy, but that wasn't true--she'd hardly even seen him as a person at all. He was there for her, period. Not vice-versa. She wasn't supposed to have to think of him a real person, with feelings of his own. A person that she'd pretty much taken for granted would be at her beck and call.

Buffy blushed, thinking about it--and thinking, too, about how she and Willow could be best friends but still be so different. Will didn't say much, and sometimes she got a little impatient with how cautious Giles was about the magic stuff, but she was always stopping by the library. Not only about magic or Slayage issues or to check out books. Just to talk, because Giles was someone she liked and valued. Sometimes she brought him little presents, nothing major, just thoughtful things. A new type of tea she'd had a feeling he'd like, or a banana, or the heart-shaped sucker on Valentine's day. Even though she was Jewish, Will had decorated the library at Christmastime, because she knew Giles wouldn't do it for himself, and she didn't like thinking of him alone, with none of the festive stuff that other people got. Will always remembered his birthday, which she'd snooped and figured out was exactly a month after Buffy's own, but Buffy mostly forgot until after the fact, and then was too embarrassed to do or say anything. Even Xander remembered, and would leave something silly to mark the occasion, like a jelly donut with a candle in it, or that annoying card that played Happy Birthday every single time you walked by it.

Dammit, what was wrong with her? She realized she'd stopped walking. Just in front of her, thin lines of light showed around heavy curtains. Giles's curtains. Giles's place. Without letting herself stop to think, she circled around to the front of his building, climbed the stairs and knocked.

"Just a minute," she heard him call softly, then the door opened, and he looked down into her eyes. "Buffy," he said, sounding surprised.

"Yeah, it's me."

Giles had the TV remote in one hand, and in the distance Buffy could hear a woman's voice, sounding weird and scary. Giles glanced behind him almost guiltily, pointed the remote, and shut the sound off.

"I'm sorry." Giles shook his head, not looking relaxed anymore. Not even close. "Where are my manners? Please come inside."

"It's late," she answered. "I shouldn't..."

"Nonsense, Buffy." He opened the door wider. "I insist. Please come in."

Buffy stepped across the threshold, wondering why this place, that had always--even after the demon Eyghon, even after Jenny Calendar's death--seemed so quiet, safe and Gilesish, should suddenly feel like dangerous ground.

* * * * *

"So, Giles," Buffy said, standing just inside the doorway as he shut the door behind her. A sudden wave of shyness washed over her, something she hadn't experienced since the first time she'd come back to him after running away.

Knocking on his door that night had been one of the hardest things she'd ever done. She'd rather have gone off and staked a hundred vamps instead, but when she looked up into his face, all she'd seen was tenderness and understanding. She'd wanted to cry with sheer relief, and Giles--he hid stuff well, and he hadn't let anything show in front of the others--but when he'd gone into the kitchen and taken a little too long making tea, it came to her that he wasn't really waiting for the tea leaves to steep, he was standing behind the cupboards trying to suck back his own tears. They were all gone by the time he'd returned, but she could tell. Funny thing was, when she took time to look, she could always tell.

"Buffy," he said, in a soft voice, welcoming, but giving nothing away. "I didn't expect you. Everything went well with your patrol?"

"Two little ones for the Slayer, one great big one for the Watcher. She's pretty amazing, your friend."

Giles stepped away from the door. She realized, all at once, how he was dressed: button-fly Levis, a blue polo shirt, boots. Of course, he'd been trying to deal with the boxes, and even Giles would hardly do that in a suit and tie--but the knowledge suddenly hit her that it had been him she'd seen, at the ruins of the library, yesterday and today. She'd been waiting for Giles, and seen what she thought was a stranger, and...ohmigod...checked him out. Buffy put hand over her mouth, trying to hold back a giggle. She'd checked out her Watcher, just like a guy.

He looked alarmed. "Buffy, are you all right?"

"Yeah. Thank you for asking. I'm fine."

"Would you like to--" He waved a hand, vaguely, toward the couch, backed up against its looming cliff of boxes. "Does your mother know where you are?"

"Mom's out of town again. And, umn, I'm not sleepy. But maybe you are. So I should go. I guess." But instead she came all the way inside and sat cross-legged on his sofa. "You know, we are in California. If there's so much as a little bitty earthquake, anyone sitting here would be toast."

"Toast?" Giles wondered, sitting next to her. Not way over at the other end, as he had earlier when Moira was there, but right up close, so that when she moved even slightly, her knee brushed his thigh.

"You know: 'Ex-librarian and Recent SHS Grad Found Crushed. Coroner says, 'I blame the occult.'"

Giles pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

"You are tired," Buffy said. "I should go."

"No, not at all. In fact," he continued, in a sudden burst of chattiness, "I'm a little keyed up. Everything's starting to sink in, I suppose, but I feel, at times, that I've nearly retreated to my own version of 'Fire bad, tree pretty.' You, however, seem to be making progress."

"I'm doing okay. I slept, I talked to Will. I had breakfast with the guys at four p.m. I slept more, ate waffles, went looking for you."

He smiled a little. "And found me. Here."

"After a lot of looking, Mister. And what? You don't return my calls?"

He shrugged. "I must confess: I've been remiss in checking the machine."

"No kidding. Actually, I saw you at the library yesterday--and this afternoon, I just didn't know it." She touched his denim-clad leg, letting her hand rest there, halfway up his thigh. "Kind of a different look for you, Giles."

Giles stared down at her hand, but she didn't move it. "Yes. Well."

"I have to tell you, I had a visit from the big green-eyed monster tonight."

"Really?" He sat up straighter. "Can you describe..." His voice trailed away. "Again, too long on the Hellmouth. This would be a metaphorical monster, wouldn't it? Also known as...er...jealousy?" Giles shifted away from her touch. "So, Angel's returned after all."

"God, I hope not. `Cause I sure don't want to go through yet another episode of My So-called Angsty Life."

Giles's eyes flashed at her--green, but in no way monstrous. He got what she was trying to say, all right, but didn't trust that he got it. Buffy decided to back off for a little, move onto another topic.

"So, you've known her a long time? Moira, I mean."

"Nearly all my life. Since we were--ah--younger than you."

Ouch. She didn't want him thinking about her age. "I thought you went to one of those all-guy boarding school places."

"And so I did."

"Then when did you meet?"

"Buffy." He turned to her, a slight flash of something like irritation in his eyes. "It's rather personal."

"Oh, great, so it's all right for you to know every little thing about my life, but every time I want to know the smallest bit about you, it's personal? What's next, break out the scotch? Lost weekend? Can I join you?"

Giles rose and walked away from her, looking like he would have gone straight to the window if a dozen or so boxes hadn't been in the way. Instead he prowled around the perimeter of the room, looking more like Ripper than Rupert, but not exactly like either. "When you ran away, last summer, Buffy," he said at last, in his measured, familiar Giles tone, "I worried for you terribly, because I know first-hand what can happen to children on the streets. Children alone are so vulnerable, not only physically--your Slayer abilities would protect you from that--but emotionally, spiritually, if you will. Children are meant to have people who love them, to have family and friends. All the things I was ordered to deny you, but could not. Alone, one develops an armor, a shell, a hardness that lets nothing real out, and nothing in."

First-hand? Buffy wasn't sure what he was talking about, and couldn't think what to say, but at last she got up and put the kettle on for tea. Giles glanced at her, intensely, one of his unreadable looks.

"Ah, yes, the universal remedy." He waited until the tea was brewing to continue. "I told you--oh, years ago now--of my father's tiresome speech, how I'd wanted, at ten years of age, to be a fighter pilot, or a grocer?"

"But he said you had to be a Watcher instead." Buffy grinned. "Though I can just see you, cross-referencing the groceries." She put the teapot with two cups on a tray, and added a little pitcher of milk. She was learning to drink hers without sugar, because Giles grimaced every time she spooned it in. Sweet tea gave him a wiggins.

"Yes, I was to be a Watcher." He used his feet to shove a box or two aside, and made it to the window after all. "But my father barely lived six months beyond that day. He died trying to protect his Slayer, during Cruciamentum, and my sisters--um--died as well. My mother remarried shortly after." Giles pulled open the heavy curtains, leaning his hands against the glass. Buffy could see him reflected darkly on the pane. "With my fa