After his former Handler had gone, Wesley Wyndham-Price sat alone in the driver's seat of his once-pristine van, in the center of the half-empty Holiday Inn carpark, and moaned.

His neck hurt, his ribs hurt, his leg hurt--but those were nothing compared to the deeper pain that seemed to start in the pit of his stomach and angle upward into his heart. He'd let Moira go. He'd let her squeeze his hand, kiss his cheek like a sister, or an aunt, and go.

Lightning had flashed, illuminating Moira's face only for an instant, lighting her eyes to the most amazing colour. He'd almost lost her tonight. The blind horror of that had whetted his courage to the point that he wasn't sure he would ever be frightened again.

Half an hour before, kind little Willow had murmured something about him having proven himself. She'd said, encouragingly, that she thought he was ready to be a Watcher now. The truth was, though, that Wesley hadn't thought anything like a Watcher during that moment in which he'd forced the stake to penetrate the heart of the vampire who'd once been Helena Penglis, Moira's Slayer. He'd thought instead of Moira's green eyes, and the way her lips curled when she smiled, and the way he'd shivered when she'd touched his chest beside a river in the Cotswolds.

Wesley had once believed that he didn't, couldn't, understand Mr. Giles. Rupert, that was. He hadn't been able to fathom the way in which the older Watcher had let his emotions become so very tangled up with his duties. Now Wesley felt that he understood Rupert perfectly.

Despite his own unmannerly, often despicable behavior--Council-ordered--toward his predecessor, Wesley had come to admire the older man with something approaching hero-worship, and to know that he could never, not in a million years, replace him. He'd come to understand, as Rupert did, that despite all one was taught at the Compound--to banish feeling in favour of logic and emotionless, rational thought--it was actually emotion that gave one strength.

He'd been too cowardly to stake vampires for the cause, for the good of the world--but he could Slay a thousand of them for Moira, for Moira's sake, because Moira was in the world.

How could she have been so willing to leave him here alone? Had she been told about Cordelia--Miss Chase--and thought he didn't care?

Wesley gave another moan and let his head fall forward onto the steering wheel. Lightning flashed again, three rapid strikes. His van was the tallest thing in the carpark. Perhaps he'd be struck--or was the rubber in the tyres meant to insulate one? He remembered something of the sort, but found he didn't care. Perhaps Moira would come out in the morning to find his well- crisped corpse frozen within the pitiful remnants of the vehicle.

Lord, take me now. That had been one of Maria Del Ciello's sayings, whenever faced with something of a particularly unpleasant nature, and like most everything else she said, it had annoyed him. Now, Wesley found, he echoed the sentiment.

And Miss Del Ciello, the old thorn in his side, was dead. A vampire. His throat stung where she'd pierced his skin with her fangs, where she'd drunk from him. He wondered why she hadn't drained him entirely? Some vestige of feeling?

Wesley didn't know. He knew nothing. Why wouldn't that blasted lightning do as he asked, and strike him dead?

Rain began to pelt the roof. Sheets of it. Oceans. As Rupert would most likely say, "Bloody marvelous." He wouldn't be able to see to drive home, even if he wanted to. He was stuck here until the bleeding weather let up.

For a moment, Wesley considered having a lie-down in the back and sleeping out the storm--but he'd never not slept in a proper bed, with sheets, and the very thought distressed him. Besides which, the carpeting had been soaked with Rupert's blood, and even though he'd cleaned and cleaned, the idea of lying in that stain made him shudder.

The thought of Rupert troubled him. The older man hadn't seemed very well when Wesley let him out at Buffy's house. After Moira's spells wore off, he'd be less well still. Perhaps, Wesley considered, he ought to check on the two of them. Despite all Buffy's strength and courage, she was still very young, and it might be a bit much for her to handle.

Yes, that would be the thing, once this bloody rain let up. A quick drive-by, only to make sure, and then...

Wesley started violently, uttering a squawk of pain, as a hand drummed with great force against the passenger-side window. Through the rain-blurred glass, he saw a face--someone tall, long dark hair. Most likely Maria, come to finish him off. He held a large silver cross to the glass, then startled again as the door opened, seemingly on its own.

"It shows commendable attention to the rules of safety that you've locked your doors, Wesley," Moira said to him, sliding into the van. She tucked the spare key, that he himself had given her, into a side pocket of her carryall. "But I had to come in. I was quite afraid you'd fallen asleep behind the wheel, and that I'd melt away before I was able to wake you. My God, what a storm!"

"Your...er...Your Ladyship." The excess of his emotion robbed everything from his voice, making it, to Wesley's own ears, sound cold and distant. He found that he was still clutching the cross to his chest, as if for divine protection.

For a moment, Moira's confidence faltered. A vulnerable look came over her face, that he'd rarely seen before. She glanced down at the small case held in one hand. "Perhaps I've..." She began in a soft, uncertain tone. "Perhaps I've miscalculated."

Wesley raised a hand to her sodden hair. She'd put on a Burberry Mackintosh over her clothes, and water streamed from it, adding yet another stain to the upholstery. Moira could stain his upholstery in whatever way she liked...God, had he truly meant that the way it sounded? Quite revolting to even think it. Worthy of Xander.

She'd come back, she'd come back to him!

"Your Ladyship," Wesley tried again. "Was there something you'd forgotten?" Oh, God, God, what had he said? What sort of bloody fool was he? He needed a Cyrano to pen for him all the things he wanted, and needed, to tell her. Was there something she'd forgotten? Good Lord.

Moira gazed at him, an odd light glinting in her eyes. "Actually, yes, Wesley. I have forgotten something."

"In the back, do you think? I could help you search--"

'No, love, not in the back. Up here." With exquisite gentleness, her hand touched the nape of his neck, her thumb moving softly against his hairline. Moira bent toward him, pulling him nearer to her. Despite the night's efforts, she smelled enchanting, and Wesley didn't much care if that was magic, as she'd said, or only her essential self.

He knew Moira would never hurt, or use him. He knew she felt her own sort of pain, and ought not to be alone. Wesley brushed his cheek against her damp one, then kissed her in the hollow beneath one high cheekbone. She'd worn no makeup, and the taste of her was indescribable, sweet and salty and delicious. Her skin smelled like some equally heady spice, one he could not put a name to.

Wesley's lips found hers. Moira's felt slightly cool, a result of the weather. They parted, and his tongue slipped just a little into that warm hollow, then deeper, tasting and exploring her. Without his conscious control, his hands moved inside the lapels of her coat, finding the tiny pearl buttons that held shut her body-hugging silk cardigan.

Moira pulled back a little, her eyes catching his, and for a moment Wesley almost thought he'd displeased her, but then her hand moved to his thigh, stroking him. Her fingertips ran ever-so-lightly over the zip of his trousers, feeling the swelling where he'd already, almost painfully, begun to erect. He bent down, kissing the upper curve of her breast, now revealed, then glanced up at her face again. Moira had worn a brassiere with a front closure, but his hands shook too badly to work the clasp. Her fingers followed his, the garment opened, and he looked down at her once more, her skin so fair in the darkness it was nearly a source of light in itself. The rain beat and beat around them.

"Wesley," Moira said softly. "Please don't take my words amiss, but have you done this before?"

Ashamed, he shook his head. He hadn't. Not with the village girls of Henton, who had teased and laughed at him. Certainly not with the jaded debutantes his mother threw in his direction. Not even at school, or at Oxford, or with the beautiful and confident Miss Chase, after whom, he must confess, he'd quite lusted, though in the end he hadn't even managed to kiss her with any sort of aplomb. Thirty-two years old, and a virgin.

"Let's slip into the back, shall we?" Moira seemed content to take the lead, as she always had-- and he was quite content to follow her direction. She moved between the seats, shedding her Burberry as she went, drawing him with her. Wesley moved awkwardly, but the pain felt far less now, perhaps overwhelmed by his excitement.

They sat on the first of the bench seats, turned toward one another, the noise of the storm and the deluge granting them perfect privacy. Moira lifted his hand, kissing the palm, then placed it upon her breast. Wesley squeezed softly, experimentally, feeling the weight of it, and the wonderful, yielding firmness. Without even needing to be told, he lowered his mouth to the other, running his tongue lightly round the nipple. It tasted different, a smokier flavour, exquisitely pleasant. It delighted him that Moira shivered with pleasure. She reached down and opened his trousers, her fingers resting, just lightly, against him. He pulled her nipple into his mouth, running the surface of his tongue against her puckered skin.

Moira's fingers left him, moving upward, rubbing his chest through his shirt, her thumb circling over one of his own nipples. She raised his head with her other hand, though he didn't want to release her. Moira's eyes met his again, and she said, very quietly, "Wesley, I want to take care of you." Then, with a touch more humour. "You will probably find it rather shocking."

He couldn't speak, and swallowed convulsively as her hands worked his buttons, slid his braces down from his shoulders, divested him of shirt and undervest. Wesley shivered violently, though the inside of the van wasn't cold, or not particularly. She made him rise up a little from the seat as she took down his pants and trousers, then knelt between his knees, her hands running up and down his thighs until he arose to painful hardness.

Moira studied his body, looking nearly detatched, as if she was studying a sculpture or a painting. Her scrutiny unnerved and excited him all at once. He couldn't tell what she would do next.

"I...er...ah..." He said, and other foolish sounds, but Moira only smiled sweetly. She leaned forward, pressing his penis against the bare flesh of her abdomen. She first licked one of his nipples, then bit it lightly, her hands still rubbing at his thighs. Wesley nearly climaxed then and there, but Moira sensed his nearness, and reached over to grasp him firmly, no longer touching anywhere else, as she gave him the chance to recover himself.

She wore a sarong-skirt in a lovely blue-green pattern, and when she rose its folds parted over her thigh, revealing one shapely leg almost in its entirety. Still holding him, standing, stooped over a little so as not to knock her head on the van's ceiling, Moira released the knot that held the sarong about her hips. The light fabric fluttered downward. With a quick, careless gesture, she removed her silk knickers, kicking them away into a corner. She'd such marvelous long legs, the shape of them perfectly defined with muscle.

"I want to touch," he told her hoarsely. "I want to touch you."

Moira rested one knee on the seat beside him, guiding his hand past the crisp curls of her hair, toward her center, which was hot and moist, folded and complicated--not at all what he'd expected. He nearly cried out when his fingertips slipped inside her. There was meant to be a place, he knew, that one touched to cause excitement. One never encountered enough of these things in Ovid, and the rest of his reading, from childhood, had primarily been concerned with demons. Wesley felt hideously naive, and dreadfully foolish.

Entirely by accident, his questing fingers encountered a spot that made Moira gasp--and not as if he'd caused her discomfort. He'd been touching very lightly, half afraid, and when he touched again she thrust against his hand, her heat and her moistness increasing. He began to rub the spot with the same light pressure, his fingers wet with her own...what was the word? He couldn't think of anything that didn't sound rather disturbing. Dampness. Secretions. They sounded horrid, but it wasn't horrid, it was lovely, and exciting. Terribly exciting.

Nectar, he decided, rubbing his other hand over the firm curve of her buttock, down her thigh, Moira breathing in short, hard gasps above him, her head thrown back. All of a sudden her entire body went rigid, and Wesley could feel the inside of her pulse against his fingers. She pressed herself, hard, into the whole of his hand, and he realized he'd done it. He'd brought her to this crescendo.

He bent forward and kissed the bare taut skin of her belly, not far from that dreadful scar where she'd been hurt so badly. None of it repelled him--rather, he was filled with a fierce, protective tenderness. Perhaps never, in her life, had Moira possessed someone to care for her. That had been what lay behind her rash act earlier, and the harsh words she'd spoken to him. Moira didn't need to be coddled or protected, but she needed to be loved. Wesley knew--with what he recognized, in himself, as unusual sensitivity--that she and Rupert had too much between them for that to be an option.

He could love her. He did love her, and he hoped, most fervently, that someday she would love him in return.

Moira went to her knees before him, and for a moment he felt great concern. Was she all right? Had he distressed or hurt her? Then he realized what she meant to do, and his excitement increased tenfold. Oh, God, she wouldn't, would she? Oh, God, she wouldn't...but please. Please.

Again, she parted his thighs and reached down between them, cupping him in her hand, rubbing her thumb lightly over the sensitive skin. She bent, and her tongue flickered over the opening to his penis, taking the wetness that lay there like dew. Her lips closed over the head and her tongue caressed him. Wesley slumped backward in the seat, and Moira's hands slipped beneath his arse, raising him a little, kneading his muscles with her fine, strong fingers. He tightened almost unbearably as she took the rest of him into her, far into the warm, wet passage of her mouth, her tongue moving against him. Only a few strokes, and he came, violently, in a spasm that seemed to last forever. She swallowed, drawing him in even deeper, and his body jerked again, another, briefer jolt, like the aftershock of an earthquake.

Thunder, with appropriate timing, crashed directly above them, shaking the van. Moira let him loose, and raised her face to kiss his stomach, while Wesley raised a trembling hand to stroke her damp hair. She rested against him, arms clasped loosely round his waist. From that position she'd be able to hear, quite clearly, the rapid drumming of his heart.

He hadn't known. He hadn't expected. He only hoped, against hope, that it meant as much to her as it had to him.

"Your Ladyship," he said, quietly. "I--er--I love you."

"Do you, Wesley?" She looked up, her body still so close to his, still scented so headily, with the fragrance of her nectar.

Say it back, he thought, with sudden franticness. Say it back to me, Moira, even if you don't mean it. Let me, at least, hear the words from you.

Wesley wanted to weep, fearing that he never would. Moira wasn't a liar; he'd always been impressed with her truthfulness. Her straightforwardness. Her honesty to herself and to others. Moira never talked round things, or disguised them with polite half-truths--and yet she wasn't tactless, like Cordelia.

Lie to me, this time only. Moira, please.

"This night," she said, thoughtfully, "I was terribly foolish."

Did she mean Helena? Or what had just happened between them? Oh, God.

"I showed you my sickness," she said. "How can you still want me?"

Suddenly, Wesley could see her face clearly, and she looked so very lost, and so vulnerable, all her wounds no longer hidden from his eyes.

"Were it you," he told her, surprised by his own honesty. "Were it you, who had been turned, and called out to me, I can't say that I wouldn't follow. I'd like to say I wouldn't, that I would do what must be done, but I don't know that I could look into your eyes and manage it."

"Wesley," Moira said. "You must never. Never. Don't be like me. Promise."

"I can't," he told her, "Promise, that is. But I should certainly try."

"Ah, Lord," she sighed, then laughed a little. "What a pair we are! Wesley, I do think that I could love you."

* * * * *

Buffy could tell almost the moment Moira's spell wore off. One minute she'd been lying cuddled up with Giles in that warm, drowsy state halfway between sleep and waking, vaguely aware that the candles had burned down and the power come back on again. The next she felt his whole body stiffen and pull away. His breathing had been slow and even, but now it started into hard little jerks that scared the hell out of her.

Usually when Giles got hurt he'd make some dry little joke about needing an icepack and go on with whatever he was doing. Even back in November, when every one of them got that horrible stomach flu, and the rest of the Scooby Gang had spent days at home, in bed, groaning and complaining, the most she'd ever gotten out of Giles was an, "Excuse me, I'll return shortly. He hadn't missed a day of work, and he'd still stayed late every night at the library, researching.

Buffy came awake immediately, and reached to touch his shoulder, but Giles flinched away from her hand. This scared her worse.

"Really bad, huh?" Buffy tried to sound sympathetic, not panicked.

"No," he said into the pillow. "I'm all right."

"Liar," she told him. "You want me to see if I can find you an aspirin or something?"

Giles didn't answer, so she went in search--her own bathroom held a bottle of Tylenol that had expired in 1997, and another bottle of Midol. Buffy went to check her mom's medicine cabinet. Bingo. A nice package of Motrin, not even opened, right there on the shelf next to her mother's birth control pills.

Her mother's what? Buffy did a doubletake. Whoa, mom really was enjoying a little romance, apparently.

Which reminded her--she needed to make an appointment of her own, soonest, so that she could do away with the green rubbers that disconcerted Giles so badly.

Buffy smiled a little. Disconcerted? It was starting already--she'd started to think in Gilesspeak. Or what had been Gilesspeak.

Another thing to think about--how much of Giles's brain really had gotten fried by the bad, scary magic he'd called on to save her from the vampire army?

God, Buffy thought. That was only like--what?--eight hours back? That the time since had been so short seemed impossible. It seemed like months ago. Graduation seemed like years.

Buffy hurried downstairs for a bottle of water, pausing just for a second to throw Giles's clothes from the washer into the dryer, then back up again. She twisted the cap off the pill bottle as she went and shook four of the tablets into her hand. Giles hadn't moved during the time she'd been gone, except to burrow his head down deeper beneath the pillows--so deep she wondered how he could breathe. Even from across the room she could see the horrible bone-deep bruises around and between the scars on his back. The sight made her feel a little sick.

"Sweetie," Buffy said, trying not to let her voice sound shaky, "I found you some Motrin. I know its not the real thing, but it might take the edge off."

He didn't answer. She tried again. "Giles." Still no answer.

His good hand was clutched on to her pillow, so hard that the knuckles--which were also bruised, and gashed, and skinned--looked whiter than the white pillowsham. How many vampires had he taken on for her, with his fists and his sword? It had looked like hundreds. She knew that he'd fought for hours, riding his own weird magic and the wave of Moira's spells. No wonder he was like this--the spells hadn't kept him from getting hurt, they just kept the injuries from showing much until the witchy stuff wore off. She suspected that if she folded back the covers, she'd see blood on her sheets, and she knew that she probably should look, but couldn't stand to.

She wondered why, earlier, the damage she herself had done to him had shown up worse than anything else?

"Rupert?" she whispered, suddenly so afraid she couldn't stand it. What if he was dying? What if she hadn't saved him after all? What if she'd hurt him even worse, making love to him during the storm? "Rupert, please," she breathed.

"Can't," he told her finally, in a low, tight, agonized voice.

Okay, he could still talk a little. Maybe he wouldn't die right away. God, she hated to see him suffer, and hated even more that she couldn't do a thing to help.

"I...um...if you wanted I could go get your real pills from your place," Buffy offered.

That got her another single word. "Couldn't."

"You couldn't take them?" Buffy sat down on the edge of the mattress, then sprang up again when Giles made a sound like a horrible, gasping hiss.

"I want to help you," she said plaintively.

"Please..." Giles stopped. Obviously he'd caught himself just short of telling her to go away, please, and leave him the hell alone.

"Do you...umn...want to be on your own for a little bit?"

"Please," he repeated, in an even lower voice. "Sorry. I love you."

"It's all right," Buffy answered, trying to joke a little so that he'd know she wasn't offended, even if the joke came out completely flat. "If you need to scream or something, it's probably better I'm not here, right? For the whole male pride thing?"

Giles didn't answer that one at all. Buffy backed out of her bedroom, snagging her robe on the way. She wished she knew what to do--if there was anything that could be done.

In the kitchen, the battery-operated clock read 4:13, while the ones on the stove and the microwave flashed red twelves at her. Buffy felt like the only person awake in the whole world.

Someone had to be smarter than her. Someone had to know. Willow maybe, or--God forbid--Wesley? She remembered Moira doing all those tidy little stitches on Giles's cut hand. Geez, he was having a bad week.

Obviously, Moira would be the person to call, but Buffy felt bad about disturbing Giles's old friend. Wrong or not, Moira'd lost someone she loved last night, and the older woman had only been about a pint short of suicide. She probably needed, and deserved, a little downtime.

From right over her head came a stifled moan worse than anything Buffy'd ever heard in her life. She found herself halfway across the room, punching in a number she hadn't even know she'd remembered, the number for Moira's digital phone.

A guy answered. An English-guy voice, one she didn't recognize. For a second Buffy wondered if she had the wrong number--and wondered why, if that was true, the guy didn't sound mad at being woken up at four-thirty in the morning.

"Uh...hi?" she said hesitantly.

"Buffy, is that you?" the guy asked her.

British guy. Knows me. It wasn't going to register. And who the hell are you? Buffy wanted to say--but didn't, because it came to her that the guy sounded kind of the way Wesley would sound if he didn't have such a huge British flagpole shoved up his butt.

"Uh...yes," she told this happy version of Wesley.

"Are you all right?" he asked her. "You sound rather upset, Buffy." He sounded sympathetic, now, as well as happy. It was giving her a major wiggins, like she'd just phoned up Bizarro World where everything was backwards.

"I'm okay," she told him, in a little, little voice, still convinced that she couldn't be talking to her erstwhile--another Giles word--Watcher. "Can I speak to Moira, please?"

"Why, of course, Buffy. Just a moment." He appeared to have covered the receiver with his hand, but she could hear him clearly anyway. "It's Buffy, love."

Moira picked up. "Hullo?" she said, in her usual calm, crisp Watcher-voice, like nothing bad had happened at all.

See, Buffy told herself. It really is Bizarro World. Because in the normal world, Moira should have sounded upset. No one could be either that together, or that repressed. She'd nearly died, for Pete's sake.

For a few minutes after she heard Moira's voice Buffy could only hiccough and sob--and she hadn't even known she'd started crying.

"It's all right, love," Moira told her kindly. "I was just heading out on a run, you didn't even wake me. Let me catch hold of my medical bag and I'll be there straightaway." The Watcher hung up without Buffy ever having spoken a word.

Buffy heard another moan and went outside the front door to wait, going up and down the steps a million times, though it didn't even take Moira a quarter of an hour to get there. She really was dressed in running clothes, the way she said. Did she always get up at four AM to run, or couldn't she sleep--maybe she was still on London time, and her body thought it was noon?

One look at Moira's pale face answered her question. Moira was making herself run for punishment, or maybe just to wear herself out, so she'd get exhausted, and wouldn't have to think anymore. However happy Wes was, Moira was still suffering, at least a little.

"I'm glad that you called," she told Buffy quietly. And she did, really, honestly, look glad.

"I thought you'd be the best person. I got scared."

"Are you squeamish round blood or needles, love?" she asked Buffy as they climbed the stairs.

Buffy shook her head, but that was kind of a lie. She already felt queasy. "Aren't you...I mean...won't you do a spell or something?"

"I'm in no shape for further spells tonight, Buffy," Moira answered, still quietly, and Buffy noticed again how tired she looked, then how the skin of her throat was bruised and torn. She could see the dark purple marks of Helena's fingers on the older woman's neck. "Your lavatory is...?"

Buffy showed her the door, and Moira handed her the medical bag, then went in to wash her hands.

"Have you a first aid kit?" Moira asked, scrubbing hard--doing a little Lady MacBeth action there, as well as getting everything clean.

"Super deluxe," Buffy answered. "Mom went all out as soon as she discovered that I was the Slayer. Why didn't you get Wes to put a bandaid or something over those big holes in your neck?"

Moira glanced up at herself in the mirror. Her body gave a huge jerk, as if she'd just noticed, and been shocked. "I...I..." She started sobbing all of a sudden and sank down onto the closed toilet seat with her clean wet hands pressed over her eyes and her fingers pushed up into her hair. Almost the worst thing was that, while she did this, she held completely still and even with all that crying didn't make any sound. It was like trying to watch a video with the "pause" button pressed.

"Wes sounded happy," Buffy said to her in a small voice, almost surprised that she herself made any sound at all. "I thought you guys were okay."

The Watcher did something that Buffy guessed was a nod, but she didn't stop. Seeing Moira cry was like watching a guy cry: it made her uncomfortable. The whole thing reminded her of the way Giles was after Jenny Calendar died, outside the Factory, and all she could think of to do was the thing she'd done then. She pulled Moira close against her, and rubbed her back until eventually all the sobs faded away.

Eventually, too, both of them looked in the mirror, at their blotchy faces and shadowy red-rimmed eyes, and had to laugh a little.

"Yeah, we're ready for the cover of Cosmo," Buffy said.

Moira blew her nose, loudly. "Glamourous `til the end! I'm sorry. It's the magic. I'm just knackered."

"What does that mean, anyway? 'Cause a lot of the time I don't get Brit words. The whole 'boot' and 'bonnet' and 'carpark' thing. The first time Giles told me to put something in the boot I was, like, looking around for footwear, and thinking whatever it was wouldn't fit--it was a crossbow, I think."

"Knackered means ready to be hauled off and ground into dog food." The Watcher gave another short laugh, splashed water on her face and washed her hands again. "Which I believe I am. Just here, is it?" She went through into Buffy's room, while Buffy followed with the First Aid kit.

Moira cleaned the clutter off a chair so that she could sit beside the bed. "Good morning, Rupert. Bit sore, are you? Something to remember, before you ask me to repeat that particular combination of spells."

Giles muttered something that was probably a British swear word. Moira's eyebrows shot up about half an inch--a bad swear, then.

"And with Buffy present?" she told him. "I'm going to need your arm, Rupert."

He didn't move. Buffy would've been willing to bet that he wasn't able.

"All right, then. I know. Buffy and I shall have to turn you over. Feel free to scream if you'd like."

Moira showed Buffy where to put her hands, and they did the "One, two, three," thing. Giles went over way more easily than she expected, and he didn't scream, but his jaw and the muscles in his neck got so tight that she knew he'd only kept quiet through force-of-will again. Then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he was out.

"Oh, God!" Buffy gasped, putting her hands to her mouth.

Calmly, Moira took Giles's arm, found a nice big vein, and swabbed the skin over it with alcohol. "Actually, one sees that quite a lot with the male of the species," she told Buffy. "Did you notice how he tensed up? Rather than letting out a nice, healthy yell, many men will grit their teeth and clench those powerful jaw and neck muscles of theirs to the point that they block the flow of blood to their brains. Then down they go, and we can work our wicked ways. Good job Rupert was already in bed. As you know, he's terribly heavy to move."

"I...uh...I thought..." Buffy said.

"He's not dying, love," Moira told her. She took Buffy's hand, putting it to Giles's neck. "Feel that? The pulse is a bit fast, but perfectly strong, and now that Rupert's out, he's breathing quite well."

Moira removed a little bottle with a rubber stopper from her bag, opened the package to a disposable syringe with her teeth, stuck the needle through the stopper and sucked a yellowish liquid up into the tube.

"You're not a doctor," Buffy said anxiously.

"No," Moira answered, squirting a little of the fluid into the air.

"What's that you're giving him?"

"Quick acting poison," Moira responded calmly, sliding the needle home. "Ought to be over in a matter of seconds."

Buffy gaped at her in horror. God, the woman was crazy! What had she done calling her here? Then she noticed the sympathetic warmth in the older woman's eyes.

"It's possible that you're joking," she said.

"It's possible," Moira answered drily. "What I gave him should take off the worst of the edge, help him sleep a bit." She touched Giles's temple gently, with just her fingertips. "He really will be all right, I think, Buffy. Let's just survey the damage, then see about getting those cuffs off you, shall we?"

Moira smiled up at her, with that perfectly calm expression and those troubled eyes, so that Buffy didn't know whether she meant what she said, and was fighting with her own problems, or lying about Giles to make her feel better. She wasn't sure that she wanted to ask, either.

"I wouldn't lie to you, love," Moira said.

* * * * *

Wesley lay in bed between crisp linen sheets, with a proper china teapot on the table beside him, and a proper teacup filled with lovely strong tea, which Moira had brewed for him with her own hands. She had found for him, on the television, a channel that played only the old American films that he so dearly loved, and just now, on the screen, Gene Kelly danced through a downpour much like the one they'd experienced last night, grinning as he leaped and spun through the rain.

Wesley rather wished that he might do the same, that something in his soul would unlock and allow him to do any sort of dance but a stiff, formal waltz. He felt closer to heaven at the present moment than he ever had in his life. Everything he wanted. Everything. From the small creature comforts that surrounded him now, to friends, to the affection of an amazing woman, to his own self-respect. All this, when only a week ago, he'd been sunk into the depths of despair.

"Moira," Wesley had said the night before--or was it earlier in the morning? he couldn't be sure--"Moira, let's get all your things. Come stay with me, please do. I've a little house, as you know, and it's so entirely empty."

She'd stretched to give him the most tender and delicious of kisses, saying, "Be careful what you wish for, my love."

"Honestly, Moira, you mustn't remain here, in this hotel. You must come home with me. I absolutely forbid you to stay in this place a moment longer."

Sitting back on her heels, Moira extended the first two fingers on each hand, crossing one over another on her bosom in a sly mockery of a Watchers' sign--a sign he'd tried using himself, once, with dismal results. Like children they were, really, using their little secret tokens and mysterious words.

Wesley'd felt himself blush at the mere thought: no wonder Buffy and her friends hadn't respected him. Had he really been so entirely pompous? By the authority vested in him by the Watchers' Council, indeed! As if the kids could possibly care about that.

"Please, Moira," he'd said, stroking her damp hair again. "I should so like you with me."

In an instant she'd been gone, racing away from the van, and from him, returning only a few minutes later with a suitcase of rather considerable size, which she heaved into the back.

"Wesley," she'd told him, smiling, "Come out to me."

Wesley had hesitated a moment: it was really most frightfully wet out, and a little cold, but at last the light in Moira's eyes enticed him. He slid down carefully to the rain-pooled tarmac, feeling the fat drops through his shirt, until the fabric was entirely soaked and clung to his skin. His hair melted and waved and dripped into his eyes, and Moira laughed.

"I wanted to see if that would happen," she told him, speaking loudly with the noise of the downpour. "Though I half expected that, like Moses and the Red Sea, the waters would part before you. Perhaps you're human after all, my dearest."

"Human enough!" he'd answered, catching her round the waist, pulling her close, into a deep kiss, in which her mouth tasted warm, spicy and complicated, like Moira herself, and also very cool and clean, like the rain. Her hands rubbed his back and shoulders through the sopping cloth, until he'd become excited for her all over again, and then they'd climbed back inside the vehicle.

Moira had driven him home, the two of them dripping and steaming, flooding the seats with the water that streamed from their clothes. Wesley hadn't even cared, though he feared he might, later in the day.

Inside his empty house, they'd dried each other, laughing, flinging their wet things onto the floor--though afterward, while Moira took a shower, Wesley hadn't been able to resist the urge to pick them up and hang them neatly in the laundry room. Moira twitted him gently about that, once she emerged.

She smiled a bit, too, at his pajamas--rather nice ones, Wesley thought, given him by his paternal grandmother at Christmas. They'd his family crest stitched onto the pocket.

Moira herself emerged nude from the shower, drying her hair with a large towel. She seemed to walk about that way with the most amazing lack of concern, and Wesley rather wished she'd stop--it was lovely, true, but somewhat distracting. He seemed to lose his ability to speak every time she entered the room.

Outside the windows, the rain appeared to have let up, and Moira had begun to put on her tracksuit when her digital telephone rang.

"Get that, will you, love?" she said, sitting on the end of the bed to lace up her trainer, bits of reflective tape on the side of the shoe flashing light into his eyes.

"Good God, its half-past-four! Who could possibly be calling?" he'd said. But the moment the words left his mouth, he'd known. It would be Buffy, of course, poor child. He felt great charity, that day--even for disobedient young Slayers. They really oughtn't to have left her alone.

Buffy it was, her girlish voice trembling, so distraught she didn't seem to recognize him. Wesley spoke to her as soothingly as he could. Moira did the same, and promised to come to the young woman's aid before she rang off.

"Ought I to come along?" Wesley asked her. Truth be told, he felt tapped out, and even with his leg and neck-braces restored, he was sore. His entire body seemed more than somewhat achy, in fact--rather as if he'd caught a bit of the flu, although otherwise he felt well, only a little lightheaded. Perhaps he missed the blood Maria Del Ciello had drunk from him; perhaps he was only slightly overwhelmed by the night's events.

"No, no, that's not needed," Moira answered. Before she went out the door, she brought him the tea and switched on the telly, finding the channel he liked as if by instinct. Wesley couldn't escape the feeling that she meant it all as an act of atonement--or, possibly, of gratitude.

"Will you be long?" he asked her. "You shan't really go for a run, shall you? It's awfully wet."

He didn't like to mention the other reason.

"We shall see." Moira kissed him in parting. "You ought to try for a bit of sleep. We'd rather a big night, after all."

"Only after you're beside me," he answered, wondering how she could keep such poise. Her night had, perhaps, been larger than anyone's--except for Rupert's. Helena had taken far more blood from her than Maria took from him, and there had been a tremendous emotional drain for Moira, as well. He meant to say more, words of caution and encouragement, but his love had already gone.

On the screen, Gene Kelly completed his dance. Songs and plots and more dances passed by--all terribly silly, really, but they made him happy. Wesley thought of sweet little Willow, and of Xander, who mocked and confused him, but had saved his life. He must remember to ring them both, later in the day, to make sure that they'd come through this with minimal distress.

Poor Willow. Her lovely hair seemed quite spoilt, though perhaps something might yet be done. She ought to ring up Cordelia. Cordelia would know, if anyone did.

Wesley thought, too, of the attractive Miss Chase, now at home in Los Angeles. He hadn't loved her, certainly, but he wished her only good. He wished, too, that he'd made less of a fool of himself over her--and that, at least for the sake of his pride, he'd kissed her with something better approaching grace.

One ought to look upon the bright side, however. Had he been more successful with Cordelia, this night with Moira might, perhaps, never have been, and in kissing Moira he felt no awkwardness whatsoever.

Sinking warmly into his pillows, Wesley listened to Debbie Reynolds sing, "You are my lucky star...I've loved you from afar."

So true, he thought. So true.

It occurred to Wesley that he really ought to ring Buffy's mother immediately: Joyce Summers's daughter was clearly her brightest star, and she must be dreadfully worried. He reached for the telephone.

"Can't you use magic?" Buffy gasped. She and Moira had been fighting with the cuffs for half an hour, and the damn things still refused to give. The Watcher had started with the subtle "pick the lock" approach and had now escalated to the screwdriver-hammer-bludgeoning method. Buffy was picking up an interesting selection of British swearwords, which she fully intended to use on Giles once he felt a little more together.

"Cold. Iron." Moira muttered. She seemed to have gone nearly as pre-verbal as her best friend.

Thinking that made Buffy sad. She made herself concentrate on the problem at hand. On her hands to be specific.

"Your mother has--" Moira hissed. "The most useless sodding lot of tools I've heretofore encountered."

It took a Watcher, Buffy considered, to be so completely p.o.'d and still use a word like 'heretofore' in a complete sentence. "They're not all that cold," Buffy told her. "Not the way you've been hitting them."

Moira glared at her--just about Giles's equal in the glaring department, in fact--and pushed a couple streamers of sweat-soaked auburn hair out of her eyes. "Magic doesn't work well on iron, hot or cold," she said, trying to sound patient and pretty much failing. "Not my magic, at least. What I wouldn't give for a--what do they call them here? A Dremel tool. One of those rotary things..." She waved her hands vaguely, probably too tired to translate her thoughts into American. "They buzz, and have any number of quite small attachments."

Buffy got up and went down to the basement, returning with a shoebox. "Like this?" she asked.

Moira averted her gaze, obviously trying to avoid giving Buffy another, even more ferocious, glare.

"Yes. Quite. Lovely." She plugged the tool into a kitchen socket, and snapped the safety goggles down over her eyes. "Lovely," she repeated, in what didn't exactly sound like an appreciative tone--more like the kind of "lovely" Buffy usually got from Giles when she'd discovered the demon of the day in one of his musty books half an hour before, but forgotten to mention it because she was chatting with Willow about boys or clothes.

In something like under a minute, the first handcuff fell free. Okay, Buffy could see Moira's point, especially since the older woman had hit her thumb really hard on about the fourth try with the hammer and screwdriver, and now had one of those icky blood-blisters under the nail, which was probably going to drop off. Moira gave her a heartfelt look as the second cuff fell free, and dropped them both, from a height of about six inches, onto the kitchen counter.

"Sorry," Buffy said. "I didn't think."

"Quite all right," Moira answered, finally getting her voice under control. Maybe she was just glad to have it all over with.

Being Moira, she walked Buffy upstairs again, made her wash her skinned wrists really well with soap and water, dried them off carefully and bandaged them up, saying that she thought the left might be a little bit sprained, and that Buffy probably shouldn't patrol for the next couple nights.

"You don't have to tell me twice," Buffy answered, then said. "Not like there's gonna be anything to patrol for."

"They'll be back." The troubled look, that had vanished temporarily during their handcuff battle, returned to Moira's eyes.

"Even if Giles isn't baity anymore?"

"There's always the Hellmouth." Moira tugged the scrunchy out of her hair, pulled the whole mass back again and put the band on tighter. She had hair like a lady in a old painting, so much, when she let it down, that it didn't seem quite realistic. "And there's also Maria," she added.

Buffy frowned. She'd forgotten that. Forgotten Maria, who'd sometimes seemed almost like a person, even though she wasn't anymore. Buffy had kept wanting to trust the vampire, and been wrong every time. "I'm sorry," she said. "I could kinda tell what she was like, maybe. Before."

"She was my student, and my friend," Moira said in a quiet voice. "I shall miss her--but I shan't make the same mistake twice."

"I didn't think so." This stuff made Buffy uncomfortable. She wanted to look anywhere but at Moira's face. "The way that you...uh...you felt tonight? I never felt that way," she said. "I felt like I wanted to hide, though, lots of times. Do you know about Angel?"

"You told me," Moira said. "That night we patrolled together."

"Oh. Yeah." Buffy found herself staring upward into the older woman's huge, green, shadowy eyes. "Well, Angel made me feel that way. Wanting to hide with him, or from him, but always the big hiding thing. Can I tell you a secret?"

The Watcher nodded.

"I can't really tell the others--'cause there are so many issues, and I was just so...goofy for him, for so long. But I'm glad. That he's gone, I mean." Buffy took a step backward, almost blown away by the sudden awareness of how much she meant that. "I'm glad."

"I'd imagine that you are," Moira answered, her tone saying that she understood perfectly. She put her hand on Buffy's shoulder, walking her back toward the bedroom. "Buffy, the words I spoke to Rupert, in the kitchen, a few days ago..."

"I know it's probably not the best idea," Buffy told her. "I know there's weirdness involved."

"All that matters, in the end, are the Watcher and the Slayer," Moira said. "There can be no stronger bond, and anything that tries to come between them--other friends, other loves, the Council itself--is bound to fail. We are called, one to one, life to life."

"Whoa," Buffy said. "No heaviness there, Em."

"That's a direct quote from the first Watcher Journal, Buffy--the first we have recorded, at any rate." Moira tipped Buffy's head upward with a hand beneath her chin, looking down into her face a minute before she bent to kiss Buffy's forehead. "Take care of my poor Rupert, won't you?"

"You don't even have to ask."

"No, I don't, do I?" Moira smiled a little. "And now I'd best go see how my Wesley's getting on."

"Speaking of weird," Buffy said.

"He isn't, you know," Moira answered. "He's really rather lovely."

Buffy knew that word meant something different to English people--or several different somethings--so she gave Moira's arm a quick squeeze and let it slide. The Watcher promised to come back in a few hours to check on Giles and give him another shot. She said she'd let herself out--Buffy let her do that.

Giles lay still and quiet in Buffy's bed, looking very big and dark and masculine against all the pink, peach and white in her room. His eyes were half-open and kind of glazed, though they followed Buffy when she moved. She sat in the chair Moira'd brought to the bedside and gazed down at him, reaching out to lightly rub her thumb against his temple. His eyes closed, making him looked almost relaxed, or maybe just monumentally stoned. Moira said he probably felt like he'd been beaten with chains, and there were a couple deep cuts that it was too late to stitch, but she hadn't been able to find any broken bones--except, of course, for his hand, and possibly some ribs that Buffy herself had cracked by holding him so tight.

Moira didn't say, but although the soreness might last for days, and the hand would probably take all summer to heal, it was the magic burn-out that really worried her--and since Moira seemed to know more about magic than just about anyone else, that scared Buffy more than any other thing could.

"It's too soon to tell," the Watcher told her--which either meant exactly that--that it really was too soon--or else that Moira didn't want to drop the bomb on her all at once.

"Hope for the best, expect the worst," her mom sometimes said. Whatever that meant.

Buffy realized that Giles had taken hold of her hand, and given it a gentle little tug, probably all that he could manage at that point.

"What?" she said to him. "You want me to join you?"

Another tug, his reddened eyes gazing up into hers.

"What, I'm not s'posed to go away this time?" She couldn't help but tease him a little, so relieved that he wanted her--that he felt well enough to want her. When Giles released her hand, Buffy shed her robe and slid in beside him, moving as carefully as she could, afraid that she might jostle or hurt him. Slowly, his head moved to her shoulder, and he curled up against her, his good hand resting lightly at her waist.

Buffy shifted to kiss his mouth with the same care--just a whisper of a kiss, but he smiled against her lips. "Goodnight," she said, even though it was morning. "Sleep tight."

They drifted off together, and stayed down for hours, not waking until footsteps sounded on the stairs, and the bedroom door swung open, and her mom's voice said, "Oh, Buffy, honey, I was so... I was... Buffy? Buffy, oh my God!"

* * * * *

The wave of total joy Buffy felt at the sound of her mom's voice dried up instantly as she remembered who and what and where. With Giles. In her birthday suit. In her mother's house. In her little-girly bedroom. In her bed. What had seemed like a great idea in the middle of the night, all alone, seemed less great when she looked up past the dark tousled waves of Giles's hair to see Joyce's shocked, pale face. And...yikes! Her dad's face, too, glowering--how was that for a Giles word?--just behind Joyce's.

Giles made a little noise of protest when Buffy stirred--he'd started to get a bit tense again, probably just about ready for another of Moira's wonder-shots--though not, at least, needing it as badly as he had before. Carefully as she could, Buffy moved his head off her shoulder and onto the pillow, hoping that doing so didn't leave anything exposed to her dad's view. Hank's eyes already bulged out of his head in a way that would have been pretty funny, if she hadn't been the cause. Her mom just looked like she wanted to faint, or throw up. Maybe both, as soon as she could figure out which took precedent. She had those two little white spots--one by each corner of her mouth--that meant she was so mad the blood had stopped reaching her head.

"Downstairs, young lady. Right now," Hank Summers snapped, in a voice that wasn't anything near as bad as some of Giles's Watcher-voices--but quite bad enough, thank you very much. Bad enough, for sure, to make Buffy feel about three steps below pond scum--and about three years old.

"Uh, Dad--" she began.

"Now, I said!"

"Hank--" Her mom blinked, like she'd just come out of some kind of zombie trance. "Why don't you go downstairs first?"

He started to protest, then took her point and went, his tread so heavy on the steps it sounded like Godzilla was heading into the living room. That would have been funny too, if Buffy hadn't felt so petrified, and so embarrassed. But not ashamed. She wasn't in any way ashamed, and that was kind of a surprise. Weirdly enough, it almost made her glad to get everything out--she'd had enough to last a lifetime of the lying game.

Joyce went to the dresser and, without a word, started tossing clothes over her shoulder onto the bed: the one pair of ugly cotton panties Buffy owned, her sensible white cotton bra, her baggy overalls and the biggest, most concealing t-shirt in the drawer.

"Get dressed, Buffy," her mom said, in this quiet, deceptively calm mom-voice. "Go downstairs and talk to your father. He's been very worried about you."

Yeah, right, Buffy thought. This would be Hank Summers, invisible dad? But she didn't say anything.

"You could have called me yourself," Joyce said. "Buffy, I didn't know if you were dead or alive. You didn't have to make me wait to hear that from Mr. Wyndham-Price."

Thanks, Wes, Buffy thought. God, her mom was good--she could have been a travel agent for guilt trips. Joyce was right, though; about that part anyway. Buffy knew how much her mom loved her, and that she really should have phoned. Even looking at it from the selfishness angle, if she'd taken the time to call herself, maybe her mom would have just stayed in L.A, or at least given her an estimated hour of arrival. Time enough to maybe make everything look not quite so barfworthy from her mom's point of view.

She wondered if Joyce would buy hypothermia as an explanation? You were supposed to get skin-to-skin naked for that, right? To warm the other person up?

Nah, she thought. As some old, dead guy once said, honesty was the best policy. Better to deal now than to go cringing around the truth until it finally just came out anyway.

"I know," Buffy told her. "I'm sorry, Mom. It would have been--umn, considerate to call you. It was just kind of a night..."

"I don't want to hear." Joyce pressed a hand to her forehead. "I don't want to look at you right now. Just go."

What was a person supposed to say to something like that? Buffy went.

Her father had waited to pounce--not with a welcoming hug, or anything else that let her know he was glad to see her safe. He lit into her with a lecture, and went on and on and on, spicing the whole thing up with a bunch of "disappointeds" and "young lady's" and "deceitfuls." Buffy felt her eyes glaze over. It came to her that she didn't care about anything this man said. He didn't know her, hadn't been there for her--he was just a guy who, for the past two years at least, had done pretty much nothing but sign checks. Check-guy. Money-guy. Mr. Big Businessman, whose quarterly reports meant way more to him than her birthday.

Buffy remembered the time when that poor unconscious kid, Billy, had made all her worst dreams come true. It was probably real after all, the stuff her nightmare-dad said. She was a disappointment to him. She wasn't the daughter he'd wanted. To him she probably seemed awful: mouthy and lazy, with a sucky attitude.

She turned her back and went to sit on the couch, feeling numb. He didn't have any right. He didn't mean anything. She watched the mouth move in the middle of her dad's blank, pleasant, temporarily-furious, all-American face and thought, He doesn't know me. He'll never, ever know me again.

"You aren't even listening, are you?" Hank asked.

Why not be honest? What was there to lose? She wasn't a kid anymore, she couldn't spend the rest of her life worrying if she made daddy proud. Buffy shrugged.

"That man up there--" Her father sat beside her on the couch. He looked like he had bit into something nasty-tasting. "How old is he?"

Buffy shrugged again. "How come it matters?"

"I asked you a question, young lady."

"Stop calling me that!" she snapped, suddenly furious. Overhead, dimly, Buffy could hear her mom tear into Giles--like that wasn't a waste of time. Chances were, at this point, he wouldn't even hear her.

Buffy rubbed her temples. She wanted to sleep more. Hours and hours more. She slept really well with Giles beside her; much better than usual.

"I don't know." She glanced at her dad's face. He looked like a stranger, like some angry stranger who just happened to be sitting there yelling at her. What did it matter? "Forty-something. Forty-five, maybe?"

"My God, Buffy." Her dad just looked shocked, in a whole different way from her mom. Disgusted, and pissed off, and like he not only didn't know her, he didn't want to.

Buffy thought of the lines in Giles's face, that got there from laughter and tiredness and worry and maybe even pain. She thought of the way they crinkled around his amazing green eyes when he smiled at her. She thought of how they'd fought and laughed and held each other at all the best and the worst moments of their lives, and the way Giles had been there for her every single second of all their time together.

"I don't want you to see him anymore," her father said. "Your mom told me about the unhealthy relationship you had with that college boy--and now this. Buffy, we worry about you."

College boy? Oh, yeah. Angel. Buffy almost smiled at the thought of Angel as a college boy, but she knew that smiling would only make her dad madder, and she didn't really want to have a blow-up fight with him in her mother's house.

Then came the kicker: "Your mother told me, too, about this strange fantasy you have--that you're some kind of superhero? Frankly, sweetheart, you're awfully old for that kind of thing.

What the hell, Buffy thought. "Not that old, Dad. We just met one Slayer who made it all the way to twenty-seven. Course she was crazy by then, but it's the years that count, right?"

Buffy jumped off the couch, moving away from him, not wanting to look at his face. "If you start right now, maybe you can make a nice little daughter who's everything you want. Or a son. A son would be even better, right?"

Hank's jaw dropped.

"C'mon, Dad. That's why you're here, isn't it? You're mom's mystery man. Two years, and I get nothing from you, and now we're all going to be one big happy family again? Geez, you honestly think it works like that?"

"You are the most insolent, disrespectful..."

Buffy turned to stare at him. She could feel her face getting hard and cold, until she knew the look she gave him was probably worthy of Moira at her most Watchery. "Don't forget slutty, Dad. That one's important."

"Buffy, I caught you naked in bed with a man who's older than me. What am I supposed to say to you?"

"Try this: do you love him? Is he good to you? Does he take care of you? 'Cause, Dad, the answer to all those is yes. Okay, so he's older, but what does that matter? Okay, big, big cliche time, but if I walked out the door and got hit by a bus tomorrow, and least I would have known what it was like to be loved by the most decent, caring man in the world." Buffy felt tears sting her eyes. "I almost died, Daddy--and Giles almost died, too, to save me. He was willing to give up everything. For me. You won't even give up a day at your damn job."

"Almost died." Hank still had that bad-taste look on his face. "Your mother told me that man...your 'Giles'...feeds this sick fantasy of yours."

"Well, since mom has told all, you want a demonstration, Daddy?" Buffy moved closer to her father, until she stood only an arm's length away. "Hit me. Hard as you can."

"Buffy--"

"Come on. It's all a fantasy. Giles is some kind of pervert. Hit me. I'll fall down. You'll say, 'I told you so,' and then I'll be all better. I can go back to being your sweet little girl again."

His mouth doing weird things, Hank swung at her, a weak little girly slap. Buffy blocked it easily.

"Geez, Daddy, I hope you can do better than that. Willow could've blocked that one--and laughed at you after. Really hit me. Pretend I'm Giles."

Her dad swung again, a backhander, really trying that time. Buffy blocked that one too, and twisted, getting her dad's arm up behind him, taking him down. Hank lay with his face in the carpet and her knee in his back.

"Now try to get up," she told him.

He tried, and couldn't. 105 pounds of her, and he couldn't budge.

"Now tell me again about my fantasy, Dad--`cause I've gotta say, I'm still feeling a little deluded."

"You're on drugs," Hank said.

"Nope."

"Drugs can make people unnaturally strong."

"What's it like in the State of Denial?" Buffy asked him. "Is the weather good?"

"It's impossible," her father answered. "It...can't be."

Buffy shook her head, and let him up. "Whatever."

"How long...?"

"Remember when I burnt down the gym at Hemery? That was vampires." Buffy couldn't help but smile a little at the look of blind confusion on her dad's face. "What, it's easier to think you're daughter's a sicko arsonist? C'mon, Daddy. I'm the Slayer. I do what I do."

"But if you didn't--" The look on her father's face hurt Buffy's heart a little. He did love her, really--he just wasn't a man who was very good at loving people. If he and her mom got back together, she knew, Joyce was going to end up getting wounded all over again.

Buffy shook her head, remembering how much she'd wanted, once, for that to happen. The getting back together part, not the wounding. How she'd hoped and hoped only for that, for her mom and dad to love each other, for them all to be a family again.

She had a new family now. Giles and Willow and Xander and Oz--even Cordy, in a funny way, because every family needs the bitchy sister who goes off to find fame and fortune.

Buffy still loved her dad, always would, but these other people had maybe become more to her. They weren't blood, but they were the one who, time after time, proved their love, so that she never, never had to doubt it.

"I love you, Daddy," she told him quietly. "But I'm all grown up now. I can't always do what you say."

"When did you ever?" Hank answered, but he smiled, a tiny smile, and Buffy smiled back, the expression feeling, on her face, a little bit sad.

Above them, Joyce stopped yelling. Something hit the floor, really hard.

"I better--" Buffy gestured.

Hank nodded. He sank back down onto the couch, trying to brush the carpet lint from his pants. Buffy hit the stairs running.

Her mom blocked the door, standing with her hands over her mouth, and the biggest expression of horror and out-and-out ewww on her face that Buffy ever saw. Giles was on the floor, trying to get up again and not doing very well--for one thing, he was weak, and in pain. For another, he'd managed to get himself all tangled up in the bedclothes. She could see his naked back clearly, though--and so could her mom.

"I-- Oh-- God-- I--"

Nice to know that the inability to speak in complete sentences in times of stress was a family trait.

Buffy went to Giles and knelt before him, helping him sit. "It's okay," she told him. "It's okay."

"Buffy, you were gone," he said. "I awakened. You were gone."

"I just had to talk to my dad," Buffy told him. "Remember? Like I said." She stroked the sweaty hair back from his forehead. Giles's eyes were a slightly dull green, but the whites weren't as red as they'd been before.

"Oh, yes," he said. "I heard that, did I?"

"You might still have been sleeping." She reached for his injured hand, propping it up across his lap. "How are you feeling? You didn't hit your hand, did you?"

"Wretched. I fell."

"I know, sweetie."

"That horrid woman shouted at me."

"That's my mom. She's not really horrible, remember? She just got a little surprised."

"Ah." Giles thought a minute, that little triangle of lines appearing between his eyebrows as he concentrated. "Joyce. That's your mum. Joyce. We did something once--"

"Don't go there," Buffy told him.

"I remember a police car."

"Really don't go there."

"But I love you, Buffy," he told her, the truth of that so plain in his face Buffy started to cry. Giles touched the tears with his fingertips. "I love you. You're my life."

Behind her, Joyce made a strange, sad, strangled little sound.

"I love you, too, Rupert," Buffy told him, and kissed him very gently, not even thinking, right there in front of her mom.

"Rupert, that's my name," Giles said, a little breathlessly, when she pulled away. "But that isn't what you call me, not usually."

"Uh-huh. That's true. I usually call you Giles."

"That's also my name. Which comes first?"

"Don't you remember?" Buffy asked. Giles thought about that one a long time, so long she almost broke down and gave him the answer.

"The Rupert," he said, finally. "Then it's Henry, then Sebastian. Giles comes last."

Very good! she almost told him, like someone praising a little kid, but she bit it back. Giles discombobulated was still Giles.

"Got it in one," Buffy said.

"Why did your mum shout at me?" he asked her. "I'm meant to be here, aren't I?" He looked so troubled at that, Buffy had to hug him. She did it gently, but even so Giles made a little noise of pain--though he didn't pull away.

"Of course you're meant to be here," Buffy said. "You're meant to be wherever I am."

"You see, I thought so," Giles told her. "Only, your mum seemed to disagree."

* * * * *

Wesley had fallen asleep after all, though he certainly hadn't intended to, and he awoke to the sight of his lovely Moira emerging from the bathroom--not naked this time, but clad in a silver-blue dressing gown. In many ways the gown made matters worse, for it made her look entirely enchanting. The color was his favourite, and the fabric such a fine silk that he nearly ached to touch it, especially as it curved and shimmered over the lines of Moira's body.

Worst of all, for him, was that the cut of the gown reminded Wesley of a style he'd seen Ginger Rogers wear in one of her films. Moira, he realized, had a dancer's grace, and a catlike quietness. The skirts of the gown floated open as she walked, granting him glimpses of his former Handler's shapely legs.

Oh, Lord, Wesley thought. Perhaps I'm yet dreaming.

He lay back on the pillows, pulling the covers all the way up to his chin, as Moira shed the gown to reveal a matching nightdress of such briefness he wondered why she bothered.

"Have I driven you into hiding, love?" Moira smiled at him, bending down to bestow upon his lips the most gentle of kisses. Wesley nearly melted with happiness, feeling the shape of her smile against his mouth, the brief caress of her breath. The shadowed quality of her eyes troubled him, but he'd bring her through that. He swore that he would.

Moira lay down beside him, touching his face with her fine, long hand. Her lips brushed his mouth again briefly, and then her cheek pressed against his. Wesley felt enfolded in her love, wonderfully enclosed, safer, here on the Hellmouth, than he'd ever felt in his life. He'd thought himself, once, terribly homesick for England, but all he wanted, really, was to live here forever in this snug little house. Put in a bit of a garden perhaps, grow roses of the fussier sort, come home every night to his strong, lovely, redheaded wife.

He nearly asked her right then if she'd have him, but didn't want to seem foolish--and besides, he wished to do things properly. Let enough months pass them by that his proposal wouldn't seem like a whim. Shower her with flowers. Get down on his knee before her. Slip his great-grandmother's betrothal ring--which he must have sized; the Victorian band would be far, far too small for Moira's hand--onto her finger. Say all the quaint, old-fashioned words, which would, no doubt, amuse Moira, who was in no way an old-fashioned woman. Despite that quality, her determined modernness, Wesley knew somehow that Moira would take his words as intended.

"Em," Wesley murmured into her ear. "Oh, my dearest."

Had Moira ever been married? he wondered. He thought not. She'd been quite young when she went for a Watcher, barely twenty-nine, by his calculations, and would have spent the previous three years, as he had, in training. Add to that the time spent to achieve her undergraduate and graduate degrees, and her Olympic adventures. No, she would not have had the time, nor would she have any children--and now, he supposed, judging by the path of that last, most dreadful wound, she could not.

She had been Rupert's once, Wesley supposed, and he found himself not wanting to think of that. He didn't like to think of how she might compare them--until he realized that Moira would not. His beloved would never be so ungracious.

Moira made him feel that every time they touched must be wondrous and new, a discovery.

She rose up a bit, laughing softly. "It's like magic," she said.

"What is, my dearest?"

Moira propped herself on an elbow, gazing down at him, still with that slight smile on her face. "The way you seem to go straight from a state of clean-shavenness to a bit of a beard, with no shadowy, bristly stage in between."

"Oh! Then I ought to--"

"Leave it." Moira's fingers traced the line of his jaw. "It's charming."

Wesley felt himself blush, "Rather scruffy, I'm afraid."

"Perhaps--but let's be daring, shall we?" She raked her fingers back through his ungroomed hair. Wesley could feel it becoming tousled, and tried not to let that distress him. "You've lovely brown hair," Moira said reflectively. "Not black after all. I never knew. That odd stuff you put in makes it appear darker, but there are little lights there, really, coloured like honey."

His blush deepened. As with Cordelia, it made Wesley feel prickly when Moira said kind things about his appearance. He wasn't vain, really--he'd never thought much about his looks one way or another, nor expected women to find him particulary attractive. He merely had been taught to dress and comport himself in a certain way, and he liked very much to be tidy. The touch of his beloved's fingertips against his scalp, however, made him tingle with pleasure.

"There's a lovely wave to it as well," Moira continued. "Were you an adorable child, Wesley?"

"Not noticeably," he answered. "I can't actually say that I suffered from a surfeit of adoration. Rather the contrary, really."

"But I expect that your nanny adored you." She was teasing him, he knew, a small feline smile on her beautiful mouth.

"How--how did you know?" he stammered, surprised by a wash of feeling he'd thought stifled many years before. Quite awful to think of, really, that the only person who honestly cared for one had received a wage to do so, and would have gone away had payment not been made.

"I never meant to make you sad, love," Moira told him. "Only, you've rather the look of someone who was loved and adored at one time, and has missed it since then." Moira gave him another of her tender kisses to take the sting out of her words. "I think I've always been drawn to that look," she said, then lay a bit in silence.

"When Rupert--" she said at last, quietly, a peculiar expression on her face that, try as he might, Wesley could not decipher. He waited for her to continue.

"When Rupert and I first met, he had much that same look--a great boy of fourteen, and he'd cry in the night, trying to hide it from me, of course. He missed his dad dreadfully, and his sisters too."

"Were you--er--at school together?" Coeducational schools were all right for Americans, Wesley supposed. But, despite himself, the thought of them for British people of their class alarmed him. He'd assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that Rupert attended exactly the same sort of school he himself had attended, hundreds of boys squeezed in together in a series of chilly medieval buildings, masters like dusty ravens in their black academic gowns--and that Moira had been taught at the girl's equivalent of the same, serving, perhaps, as Head Girl of her Hall, and captaining the field hockey team.

"Why are you smiling?" Moira asked him.

"I'd a sudden picture of you in your school uniform, a little girl with bruised knees, causing terror to the other little girls with your field hockey stick."

An even odder expression came into Moira's face. Her look hardened, though not against him. "I was never at school, love," she said.

Wesley gazed up at her, confused. "You'd a governess? You were taught at home, then, as a little girl?"

"Neither was I ever a little girl. Not ever. I began as an infant, and then I became a LeFaye."

Wesley sensed the beginning of something painful, and took her hand, holding it between the two of his own. "You needn't tell me, my dear."

"Let's lie quiet here, for a little. Perhaps I can tell you later, under cover of dark."

"Only if you wish." Wesley took her into his arms, until Moira lay with her head on his shoulder, her arm round his waist, turning him to her until their bodies fitted together more perfectly than he'd ever known two bodies could fit. Only this mattered, not the past, and not the future.

Once more, he was entirely content.

"Are you ever gonna be okay with this?" Buffy asked her mom.

Joyce still had that spooked-mare look, though her hands finally came down from her mouth. She didn't even seem to have heard the question, because she asked another one entirely, or tried to. "His--? How--?"

Buffy stared at her, not getting it.

Her mom tried again, snapping out the words one at a time. "On his back--how did that happen?"

That wasn't the question Buffy had expected, and she didn't know how to answer. But of course her mom had noticed--the whole scar-and-bruise display was pretty vivid after all. She'd forgotten, somehow, her mom's big thing--or her second big thing. The first big thing being how protective Joyce was of her, her only child. The second big thing was Joyce's niceness: she hated to think of anyone being hurt. That was how, really, the Hansel-and-Gretel demon got her--not because Joyce was a book-burning fruitcake, but because she was so kind. The thought of bad things happening to little kids caught her hook, line and sinker.

She'd even spoken sweet words over Patches the Zombie Cat.

"Angel," Giles answered for himself, then his eyes got that look. That bad look Buffy'd been ignoring for the past year. She saw it plainly now. "It was Angel, wasn't it? Or Angelus--that's what he calls himself, but they're the same, aren't they, only the one broods, and the other's cruel?"

"Oh, lots of words now," Buffy said, trying to make a joke of it.

"The demon's always there, you see, with the soul laid thinly atop it--only the demon can reach through, can't it? It can even tempt my sweet Buffy to do things that she oughtn't."

"Mom, if you're not too busy, I could use some help here. And Giles, you're gonna have to work a little too."

"Don't change the subject," Joyce told her.

"What subject? What are you asking? How I could know what Angel did to Giles and still take him back as my boyfriend? I didn't know. I didn't ask Giles what had happened. I was stupid. Crazy. Bad. I don't know."

"No," Giles said. "None of those things. You are my wonderful Buffy. It would not be possible for me to love you more."

"Angel did that to him?" Joyce asked.

"Let it go, mom."

"I can't, Buffy. I find you here in bed with Mr. Giles, acting as if...as if, I don't know. I can't put it into words. It's disturbing."

"Let's try to get you up off the floor, okay?" Buffy told Giles, not wanting to deal with her mother.

"I'm quite able to get up on my own," he answered. "I did it before."

"Yeah, and you fell on your butt. Hence, the floor-sitting. Let me help. Really."

Giles tried to give her a glare, but it lacked wattage. He proved her halfway wrong, though, by hauling himself up against the edge of the mattress. "There? You see?"

Buffy caught him before he could fall down again. "Yeah, Giles, and I'm sure my mom appreciated the free show." She sounded kind of mean, even to herself, and she knew Joyce wouldn't fail to notice.

"Buffy," her mother cautioned, in that I'm-so-disappointed-in-you mom-voice.

"The free--?" Giles began, a little slow on the uptake. "Oh, dear Lord!"

"Now you say that," Buffy answered, her voice slightly more under control, though her throat felt tight and she wanted to cry, the way it seemed like she'd been doing nearly nonstop for weeks. Why did her mom have to say this stuff? There'd been so much badness, and she'd dealt, and moved on--so why did Joyce have to drag it up all over again? Why, since she'd finally figured things out, couldn't she just be allowed to go with it?

She needed to focus. Carefully, tenderly as she could, she helped Giles ease back against the pillows. "Lie still, sweetie," she told him, "Rest a little. Moira's coming soon to give you your shot, and we'll get her to drive us to your place, okay?"

"Whatever you think is best," he answered.

"You hurting bad?"

"No, no, not at all. I'm fine." Giles smiled up at her as well as he could, and Buffy touched his damp forehead, noticing the gray tinge that had come in under his skin again.

"Are you lying to me?"

"I wouldn't," he told her. "I'm so sorry to have shamed you, Buffy. Have I some clothes anywhere?"

"I'll bring them in a minute." Buffy glanced at her mom. "I guess we should have gone to your place last night, after all."

"You've lost the handcuffs," Giles said. "I'm so glad. I never liked them."

Buffy almost laughed. Giles, Mark 2, certainly was the master of the incriminating remark.

"Let's not talk too much about those, huh?" Buffy wanted to make some glib comment about hiding the whips and chains under the bed, but decided that Joyce was mad enough--she didn't really want to completely trip her trigger. She forced herself to remain glib-free.

"They hated me, both of them," Giles said suddenly. "Only I didn't know. I thought Angel was my friend, you see."

"Giles, please," she said. "You're not helping."

"Only a little over a week ago," Joyce told her, "You let Angel nearly kill you, because he was the most important man in the entire world--and now you say you're in love with Mr. Giles? Buffy, what's going on in your head? What are you thinking? This is just...just too much. It's like that awful man and his stepdaughter."

Once upon a time, her mom had been a huge fan of Woody Allen movies. Now she wouldn't even say the guy's name.

"Okay, mom, for starters, it's nothing like that. Giles isn't my dad, or my stepdad, or anything. You guys...did what you did, and it was embarrassing for you, or nice, or whatever. Anyway, you were under the influence. You didn't mean it, any more than you meant to burn Will and me at the stake, right? Giles is just a guy who happens to be older. And I--" Buffy felt her shoulders slump. She really didn't want to deal any more. The good words just weren't coming to her.

"You've made an awful lot of mistakes," Joyce said.

"Like I'm the only one? What about you and dad?"

"Yes, that was a mistake, but we're trying to make it better. Maybe our mistake was that we didn't try sooner."

"Dad's gonna hurt you," Buffy said in a flat voice. "You'll just get it together, and away he'll slime. You know this, right?"

Joyce gave her stubborn look. Buffy knew that one well: she had her own version.

"If you're getting back together for me, because you think that'll make me a good kid again--please, spare yourself the grief. I love dad, sure, but you can't rely on him. He'll be irresponsible, and he'll turn on that ol' Hank Summers charm to weasel out of it. You'll nag and yell and start getting those headaches, and then you'll be cranky all the time." Buffy looked up, watching Joyce's face.

Her mom had beautiful skin, and usually you didn't see a wrinkle there--not that Joyce was really old enough to be into the seriously wrinkly zone. When she was really stressed or sad, though, the little lines showed.

Buffy had never seen as many lines as she saw that morning.

"You aren't gonna be okay, are you?" Buffy said to her mother, turning completely away, so that those lines and that look were out of her sight. Giles, helpful as ever, had slipped right off into dreamland. She took his good hand, feeling the slight pressure of his fingers against her own, as if a time never came when he wasn't at least partly aware of her.

"I don't always do stuff for the reasons you think," Buffy said. She could still feel her mother's presence behind her in the doorway, the pressure of Joyce's sad gaze on the back of her head.

"Then why do you do them, Buffy? Because I'm damned if I understand. I feel as if you're sliding further and further away from me, and nothing I can do or say will ever bring you back home."

They glared at each other, two stubborn Summers women, and into the cold silence came Moira's voice. "So sorry, am I interrupting?"

"No," Buffy said, aware that her teeth were clenched together, which make her voice sound funny. How come she could handle all this with her dad, but with Joyce she just fell apart?

Because her mom cared, and she cared about her mom, and all Joyce's doubts were justified, reasonable, understandable--okay, they were also wrong, but her mom had no way of knowing that, any more than Buffy had a way to explain. She felt horrible. Just horrible. A sick feeling crept into the pit of her stomach, but that stubbornness wouldn't go away.

"No," she told Moira. "Giles and I were just about to get ready to leave."

* * * * *

Giles woke in his own bed, with no extremely clear memory of how he'd gotten there, only that Buffy had been involved, and his old friend Em.

He spent a few moments, as he had when Buffy asked him his own names, trying to remember all of what Em was called, but the words simply wouldn't come--instead, he received a sudden, vivid image of his friend as a girl, wearing his leather coat over her tatty summer frock, running and running through the dark, wet London streets. The panicked sound of her breathing returned to him, and the fire of his own breath in his lungs as he'd tried to keep up. There had been a bridge, and a large black car, a hatchet-faced old woman and a stern, handsome, terrifying man. Mr. Stanley, the man was called. Mr. Stanley, of the Watchers' Council. His stepfather.

Thirty years later, the vision of his stepfather's face still filled Giles with a hatred so intense he was nearly nauseated--and yet Mr. Stanley had never once touched him, in either love or hatred, or so much as raised his voice in anger. Everything Mr. Stanley did, he had done with his eyes, and with his calm, rational, reasonable voice.

Every moment of crushing self-doubt Giles ever suffered, then and since--and there had been many, far too many to count--had come to him phrased in his stepfather's measured tones. Mr. Stanley had made living with fierce, feral Em in the rat-infested darkness beneath London's streets seem a paradise compared to spending even one moment more of his life within the snug walls of his mother's house in Salisbury. Living with Em, who'd never cried, who'd never closed her eyes when she kissed, who'd made love to him in brief, nearly-brutal explosions that made one feel that one came inside something like a fireworks display--brilliant, beautiful, fiery and hurtful--had truly been a heaven as compared to that hell.

Giles gasped at the memory, pushing it forcibly from his mind. Why would that image return to him with such power, when kind, simple, fresh ones would not? When he could not remember names or places, or even string words together, as he knew that, quite recently, he'd done with ease?

He had been at Buffy's house, in her sweet, girlish room with its warm pastel colours and her soft toys set aside on the floor. They'd even names, he felt fairly certain, and perhaps she'd still hugged them close to her when she'd lain alone in the night. Such a contrast it provided to his own, dark-beamed, bachelorish room. He tried to imagine her bright outfits hung beside the drab tweeds in his closet, her sparkly little brooches and clips strewn over the bureau-top, her plethora of odd footwear tumbled over his floor. Had she come here with him, his treasure, his beloved--or had she remained behind in her mother's home?

Better, perhaps, for her to have stayed with...Joyce. Yes, Joyce. That was Buffy's mum's name. He kept forgetting. So young, she still needed her mother, needed Joyce's love and approval, and yet, he wished...

There had been a battered van, he recalled--not Oz's--and Joyce's voice, speaking words that could not be taken as kind, followed by Em's crisp replies. Giles remembered Buffy weeping as she helped him dress himself, almost more hindrance than help. She'd kept presenting him with what seemed endless items of clothing, half of them turned wrong-side-to.

And Buffy was here, in his bedroom. She wept, still, sitting cross-legged on the side of his bed, her deceptively fragile shoulders hunched in misery. He felt so very sorry, and so sad for her.

Giles's thoughts moved with the slowness of cold syrup, and the frustration made him nearly furious. He must make an effort, for Buffy's sake. He'd be no use to her as he was--and yet the smallest attempt only seemed to further drain his strength, and to increase the throbbing in his skull. He must ignore it. He must try.

"Buffy?" Giles said. His voice came out odd, not like his own voice at all. Buffy, at any rate, wept too passionately to have heard him.

Giles turned, watching her, wishing, rather, that her form would not show such an alarming tendency to multiply in his blurred sight. Yes, additional effort was definitely called for. He forced himself to sit, barely stifling a cry as a hundred arrows of pain stabbed through his body and that now-familiar corkscrew of discomfort twisted down from his skull. God, what had he done to himself? It was absolutely appalling.

For her, though, he could ignore the arrows, just as he'd ignored those that resulted from Angelus's...attentions. He touched Buffy carefully, on the arm, mindful of her reflexes, knowing better than to alarm a distracted Slayer.

"Buffy, what is it?" he asked her, thankful that the words came out as intended, not all twisted about.

She would not turn to him, hiding, instead, her face in her hands. Giles reached over to switch on the bedside lamp, fumbling a bit with the difficult little knob.

"I wish you still remembered stuff," was all she answered.

"I know, dearest." Ignoring the shrieks from his tortured muscles, he drew her onto his lap, holding her close. The weight of her head on his bruised shoulder was enough to make him want to scream. Spasms of agony ran though his body--but she needed him, needed his comfort, and Giles hoped that she could not feel the tremors.

"I know how much you love your mum," he told her, guessing at the cause of the tears. "The last thing I should ever want to do is come between you."

"You didn't help very much back there." Buffy swiped at her tears with both hands, childlike in that gesture, if in nothing else.

"I know," Giles answered, though he could actually remember nothing of what had been said. "I shall try to improve. Honestly."

"Like that's fair to you?" she said. "I'm upset 'cause my mommy's mad at me, so you have to pretend to be all fine, to take care of me?"

"I am fine," he told her. "Only a little sore, and that's to be expected." He fell silent, the mere effort of forming those short sentences having utterly drained him.

"Yeah, you're fine. And that's why you're dead white and shaking like a leaf. Good try, Giles."

He smiled a little in an attempt to reassure her. "Why don't you call Willow and Xander? The three of you ought to do something you enjoy." He paused, gathering strength. "Go to that Bronze place you all like so well."

Giles felt proud of himself, rather, that he'd remembered what they liked to do, and by what name the place was actually called.

Buffy quickly burst his little balloon. "Just 'The Bronze,' Giles. Not 'that Bronze place.' And like I'm really going to leave you here all on your own. 'Cause that turned out so well last time."

"There may actually be limited numbers of vampires to whom I've granted standing invitations into my home." For that had been, he remembered, exactly what occurred: he'd known a girl named Helena. A Slayer named Helena, and she'd been turned. That creature, who had once been a girl he'd loved, as if he'd been her uncle, or her older brother, lay at the root of all this pain. "I shall have to be left on my own at some point," he told Buffy.

"Just not yet." Carefully, Buffy slid from his lap. "You gonna say how much it hurt to have me sit there?"

"Not bloody likely," he answered, though the relief was so great he could hardly catch his breath.

Buffy turned, rising on her knees, facing him. "Ya know, Rupert sweetie, I kinda love you. If I give you a big kiss, are you going to be trying not to scream the whole time?"

"'Rupert sweetie?'" Giles attempted one of his raised-eyebrow looks, feeling the pull of his bruised skin.

Buffy laughed at him, but kindly. "You know, I'd give those patented Giles-looks a rest for right now. They're not really working--you look like Wile E. Coyote post-Acme bomb."

"I've no idea what that means."

"Sorry, Giles, but if we're gonna be together, you'll have to learn--it's more fun if I don't have to explain myself all the time."

"Delightful."

"Hey, just think of it as studying the ways of a primitive culture--you'll do fine. And I promise to learn at least a big word a day. How's that?"

He felt himself turning upon her a troubled look--how could he explain what he'd lost to this exquisite, brave young woman, who loved and needed him so? What if, for all his trying, he could never regain enough to be truly of use to her?

"Or not." Buffy stroked his cheek with the tenderest of touches. Giles shut his eyes, turning his face into her hand. He must be honest with her. They must have now, no further lies.

"Buffy--" he said, uncertain of how to even frame the words that he must say. "I-- I--"

"I asked you to lie to me once, do you remember?" Buffy asked, as if reading his mind.

Confused by her words, Giles shook his head. He could not. Honestly, he could not.

"I wanted you to tell me that things eventually got easy, that everything would someday come down to happily-ever-after if we just held on long enough--and you did. You told me that, but in a way that I knew you meant it wasn't true. And even when I asked you, I already knew." Her fingers brushed his jaw with a feather touch. She gave him the tenderest of kisses, her mouth tasting, very lightly, of mint and honey. His Buffy could be so gentle when she chose, despite her strength, and so caring.

"I know what is true, though," Buffy continued, pulling back, her eyes gazing into his.

Giles wished that he could see her more clearly, without his vision doing what his young friends might call "fuzzing out."

"I know that it's true that you cared for me when no one else would," she said. "When I kept choosing Angel. When I ran away, and everyone else got mad. When I did every stupid thing I could think of, you never stopped loving me. I'll never in a thousand years be able to make it up to you, Giles. Don't add anything else to my personal bucket o' guilt. Let me take care of you now. Don't pretend." Her strong little hands wove into his hair. She kissed his mouth once more, then directly between his brows.

With sudden fierceness, low-voiced, Buffy told him, "Do you think I care if you're not up to reading the big, musty books right now? If you never are? If I need someone to ready moldy books, I can always get Wesley to do that for me. What I need is you, the guy-you, who loves me. I'm not gonna let you hurt yourself. Even without anything else, you had a really bad concussion, and you shouldn't be going out anywhere or stressing about anything for at least a couple weeks."

"But I'm--"

Buffy's finger rested across his lips, shushing him effectively. "Nope, no arguments. We Slayers are very stubborn."

"I've noticed," Giles told her drily.

"So, you just lie back while I get stuff ready. I'm not accepting any arguments here."

Giles did as she told him, content to lie back and watch the blurred golden shape of her move about the room, making whatever mysterious arrangements she'd planned for him--nothing too energetic, he hoped, sinking into a not-entirely-unpleasant lethargy. He could hear water running in the next room, and smelled a pleasantly herbal odour waft toward him on steam-permeated air.

Buffy returned to him a few minutes later, a blue-glass bottle in her hands. "Will gave this to me," she said. "She got it at the magic stuff store, but I don't think it's really magic. And at least its herbs so it doesn't smell too girly." She appeared to be reading the label. "There's lavender, and rosemary, and aloe, and elder flower--it's supposed to destressify you."

Giles smiled a little at the made-up word.

"And I figured that, since you're too banged-up for a nice back-rub, that a nice, hot bath would do the trick instead--I know your muscles are just in knots. I'm warning you now--fussing will ensue, and you're gonna take it, mister, and not say anything snide."

"Yes, dear."

"Sorry. Little bit of snideness detected there. It's my turn to boss you around for a change." Buffy helped Giles rise, steadying him until a measure of his sense of balance returned. He surprised himself by how heavily he needed to lean on her shoulder as he walked--but so far from minding, Buffy seemed to enjoy being able to lend him her aid. She divested him of his clothing in quick order, and Giles was surprised again by how little shame he felt.

He sighed in contentment as she helped him into the large tub, and the herbal-scented bubbles and warm water lapped around his body. The tightness in his muscles began to ease almost at once, and the fragrant steam soothed the soreness in his eyes. Buffy made sure his injured hand was propped comfortably on the side of the tub, where water couldn't get into the wound. She knelt beside him on the tile and wet a soft cloth, stroking his face, his throat and his chest until he felt nearly ready to purr, in much the manner of a contented cat.

"Wake me up in a fortnight, would you, love?" he murmured.

"I would, if I knew how long that was." Buffy spread the cloth flat on his chest, the heat of it soaking through into his skin.

"Two weeks," Giles answered, nearly half asleep. "And after the first week, I should like very much for you to join me."

"Hmn...this tub is big enough, isn't it? And after two weeks, when you've turned into the human prune?"

"I might consent to emerge. And we might spend another fortnight together, and another." Giles opened his eyes, seeing her face just over his, so lovely and golden, so filled with the most tender regard.

"And then?" Buffy smiled, that perfect, incandescent smile that lighted his world

"Would you fetch me something, my love?" He felt his voice begin to tighten with emotion. "There's a black lacquer box, about the size of a shoebox, on the uppermost shelf of my closet. Will you bring it down?"

"What, now?"

"If you please. I promise not to slip beneath the surface of the waters and drown."

"I'm gonna hold you to that," Buffy said, leaving him.

Once she'd gone, Giles felt his heart begin to beat too fast. The breath began to stick in his throat. What if this was too sudden? What if it frightened his dear girl away? Yet he knew that if he let the moment pass, months or years might go by before he could bring himself again to this point. Better to take advantage of his giddiness, and the way his injuries weakened his sometimes nearly-overwhelming restraint.

Buffy returned with the box in her hands, shaking it a bit in her curiosity. "It sounds like it's full of pictures. Won't the steam be bad for them?"

"It's something else we're looking for just now. Down at the bottom, in the leather case."

Buffy set the box on the floor, prising off its lid. Her hands trembled a little, he noticed, almost as if she'd expected what she discovered within. Giles found it hard to read her face as she regarded him, and he stretched out his hand for the small leather case.

Giles palmed one of the things he found inside, and passed the box back to her. Buffy placed it on the floor by her knee, mindful of setting the now-damp leather atop the old photographs.

"Buffy, may I--?" He sat up, reaching out toward her. Buffy's unsteady fingers brushed his. She bit her lower lip, her great sapphire eyes beginning to fill up, again, with tears. Giles slipped the twisted band of old gold, with its stone that matched those eyes, onto the ring finger of her left hand, clasping his own wet hand around hers.

"Once, in another country," he said, remembering this, at least, clearly. "I swore an oath to you, body and soul. The men who administered that oath did not believe in it, but I always did. Always, my dearest. I mean it more now, in this moment, than ever before. I would not have allowed you to come out of your mother's house, if I weren't prepared to offer you more. Will you have me, Buffy, as your own? I promise myself to you, with everything that's mine, by everything I hold sacred or dear. I promise to love and cherish you forever, for all the fortnights of our lives."

The tears spilled over Buffy's lower lids. Her face looked pale and still and filled with emotion, and for a heart-stopping moment, Giles feared that she would turn away.

"Buffy?" he said softly.

In the end, she ended up with him in the water after all, half the contents of the bath--and little islands of bubbles--spread halfway across the floor.

In the end, Giles nearly did pass out--but not from his weakness, or his injuries. Rather, the sensation came to him from the absolute completeness of his joy.

* * * * *

An old DeSoto had been parked across three spaces, just outside the entrance to the park. Maria Del Ciello ran her fingers over the dusty blue paint-job as she walked by, and grinned--the car's windows had been blacked out in patches, and she figured she knew well enough who the vehicle belonged to--she'd seen him on enough tapes back at the Watchers' Compound.

Sure enough, there he was, over by the kiddie roundabout. Long, black-leather coat, red shirt, black jeans. Burned-blonde hair, though his brows and lashes remained dark. Good jaw, good shoulders, tall. Maria strolled over to the roundabout, perching on top of the steel-pipe handholds, the platform turning a little beneath her weight. Spike--for of course it was he--wasn't a messy eater, that was good. He did things with style.

The British vamp finished drinking and wiped his mouth, letting the woman he'd chosen for his evening's victim slide out of his arms, drained dry in one go. This one had to be good--he'd killed two Slayers and literally nailed Moira Bannister-St. Ives. Maria remembered seeing that horrific scar when the two of them had showered in the women's teeny locker room at the Compound. She'd wanted to touch it, she remembered, to run her fingers over Her Ladyship's taut, flawless skin, and then feel the ridged interruption in that flawlessness. She hadn't dared. She'd never dared touch Emmy, except in the course of normal combat, much as she'd wanted to.

And now, just the night before, she'd seen Moira, object of her affections, kissing her arch-enemy, Wesley Wyndham-Price. First at the edge of Rupert's special forest, then in the rain, outside Her Ladyship's hotel. Maria had opinions on the subject. Emmy and Wesley--this was not to be. Not while she had breath in her body--okay, well, a little late for that. But not while she walked the earth. No way, no how.

Spike noticed Maria's attention and scowled. She lit a Camel, blowing a smoke ring in her fellow vampire's direction.

"Bon appetit?" she asked.

"Fair enough." Spike didn't lose his scowl. "And 'o the 'ell are you, when you're at 'ome."

Midlands accent, but not too heavy to understand, the way some of them were.

"The previous comment was brought to you by the letter 'H,'" Maria laughed. "Nice ta meetcha, Spike. How's tricks?"

The vampire shrugged. "Can't complain. Bloody dull these days. You ta blame fer that?"

"Blame my sire--she's the one who tried to stir things up. With the help of the Watchers' Council."

Spike lit a smoke of his own and climbed up beside her on the roundabout, appraising her with frank interest. Maria knew she looked good: leather pants and white tank top, thigh-length leather coat, her wild hair twisted into a French braid. Once cool thing about vampirism was that you could dress in black leather in California all summer long without turning into a sweaty mess. She'd started wearing again all the silver rings they'd made her take off back at the Compound, with their bloody Rules of Dress and Comportment, so everybody could look like a friggin' clone of suddenly-not-so-Windy Wesley.

"Wot about that bleedin' forest, sprung up where th' Factory used to be? Reeks o' magic, that does."

"Rupert." Maria blew three smoke rings in quick succession, sending each one chasing after its predecessor.

"The Slayer's Rupert? The old, stuffy Watcher-bloke?"

"One and the same." Maria reached into the breast pocket of her coat, pulling out a bottle. "Care for a nightcap?" She drank, then passed the fifth his way.

"No bollocks." Spike drank too. "Then why'd he let--?"

"Let Angel do what he did? Who knows. How much do you know about magic? Maybe that kind's something you never want to let loose." Maria jumped down, making the roundabout spin. "Catch you later, Spike. Feel free to keep the bottle."

Maria sauntered away, heading for Willie's--knowing, somehow, that the Brit vampire was bound to follow.

And so he did. In fact, he beat her there. She found him sitting all alone at the bar with a boilermaker in front of him. Maria threw a sideways grin his way, then fed a couple quarters into the jukebox. A heavy bass-line filled the otherwise empty room, the opening riffs of Chris Isaak's "Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing."

"C'mon, Spikey, dance with me," Maria said, shedding her coat across the back of a chair.

Spike watched her a minute, then slid off his stool. He kept his coat on, and Maria slipped her hands in underneath it, pushing her fingers into his back pockets, feeling up her fellow vampire's taut ass--just for the point of interest; she really didn't care. His hips pulled into hers, tight and close. They moved together, perfectly.

"Why 'aven't I 'eard of you before?" he asked, his cold lips close to her chilly ear.

"I'm the new girl in town," Maria answered, as the music throbbed through her. "But you won't get off treating me like a freshman--remember, a Slayer made me, and I was only a few Latin verbs short of being a Watcher. Anything you want to know, I can tell."

Spike nuzzled her ear. Maria remained unmoved. "So, I'm interested. Wot's th' plan?"

Maria whispered the words to him, delighted when her new partner in crime gave her a big laugh, then a smile.

Someone knocked on the door around seven-thirty, and Buffy answered cautiously, rising on her tip-toes to peer out through the peephole. She was treated to the sight of Xander's face, distorted by the peephole glass so that his nose looked huge and the rest of his head tiny.

Buffy opened the door. Willow was there too, with a couple video boxes in her hands. Xander had a big bag of stuff that smelled so good her stomach instantly started to rumble. Both of her friends looked as if they'd been whacked in the face with shovels, and Willow's newly horrible hair now hung in lifeless, over-conditioned squiggles around her face.

"Don't look at it," Willow ordered, then asked, "Do you think maybe Em knows some good-hair magic?"

"I'd definitely check with her on that," Buffy answered. "Believe me, it can't hurt. Other than that, how are you guys?"

"Remember those Sisterhood of Jhe babes?" Xander answered. "You know, that time when I asked you to find my spine, and you told me to stay fray-adjacent? Multiply."

"By about a hundred," Willow agreed, rolling her shoulders to ease out the kinks. "Can we come in?"

"Oh! Sure!" Buffy stepped back from the door.

"We tried calling your place, but your mom said you weren't home," Will continued. "She sounded mad. You didn't--?"

Buffy bent to whisper in her friend's ear. Willow started giggling, putting her hand over her mouth in a hopeless attempt to stifle the sound.

"Oh, Buffy! No! Your mom and dad both? Oh, how awful. It's not funny. I know it's not."

"I hope someday your mom and dad catch you," Buffy told her, a little miffed.

"But it wouldn't be the same--Oh! Oh! I'm sorry. Shutting up now. Somber."

"Your mom and dad caught you naked in bed with G....someone?" Xander looked simultaneously intrigued and--he didn't seem quite able to hide it--disgusted.

Willow, being a girl, was struck with ring-radar. Her eyes flashed downward to Buffy's hand, then up again, a little smile playing over her mouth. Buffy felt happy-tears come into her eyes, and Willow gave her a little nod.

"He's doing okay, then?" Will asked quietly.

"Not great, great. But okay. Definitely okay." Buffy hugged Willow first, then Xander. "I wanted to thank you guys again, for last night. You really are the best of the bestest friends ever."

"Our pleasure, Ma'am," Xander answered, in a funny, fake, Western-sheriff voice. Then, in his own voice, he added. "We're glad you're all right. You scared us, Buff."

"I'm sorry," she told them, her own voice sounding temporarily small and fragile. They all stood quiet for a minute, considering what they'd almost lost, for the second time in two weeks. "I love you guys, you know that?"

Then they all had to hug again. Group hug, just the Slayer and her original Slayerettes.

"So, uh," Xander said. "We brought Chinese. To--you know--break the Chinese food jinx."

Buffy smiled at him. "You want plates, or do we just eat out of the boxes?"

"Start with plates and then ignore them," Willow decided. She went to put her videos down on the coffee table, pausing to kneel beside the couch, where Giles had been napping, but now appeared to be at least semi-awake. "Hey, you," she said, stooping forward to kiss his cheek. "How are you feeling? Buffy taking care of you?"

It took Slayer hearing, from across the room, to hear Willow whisper, "Congratulations, I'm so happy for you," into Giles's ear. She held his hand gently for a minute, looking down into his eyes.

Buffy didn't feel the least bit jealous. She knew how much her best friend and her Watcher--sweetie--no, fiancee loved each other. If Giles had "a father's love" for anybody, the way that jerk from the Watchers' Council said, that person would be Willow. And Willow had already told Buffy that she loved Giles like family.

A little bit stiffly, Will got to her feet, and to Buffy's surprise, Xander took her place. The sight of Xander trying to be gentle and careful was almost comical, but he did okay. He was helping Giles to sit up, fussing with pillows, and Giles was taking it, patiently--or maybe really appreciating the help. Xander sat on the coffeetable, and the two of them talked, Xander looking intense.

Buffy remembered what her best guy friend had said, when he'd come in with all his luggage, about needing Giles. It could be that he needed Giles like a dad, the same way Willow did--kind of funny, really, to think of her two best buds being almost like her stepkids, but they were all family, anyway. Maybe the most family any of them would ever have.

She thought of her mom, and that made her almost, but not quite, want to cry. Will had started tugging her toward the kitchen, just about dying to know the sitch. Behind the cabinets, Buffy whispered out the whole story, and then the two of them did start crying, though Willow said over and over again, "I'm so happy, I'm so happy," and looking at the ring, and crying a little more. There was magic in it, Willow said, and made Buffy remove the band--which by some fluke, fit her perfectly--so that she could read the tiny Latin words engraved inside.

"So, what does it say?" Buffy asked her friend. "'Cause Giles had kinda hit overload by that point, and couldn't quite spit it out. He told me the ring belonged to his great-great grandmother, though, so it's old old."

"'You hold the whole of my heart,'" Will said, crying again. "Oh, Buff, that's so romantic--and so true. He really does feel that way." They hugged and boo-hooed a little more, until Xander showed up in the kitchen, wondering if they ever got to eat.

Hurriedly, they got down the plates, while Xand went to find Giles's spare glasses in his study.

Later, Buffy remembered that night as one of her warmest times. Sitting there in Giles's living room with three of the people she loved best in the world, laughing and talking as they ate the Chinese food. Xander, with chopsticks, was dangerous--if there'd been any vampires in the vicinity, they'd have been staked a hundred times over. Finally, Willow got up to find him a fork, and forced Xander to use it: she'd been sitting next to him, and was probably afraid she'd lose an eye.

Giles drank some of the egg-drop soup, but then seemed content to watch them quietly. Though Buffy wished she could get him to eat more, she didn't want to press the point in front of their friends. When she'd finished her own meal, she slid up onto the couch, taking his head onto her lap, and many times, when they were supposed to be watching the movies, she'd catch his eyes watching her instead--or her own eyes straying to him.

The way she felt for him, and labeled "love," felt so much different from the way she'd felt for Angel, and called by the same name, that the two feelings weren't alike at all.

With Angel she'd always wanted to be alone, secret, hidden. She didn't want anything to intrude, and she never really wanted to tell--she never had told much of anything, except to Willow. Buffy had come to accept, eventually, that her friends wouldn't ever feel comfortable about Angel, or want very much to be around him--the truth was, Angel never had been a whole lot of fun to be around--and she'd put up this whole "us against the world front."

Angel would be lurking and brooding for as long as he walked the earth, and he'd never change, never get any happier, or any better--and Buffy, despite the lies she told herself, would never have been able to be happy with him.

With Giles, her Giles, she could be alone, and happy, or she could share their home with their friends--and, someday, when she was older, maybe even with their children. Buffy couldn't help but smile at the thought of a bunch of mini-Gileses crawling around in their little tweed rompers. Xander was still dealing with a little bit of the ewww factor, but as she'd said before, Giles was his and Willow's family--in any crisis, they turned to him. She didn't want, or need to hide--and if people had a problem with the age-thing that was really just too bad. Sometimes Giles was a little stuffy, or serious, or a bit caught up in his work--but those were just his quirks, because he was a passionate man. He was interested in things, he was involved. She could make him feel happy, and tender and proud. He'd had darkness in his past, maybe big darkness, but he'd moved forward from that time. Instead of that hard, scared lump that Angel put into the pit of her stomach, Giles gave her a warm, comfortable, mushy feeling.

Even the way he was right now--okay, that was a little scary. But scary because she was worried for him, the way you'd be for anyone you loved when they weren't feeling well. Not scary because he was going to lose his soul and try to murder all her friends.

Giles snuggled closer to her, his eyes beginning to drift shut. Buffy touched his cheek, and he turned his face into her hand, perfectly content, perfectly trusting. Buffy's heart felt all big and heart-shaped, like it was filling up her chest.

On the TV screen, people were telling stories in very soft, beautiful Irish voices, and water lapped gently on the shores of low green islands where seals swam, and the cutest little blond kid ran wild. The movie made her feel sleepy and sad and happy all at the same time. At the end, when the family came home to where they were supposed to be all along, and the little boy ran into his grandma's arms, she started to cry again. Giles woke when the tears fell on his face, and gazed up at her, but when he looked into her eyes, he could tell nothing was wrong.

"Liked it, did you?" he asked, touching her cheek with his open hand.

Buffy snuffled and smiled, answering, "One of these days, you'll have to stay awake."

"One of these days, I shall." He drifted back to sleep, cradled in her arms, and on the floor, huddled up together, holding each other, Willow and Xander slept too.

* * * * *

Wesley Wyndham-Price woke to find himself alone, and already, after such a short time to become unaccustomed to that state, felt the lack keenly. Some instinct brought him limping from the bedroom out into the lounge, which the Americans called the living-room, as if one did not actually live within the other rooms of one's house. He found his new bed-partner there, dress