destructo-girl.com

"Lost"

Author: Gail Christison
Email: chriscln@ozemail.com.au

That night they sensed the beginnings of a change in the weather. The wind had shifted and the air ceased carrying the smell of the ocean on it.

"We are going to start putting the shelter together tomorrow, right?" Buffy asked, stretching stiffness out of her back. Slayer or not, the amount of heavy carrying she'd been doing had taken its toll on muscles and spine. Her seedpods lay discarded. Inside they were almost all woody pith with only tiny cavities. It would take forever to carve out the hard pith and the swords were taking enough of a beating as it was.

Giles looked up from his toiling over the frayed stems they'd brought back earlier. He'd already stripped one entire stem into long, greenish-white stringy bits and was starting on another.

"Absolutely. I hope to have a supply of twine ready by the time we're ready to go to sleep."

He picked up a number of threads and began braiding and twisting them until, when he finally tied it off, he had a couple of feet of, not very pretty, twine, which by the way he was tugging on it to test for strength, wasn't going to break anytime soon.

"Good." He picked up a handful of the stripped pieces and handed them to Buffy. "You can help me get finished sometime before daybreak."

In the end they were finished only a few hours after sundown. They had shifted close to the fire to continue once the last of the light was gone, and didn't stop until Giles pronounced himself happy with the pile they'd amassed.

They were getting settled for the night, now on temporary beds of the leaves they'd brought back to the camp, when the night air was split by a yowling roar that Giles recognised immediately...the hackles rising on his neck and the gooseflesh all over his body attesting to the fact.

Buffy looked up at her companion, looking for an indication of whether she should be worried or not. One look at Giles' face, even just by firelight, was enough to make her go and pick up the swords and her stakes.

"Are we sleeping or watching tonight?" she asked, when he still hadn't moved moments later.

"What? Oh...you sleep. I'll stand watch tonight. If it's what I think it is, it's a large carnivore...feline...looks rather like an overgrown black leopard..."

"Um yes, actually. You frightened one off when I was down at the stream the other day."

"Apart from feeling rather stupid about facing my mortality in my birthday suit, I didn't want to alarm you any more than this place already does."

"Funny, I'm not that alarmed anymore. The bugs pretty much keep to themselves except for the bite-y things and those little beetles that run over you if you sit too long in one place, and while I'm pretty much still jonesing for ice cream and a bath with actual soap, and maybe toilet paper and coffee—not necessarily in that order, I'm dealing."

Their shared almost-smile of civilization withdrawal solidarity stayed with Buffy even when she woke the next morning and found Giles stretched out alongside her, sword close to his hand.

One green eye opened then closed again. "Not moving. Closed for stocktaking," he mumbled.

"I thought you were on sentry duty...and you were going to call me to take over...remember?"

Buffy touched his stubbly cheek, a rush of affection making her want to brush his sunburned forehead with her lips. She refrained, but got up without disturbing him any further.

When he finally stirred, much, much later, Giles thought he was dreaming. He sniffed again. Buffy had a low fire burning and she was crouched over it.

She looked up when she sensed him close to her back. "I thought you'd like something different. Well, not that different...but hey, you didn't have to cook it or catch it..."

The fire had burned down to a bed of red-hot coals on which Buffy had rested a wide, flat flagstone, probably a river stone, the size of a dinner plate but more or less pear shaped. Alongside her were roasted crab shells. On her stone was what looked very much like crab omelette.

"Yeah. Mrs. Duck was pretty pissed, but I only took the ones that slooshed when I shook them. The other four were pretty much on their way to becoming more little ducks. Sorry. I was sorta hoping to find something better than crab to put in it...but no corner store."

"On the contrary," Giles told her. "This is a marvellous idea...the stone, the eggs...which are quite cooked, by the way."

"Ooh...um. Oh." She stopped, stumped. "God, I thought of everything except something to put it on after it's cooked."

Giles thought for a moment then went over to their piles of building supplies and returned with two clean, but slightly wilted palm-leaves, which weren't much different to banana leaves.

Delighted, Buffy scraped omelette onto both with the razor clam shaped shell she'd been using to tend the eggs on the stone.

They ate in silence, savouring the new taste. The eggs were very rich...probably too rich if they were back in Sunnydale with hen eggs available, but both of them savoured them as though they were filet mignon...or jelly donuts.

Buffy sighed and took his soiled leaf. "We so have to find something other than crab. Another week of this and I'll never be able to face crab, ever again. My turn to wash up."

Giles smiled crookedly at the highly unoriginal humour. "Be my guest," he told her, still tired and stiff from the previous few days. He decided that a quiet day and perhaps an increased amount of calories, if they could find something more substantial to eat, would probably solve the problem.

"Apart from food collection, I think we'll stay in today. We need to rest, and not get too run down. We'll try and at least construct the side panels for the shelter instead."

It took Giles almost two hours of trial and error to find a way to form a rectangle with his heavy cane, and to secure the joins with his twine with enough strength to stop it from coming apart when he tried to stand it up.

"Wow. A geometric shape," Buffy announced, returning from a trip to the fruit tree.

"Ha, bloody ha," he muttered, selecting thinner canes and lashing them to his frame just as tightly.

Some time later Buffy came back from a fruitless search for more duck nests, and wandered over to look at his work. The thin canes were set a few inches apart, right across the frame.

He looked up at her with *that* look on his face. "Astonishing how you manage to detect these things."

Giles shook his head and went to his piles of leaves and stems. For the next couple of hours Buffy watched him weave heavy stems and stout leaves in turn, over and under the canes. It wasn't until he'd done the same thing again on the reverse side, to double the thickness, and pronounced the panel finished, that Buffy understood why he was using several different materials.

He hadn't just made a wall for their shelter...a pretty impressive wall, given the 'nothing' they had to build it with...especially the no tools, no nails and no anything part of that nothing...he'd made art out of it. It was a simple design, with diagonal slashes of red and pale gold in a basically green background.

Giles looked up at her, aware of the admiration and surprise in her voice. "Read about it. It's a relatively simple technique. I don't know how long it will stand up to a storm, but the leaves I chose should be water proof enough for a cloudburst or a quiet downpour."

By the time night fell they'd completed three more panels, Buffy practising her weaving as Giles constructed the other frames. Her design ideas were too grand and ended up looking like extremely demented Picasso, but neither of them cared. Once she'd mastered the weaving part, her work was as strong as his and it was speeding up the building process considerably.

The following day Giles experimented until he found a strong enough way to make the entrance panel, before turning his attention to a design for the roof. He felt if anything, more tired than ever but dismissed it as a concession to his age and the adjustment to their new living conditions.

"I don't want a flat roof if we can help it. The first deluge—and we don't know what kind of weather we might eventually get—and the weight of the water on a flat roof will probably collapse it. Nor do I want to provide a platform for one of our feline friends to park itself on and wait for breakfast to emerge."

Buffy looked up from weaving around the doorframe. "Good plan. So what are we going to do?"

"I'm not sure, but I think now is the time to construct the basic frame work so that I can better visualize what I have to do. Buffy watched him walk over to the edge of the clearing and put a hand on one of the giant tree trunks. She guessed he was going to have to cut it, and it was pretty clear by his sombre expression that he wasn't happy about the idea.

He hadn't realized that she'd moved up to stand at his elbow. "Not a great deal. It just doesn't seem...right. I will need you, and your sharpest stake, for the next part. We're going to use these two trees to anchor the rear of the shelter, and hopefully prevent it from blowing away during the first real gale that hits us."

The process of Giles marking out where he wanted the sapling poles to go using a now-battered sword point, followed by Buffy using her Slayer strength to increase the size of the hole, first by driving her stake into it with a rock, then using both hands and a lot of sweat to pull it back out again, was straightforward, but time consuming.

When she was done, Giles could fit the trimmed and cut-to-length pole into the hole she'd made. He watched approvingly as she drove it in with the rock until there was no way he would ever be able to pull it out again. The other tree was simply notched to the same depth, so the pole could slide, with a little bending by Buffy, snugly into place. Giles added a vertical pole, a couple of feet higher than the height of the cross beam, driven into the ground exactly halfway between the two anchor trees. Then he brought his rear panel, lacing it first to the horizontal pole, then to the central pole for added strength. With the 'wall' in place, he began joining lengths of twine to lash the frame of it to the tree trunks as well.

When he finally stood back, looking more tired than ever, Buffy gave it a shake to see how firm it was. She was surprised to find it almost rigid, at least without using Slayer strength on it. It wasn't huge, but she had to stand on tiptoe to look over it.

When Giles went to select the heavy saplings for the opposite corners, Buffy followed and put a hand on his arm.

"I'm fine," he told her and scratched at his rapidly thickening beard. "I'm never going to get this bloody thing finished if I keep gentleman's hours."

She 'helped' by driving the two three-inch diameter posts into the ground for Giles, as well as a couple of smaller ones for the doorframe. The foundation saplings were over seven feet long after trimming and stripping, and after digging holes about a foot deep with the sword, he'd asked her to drive them at least another foot into the ground, which, when the holes were filled, meant they were in no danger of moving again, either.

After that she simply fetched and carried, handing him twine and panels and finishing lacings where he directed. By the time the light was starting to fail, they had a pretty impressive enclosure, in Buffy's opinion.

As they sat and ate their fruit that night neither of them mentioned the fact that they still hadn't seen another sentient being, nor had there been any sign of the Scoobies trying to contact them, or rescue them, even though they had now been missing for a week...way too long to have not been missed...they hoped.

The next day Buffy set about really cleaning out the enclosure, smoothing the ground and making certain there were no holes in the earth where nasties of any kind, insect, reptile, or beast, could unexpectedly pop out to surprise them in the night, while Giles worked on the roofing problem. They'd eaten the last of the fruit for breakfast but Giles still looked like hell when they were done. And he still hadn't solved his roofing problem.

When he'd sat contemplating for almost an hour without moving, Buffy went and hunkered down next to him. "What exactly is the problem?"

He made an upside down "V" shape with his hands. "We need this, and we have the rear support in place." He pointed to the apparently over-sized centre pole supporting the back wall. "But I haven't come up with a strong enough solution for the front support that wont bisect the doorway," he explained in a flat, tired voice. Buffy sat with him, considering the problem for the next half hour.

"So we have to take one panel off and make another one. Move the doorway right across to the side...we're keeping it small, right? So it's easier to defend? So the doorway's what...a little over a couple of feet wide? I'm guessing the panel is a little wider than I am tall. So we take the old wall off, make a new one with the door on one side, put your central support pole in...and not only do you get the pointy part for the roof, you get something strong to swing an actual door on. Am I good or what?"

Her grin disappeared when she met Giles' eyes. There was a spark of amusement and acknowledgement of her ingenuity in them, but he looked really ill, which explained why he hadn't already solved the relatively simple problem himself. Somehow, in the last few hours he'd gone from looking just plain tired to scarily pale, in spite of the increasing tan. There were dark patches under his eyes and the normally animated green eyes were almost dead.

"You don't have a mirror. You're scaring me. You look bad; you have no colour. I mean: you make Spike look like the poster boy for healthy living. I'm serious here. It's not like we can drop by the emergency room."

He was convinced less by her babble than by the fear in her voice. He nodded very slowly.

"I don't know what it is. I've eaten nothing you haven't shared, except that last new fruit, so I don't believe I've been poisoned. We've checked each other for bites every morning and there's been nothing other than the same pest which has been biting you."

"Maybe you're getting allergic to something and I'm not?" She knew she was floundering, but she was more than a little frightened. "Or we could have missed a bite...something that didn't make a lump or a rash?"

"Perhaps. If I had some welts or a rash I might suspect contact poisoning from some of the materials we've used for the huts, but..." He stopped when Buffy lay a cool palm on his brow. It felt so, very, very good...

Alarm coloured her cheeks. "Giles, you're burning up! All I know for fever is aspirin-slash-doctor soonest. What did they do before aspirin?"

"Waited it out, I'm afraid." He took her hand reassuringly in his. "If it gets worse, build a fire and keep me close to it, but if the fever gets too high, you'll need to bathe..." He took a moment to deal with that. "You'll need to bathe me to reduce the fever...but you mustn't let me chill, either. If it doesn't kill me first, the fever will eventually burn out the virus, or the infection, if we're lucky...but if I chill and can neither fight this infection nor any other opportunistic one that happens by while I'm weakened, I will die."

She looked stricken. "Aren't there some, like, native remedies? Something you could whip up...even some magic, maybe? I know you can do it: I have our Eyghon talk etched into my brain. C'mon, Giles. There must be something else we can do!"

Again, Giles shook his head slowly. "If we were in the Amazon, perhaps, or if I had my books...I-I'm sorry."

Buffy's fingers tightened around his and she rested her head against his shoulder. "We'll get you through this. We have to."

While she could still afford to leave Giles alone, Buffy collected food—as much as she could find, to last for the next few days. Fruit; a number of live crabs, their claws trussed with bits of Giles' twine; live razor clams found by treading on one in the mud while chasing crabs, for that night; two new eggs just laid by mother duck to replace the stolen ones, and a half a t-shirt full of nuts Giles had been planning to try. They looked like a greeny-yellow version of a macadamia when you broke open the shiny, spherical, ebony shell. He hadn't been able to bring himself to risk the health of either of them while they were building, and had postponed the tasting ever since the day they'd first seen them, on their way back from harvesting cane.

She brought the turtle shell to the campsite. The crabs and whatever else that came in with the tide every day had skun it clean and on one of their breakfast forays Giles had worked it over with sand as an abrasive before leaving it to dry in the sun for the last couple of days. Even with her Slayer strength, it took a bit of work to fill the big shell and carry it back to camp, up the slope, but she managed. She also arranged a new bed of leaves, covered in layers by new 'banana' leaves to make a slightly softer sleeping surface for him. More than anything, she wished she had a blanket to cover him with. It was what you did when people were sick...

After eating some of the clams and a couple of pieces of fruit at her insistence, he lay down on it without argument, next to the fire she'd built, something she'd become very good at under Giles' tutelage. While he slept, she sat beside him working on a new entrance panel to replace the old one.

Giles was right. It was a simple technique and so long as she was willing to redo new things several times if necessary, like tying joints together, she was able, eventually, to replicate his work. The hardest part was unlacing the old panel and putting the new one on. Even pulling out the posts for the original doorframe was easier. She didn't want to cut the old twine used in the lacing, because she needed to recycle it where possible for the new work, so the knots had to be undone.

Giles continued to sleep so heavily that his breathing became almost stentorian. Buffy continued to work to put the energy she would have used worrying herself to death about Giles to good use while circumstances permitted. Measuring and cutting cane for the roof panels didn't take long. By the time the light was failing, she'd lashed a cross member to the two support poles for the roof, and laced her new roof panels to it, and to the base frame. She was certain Giles would want to strengthen it as soon as possible, but at least if it rained or stormed, or got really hot, they had some shelter from the elements now.

The small, triangular spaces in front and back she would worry about in the morning, if Giles' condition hadn't changed.

Buffy went and checked him for what felt like the hundredth time. Sometimes all she did was listen to his breathing, especially when he stopped snoring for any length of time. At others she would check his brow, or sponge his face, but he never stirred, not even to go to the bathroom or for a drink of water.

Nothing had changed. He wasn't snoring any more, but he was breathing deeply and rhythmically, and his brow still burned.

She moved her food store, Giles' wallet, glasses, which he was still only using for close work lest he break or lose them, and keys and all the spare weapons, as well as her growing assortment of seashell implements, into the new shelter. Since she couldn't yet secure it, she covered the food, particularly the crabs, with 'banana' leaves, the only protection they had against forest moochers for the time being.

After a quick visit to the stream to wash her cooking stone, herself and the all-purpose t-shirt so that she could use it to bathe Giles when necessary, Buffy was ready to settle for the night. She moved her sword and her favourite stake next to him, built up the fire to last for several hours on the deep bed of hot coals beneath it, and did one more perimeter check before settling herself on the ground next to him.

He was starting to get restless again...and hotter. Buffy dipped the cloth in the turtle shell, soaking it in cold water, and bathed his brow again. She stroked it slowly and tenderly, making soothing noises until he gradually fell back into a deep sleep, and continued to watch him for a long time afterward. The heat radiating from him was beginning to really frighten her.

Silence. Or not. For the first time, every noise, every call, every singing insect in the forest seemed like a cacophony. She could even hear that cat calling in the far distance, and another one answering it from even further away, moments later. Nature's kind of silence, she decided, looking down at Giles, was way overrated...

Sword and stake on the ground between them, Buffy curled up against Giles. If she didn't have a blanket for him, she could at least share a little bodily warmth...except he was radiating enough for both of them. She snuggled in tighter, her head on his shoulder, her leg once again hooked over his right one. It meant the sword and the stake were kind of under her, but she considered that preferable to having to reach blindly for them, or having to leave either weapon where they could be picked up and used against them.

She almost laughed to herself. Fat chance. The most intelligent thing they'd seen so far was probably Giles' cat. Otherwise all they'd seen was a collection of seabirds, shellfish, some elusive fish, reptiles, their ducks, a few hints in the canopy of small furry things moving around, but nothing that ever seemed to come down to the forest floor, and once or twice just glimpses of something deer-like darting through the trees much further upstream. And of course their turtle shell meant there were some of those around the place, too. Somewhere. Maybe.

Sleep was a long time coming, which made her all the more groggy when Giles began thrashing about a few hours later. This time bathing didn't seem to help. He was so hot, and his eyes were moving under his lids like he was in some kind of demented REM sleep pattern. Buffy took his wrist when nothing else worked, and tried to get a pulse. It was pretty pointless, but it kept her from screaming. One hundred and seventy beats a minute. She dug into her memories of Giles muttering about her fitness levels during and after training...especially if she hadn't done any for a month or so...and whimpered. One hundred and seventy was very bad at any time...and horrible when you were supposedly at rest.

He was still muttering, delirious and periodically throwing his arms around as though fighting something, when she ran out of water. She stared at the shell, trying to decide what to do. She really didn't want to leave him to collect more, and the bathing wasn't working anyway, but she had to get the terrifying fever down, somehow.

Buffy had super strength, so much so that she could bend steel a la superman, if she wanted to show off, but nature had gypped her in the size stakes. When it became apparent that carrying Giles the regular way was never going to work, she positioned him and then herself, so she could pull him up and over her shoulder in a fireman's carry.

Giles roused a couple of hours later, wondering if he'd had an accident of some kind.

"Buffy?" He shifted a little, his head pounding and the rest of him feeling like hell. He was up to his waist in water, except that his head was resting against...

"Huh?" Buffy was roused from a dream that she was in a bubble bath with Giles, drinking Chardonnay and Mocha. Then reality came into focus.

His voice was weak and halting. "I am. Tell me...tell me there's a good reason I'm... taking a bath in the middle of night."

"I didn't know what else to do." She carefully drew him off her chest and helped him into a sitting position.

After a moment to let the nausea and exhaustion subside, he looked around. "Well, I must say this is an original idea."

"Nah," she admitted. "Saw it in a movie...one of Will's. Kid trying to save a horse."

"A few new ones, all of which passed on by. Nothing totally scary...well, except maybe one pair of glowy red eyes downstream a bit, but whatever it was didn't come any closer. One cool thing...there are fish in here...I saw this flash in a pool of moonlight. It was a big fish, with a shiny blue strip on its side. I saw plenty of them, until I obviously fell sleep like a dork. You could have drowned..."

Buffy's face registered alarm, and then chagrin. "I think that makes two of us." It took her a good ten minutes to get enough circulation back into her lower body to get successfully to her feet. When she was confident that she was going to be steady enough on them, she bent and used all her strength to lift Giles to a more-or-less standing position.

Tears pricked her eyes. "No, don't be. It's not your fault. Besides," she added, holding him even more tightly and watching the current, "it's already halfway to the ocean. I'm going to try to get you back to camp now and get a fire going. It'll be dawn soon."

It was no good. He wasn't going to be able to walk. Even Giles conceded that he didn't have a lot of choice in the matter, instead simply closing his eyes again and enduring. The fireman's carry was a lot harder going back, especially the uphill bit, but she was eventually able to lower him to the ground near the fireplace.

Once the fire was blazing again, Buffy peeled off her wet clothes...well, almost all of them. Giles looked up at her when she finally approached him.

He looked down at his dripping clothes and bare feet. "Yes, they do," he said wearily.

They worked together, but Buffy had to do almost everything. The overwhelming intimacy of even unbuttoning his shirt, pulling it out of his jeans and slipping it off his shoulders, let alone undoing the pants again, this time without the shield of humour, was almost more than Buffy could deal with.

They were both shivering when they were done, Giles continuing to do so even as he dozed fitfully on the leaf bed Buffy shifted him to, in nothing but his wet boxers.

"Stupid," Buffy muttered to herself. She hadn't intended to fall asleep. They were both probably going to end up with pneumonia...or whatever the hell the equivalent was there...

She moved closer to the fire for several minutes, letting her body completely dry out and warm up in the radiant heat, even though it was starting to sting some, a fact which she was carefully ignoring. She reckoned she deserved the discomfort.

Her bra and panties, however, remained damp long after it started to feel like she was barbecuing. She sighed, removed the bra and hung it on the rack with the other sopping things, and went back to Giles. He was starting to warm up but only on the side closest to the heat. The rest of him was damp, or soggy, or both.

Buffy sat down on his cold side and started to pull him into her arms to share the heat she'd absorbed from the fire, until he started to pull back.

"Yeah. Bloody hell. C'mon, snuggle time. He hadn't opened his eyes and still didn't as she drew his unresisting body against hers so that his head was resting above her right breast, and the rest of him was more or less between her legs.

Somewhere in the fog he became aware of the sensation of skin on skin...a lot of skin. At the same moment Buffy started to move, wriggling them a little closer to the fire, distracting him from his thoughts and reminding him that his head felt like a watermelon...a throbbing watermelon.

"Yeah, right," Buffy said softly, stroking his hair. "I'm sorry I can't make it better. If it helps, you're way cooler than you were before."

She looked down at the tawny head with its growing number of grey hairs: hairs now mostly damp from the water or stuck to his sweaty brow. She couldn't decide if it was a good or bad sign that he was starting to perspire so much, but she wasn't about to let him chill again. Their clothes would take the rest of the morning to dry, even with her use of Slayer muscle to wring them out after she took them off. The only thing for it was to get comfortable and hope that by the time they woke up, the fever had broken.

'Comfortable' finally came down to making sure Giles was in a good position to stay as warm as possible, and that he wouldn't be too stiff and sore when he woke up. Buffy lay on her side with her body pressed hard against his, her shoulders turned enough so that she could cradle his head on her chest...which started out fine, with his face in the hollow of her shoulder. Until, restless and uncomfortable in his delirium, he ended up with his cheek cushioned against the soft curve of her breast.

After a moment to deal with that, Buffy found herself trying to imagine the reactions of the gang, were they to find them like that. The vision of Xander's reaction made her giggle softly to herself, while Willow's took longer to figure out.

For one thing it made her remember a couple of things she'd have preferred to remain forgotten. One was Faith's comment back in high school about Giles being cute... along with her 'I'd have him in a minute' attitude...a wig-some moment if ever there was one. The other was Willow and Tara's glowing report about Giles' singing at the Espresso Pump and how sexy it was. Buffy remembered how weird that made her feel: creeped by the idea of them being turned on by Giles, who had after all, been their school librarian and her Watcher, but...her brow furrowed. God, she'd had the exact same reaction to both Faith and Willow as she'd had to Olivia when she saw her in Giles' shirt: jealousy: mucho, mega jealousy.

At the time, however she'd called it 'wigging' because the other alternative simply hadn't borne contemplation...not with all the pining for Angel, and later, the Riley fiasco. She closed her eyes. ...

Giles moved again, and Buffy suddenly realized three things: one, that whisker burn on a tender breast wasn't much fun; two, that she was actually half-naked, holding a half-naked Giles; and three, that his face was only centimetres from her right nipple and his breath was making goosebumps all over her body. ...

As dawn began to break, she finally went to sleep, still in shock about number three.

Giles woke mid morning, disturbed not so much by the filtered sunlight as by a raucous dispute between unidentified birds in the canopy. He had the mother of all hangovers and his feet were cold. He could smell the fact that the fire had gone out, and that Buffy hadn't started breakfast yet. At the thought of her name, something else came into focus.

The shock took several seconds to subside enough for him to start thinking about how he was going to deal with the fact that he was in Buffy's arms, his face so very comfortable against the softness of a breast. Her breast? Her right leg was also hooked over his hips as though to hold him hard against her body, which it was.

After a moment to wait for his headache to subside to an understated ache instead of feeling like an axe had been put through his head, and a bit of concentration to convince his gorge that he wasn't really still nauseous, he began to assess the situation as rationally as possible...or as rationally as he could with half of his body in pain and the other half now embarrassingly aroused.

Buffy's steady, deep, breathing told him both that she must not have had much sleep and that she wasn't yet aware that he was awake. His cheek, despite the stubble, told him that she was impossibly soft and silken, and he could smell the sweetness of the tender flesh upon which he was resting.

He moved uncomfortably, suddenly aware that boxer shorts were going to disguise exactly nothing this morning and that his wandering thoughts had just made the situation exponentially worse.

Waves of unpleasant weariness and nausea rolled over him as he tried to concentrate. Whatever had made him ill had made a proper job of it. He felt shocking...well...for the most part at least. He wasn't surprised that laying in the arms of a beautiful woman after so long without any female companionship might arouse him to such a degree, but what did shock him was that *Buffy* was doing this to him.

Of course he loved her. He knew he loved her, but he'd never been willing to explore that beyond Travers' interpretation of what he'd seen. Up until now it had been enough to be there for her, to 'play the father' as it were, if it came to that, particularly after Joyce's death, and because of Dawn. It was all Buffy had wanted of him, and he'd been happy to do it, to a point. He'd known since the discovery of the prophecy about the Master that there was nothing he wouldn't have done for Buffy. And while she had been a child, a student, or somebody else's, that had been more than enough...

Why had her ill-fated liaison with Riley caused him so much pain? Why had he spent most of that time wanting to throttle the boy? And how was it that the manipulative Spike had been able to see inside his soul and torment him with something even he wouldn't acknowledge to himself at the time? It had worked so beautifully too. Fool.

Giles froze. And now he had. He'd just stepped up and declared himself...to himself.

A yowling roar announced the attack. It also gave the Slayer the split second needed to roll out of a dead sleep, sword in hand, and turn toward it, position pinpointed from the sound by her subconscious. Giles also instinctively rolled into a sitting position, only to find himself vomiting helplessly again, and enraged by his uselessness.

Buffy circled, still trying to focus and catch up with her warrior reflexes, but without taking her eyes from those of her adversary. It yowled again, a challenge, a declaration. Buffy didn't really care. All she knew was that it wasn't going to touch Giles...

When the stand-off looked like continuing indefinitely, and with Giles still in difficulty, she finally lost patience. Swinging the sword up in front of her, she took off toward the feline, screaming at the top of her lungs.

It stared mesmerically at its two-legged attacker for about a second then decided on a tactical retreat. When Buffy finally came to a halt it had vanished into the undergrowth. She stood for a moment, a little lost after every fibre of her body had geared for a battle...only to be denied. Happily denied, but still...

By the time she got back to Giles, he'd finished being ill and was sitting with his brow resting on his knees.

He slowly lifted his head, revealing even darker and larger circles under his eyes and deep lines grooved from their corners, almost down to his mouth.

"May one ask what exactly that was?" He croaked, trying unsuccessfully to ignore her state of undress. "I don't remember t-teaching you that p...that particular technique."

By then the adrenaline had subsided enough for Buffy to remember that she was standing there all-but-naked, having a discussion with Giles.

She wheeled, mortified, and pulled on her damp tank top before re-starting the fire. The jeans were just too damp, still, though the morning sun was getting hotter and hotter. She went down to the stream to fill the turtle shell instead. Hauling it back was not fun after the night they'd had, but it meant a supply of clean water close by for Giles, and it took her mind off...other things.

Too tired to argue, Giles bore her wiping the bits of leaf matter and dust from his back, then watched her as she sponged the sweat and dust gently from the hair plastered to his brow and washed his face, throat and chest.

Buffy's cheeks were flushed, a subtle contrast to the colour she was building up from being in the sun so much...a soft pink blush on creamy tan flesh...and the merest hint of sunburn on her nose. Ill or not, he also hadn't failed to notice that she was avoiding looking back at him. Understandable, perhaps, after that vision he saw earlier. Yet...

When she was done, she helped him move closer to the turtle shell. With great care she cupped her hands, doing as he'd done for her, and brought the water to his lips, suppressing a surprised tremble at the feel them on her palms. Four times she brought the cool, clear fluid to his mouth, each time acutely aware of his touch. When he was done, she eased him into a more comfortable position then slipped away wordlessly, spending several minutes tidying up where he'd been ill, before excusing herself to go down to the stream to get cleaned up.

While she was gone, Giles made an effort to try to move back to the bed of leaves under his own steam only to be startled by how weak he was.

Buffy washed swiftly in the cool water, not wanting to be away too long but still shaken by the events of the last couple of days. She didn't know who she was any more, and even scarier...she didn't know who he was, either...

She found him still sitting where she'd left him, head again resting on his drawn up knees. Behind him the sun was shining on their shelter.

Giles lifted his head slowly, visions of her lovely, unclothed form in his mind's eye.

"I..." But she was pointing toward their shelter. He managed to squint at it. "Oh...oh. S-splendid. You've almost f-finished it." He looked down again and swallowed. That had been close.

"I thought if the weather turned nasty it would be bad for you if we didn't have any shelter. I didn't expect to fall asleep in the stream and nearly freeze you to death," she told him unhappily.

He managed a faint smile without looking up. "I think it safe to s-say that one is in no peril of such a fate in a tropical rainforest, not even through excess b-bathing."

She didn't laugh. Not even a giggle. "I'm going to light a fire. I know it's probably going to be kinda hot later, anyway, but I want to finish drying our clothes now. At least I wasn't stupid enough to leave our shoes on. I guess that's something."

Giles made himself meet her eyes. "You're not stupid, Buffy. The fever: it's broken, is it not?"

Buffy shrugged and reached out to lay a palm on his forehead. "You're still sick." Her brows drew together as the heat of him seeped into her skin. "Y-you...you're much cooler, though. Still too warm, but way better than last night."

He spoke very slowly, trying hard to maintain his concentration. "Exactly. And would I be sitting here talking to you now if you hadn't done what you did?" When the silence stretched he spoke again. "Buffy...what you did...thank you."

She froze then dropped her hand, trying to guess exactly how much he remembered, what he knew...and how he really felt about it. "Don't thank me yet," she said nervously, failing in her intent to sound cool and calm. "Not until you don't get pneumonia or something."

"I promise not to get pneumonia." His chuckle turned into a rasping noise. "However I can't promise to stay sitting up terribly much longer..."

That brought Buffy to life. She disappeared for several minutes, returning with an armful of firewood, not a very big one, given that they'd pretty much used up most of the fallen timber close to the camp now, and built the fire up to a blaze. Once it was going well and the still-damp clothes were rearranged in front of it, she went and selected an unused sapling, swung it around and slammed it into one of the trees, snapping a hunk off one end. She repeated the process, giving her three decent sized chunks of fuel to keep the heat up.

Next she cleared his old bed away and made a fresh one in their shelter, covering the heaped leaves with soft palm fronds once again. When it was ready, she helped him over to it, easing him into the enclosure then following. There wasn't a lot of room. It was long enough to accommodate his full length with something to spare at either end when she laid him down, but not much.

When his breathing slowed down and he was able to focus again, Giles looked around him. She'd done a fine job, very nearly as good his own work, except for her rather unique-looking knots...

He stretched out a hand and took one hers in it. "Silly girl. Of course I like it. You've done a s-splendid job."

The disappointment faded and she smiled a little, pointing to the triangular space above the door panel. "I'm going to do something about the ventilation today."

"Check. You should try and get some sleep. Do you want me to bring you some fresh leaves to throw up on?"

He made a 'very funny, ha, ha,' face at her. "I suspect I've passed that phase, although I think it wise to pass on breakfast, or any solid food for the time being." Something moved in the corner farthest from him. He tensed. "Buffy, don't move. There's something in here."

Buffy also tensed for just a moment, then rolled her eyes and moved the palm leaves aside. A rather put out looking crab was waving around a single claw it had managed to free from its bonds.

"Oops. I'll just take those with me," she said sheepishly, gathered up the little group of crustaceans by their strings and carried them, dangling, from the enclosure.

He slept for most of the day. Buffy didn't have the heart to wake him just to put his pants back on, even though she was glad to be wearing her own again, but she had checked regularly to make sure he wasn't getting too bitten by stuff, and even covered his shoulders with his dry shirt. He was also right about not closing in the roof. Despite the heat outside, what little sea breeze there was circulated under the roof, through the gaps, and kept the shaded space to a tolerable temperature.

When he woke again, they finally ate. "Guess what?" She announced, handing him a loaded 'banana' leaf. "Crab. Again. Carbohydrate withdrawal here, Giles. Why can't demon dimensions have Dunkin' Donuts, too?"

They ate together in relative silence, both trying to be grateful to the crabs that had given their all to keep them from being hungry, but not...quite...succeeding.

"So...what do you think of our little hacienda now you're awake enough to see what it's really like?"

Giles looked up from poking at the last of his meal. "You did a fine job, and I think it will serve us very well. We'll reinforce as we go, and make ourselves that platform to sleep on, and we'll move the fire closer to the door to help keep the wildlife and the insects at bay. I've been thinking perhaps a pit would serve us better. Especially if we can catch some of those fish you saw..."

"Much," he admitted. "I still feel like someone ran over me with a steam-roller, but I can now move without looking for somewhere to deposit my lunch, and my head has retired the hammer that had taken up residence in it for the duration. I don't know what caused my illness, or if it's likely to recur, but it has been extremely unpleasant and I think, had you not managed to reduce the fever as quickly and effectively as you did, potentially fatal."

Buffy's expression had shifted from being overjoyed by the realization that he really was going to be okay, to sombre again at the contemplation of what might have happened.

"What are we going to do?" She asked flatly. "We've done the basic survival stuff: water, food supply, shelter. Now what? Do we up and leave all this to follow the coast forever, or until we find some demon metropolis?" Her tone grew sarcastic. "Or better yet: ten thousand Uruk-Hai on their way to kick somebody's ass?"

"Grew up on it," he admitted. "Well, perhaps it was more like 'torch under the bedclothes' stuff. It was one of my great escapes from the 'destiny' I'd had thrust upon me at the tender age of eleven."

"Sometimes," she agreed, trying not to lean in to his touch, or to show how much it was disturbing her.

For the first time that Buffy could remember, they talked about before: before there was every a destiny, before there was ever a 'them'. Somehow, it seemed to just happen. She had asked a question: a simple question about whether he had any brothers or sisters. He'd hesitated for a long moment then sighed...and then he'd started to talk.

Buffy learned more about Rupert Giles in a few hours than she'd learned in the entire seven years they'd known each other. And then it had been her turn. Giles' question about her interest in skating, and why she'd stopped, took her back to a childhood that hadn't known monsters or vampires, or pain or parents who fought or shouted, or whose silences were sometimes even louder than the loudest row.

Buffy had smiled, her eyes sparkling, as she'd recounted her first skates, first lessons...her first competition...the costume her mother had sewn for her...the first time her father had surprised her with tickets to the Ice Show for her birthday.

Only when she looked up, eyes sparkling with good memories, face glowing, did she fall silent again. He was watching her and his expression took her breath. There was no way to know what it meant, only that she'd never seen him look at her like that before.

The silence grew long, until she realized how tired he was. Without thinking, she touched his rough cheek. "You should rest again. I think it's gonna be a while before you're back to normal."

He stared at her for a moment, as though there was something he wanted to say, then smiled and nodded.

The next time Giles woke it was with a driving need to go to the bathroom. All that water had to go somewhere, he supposed...

It was dark, but he was alone. Instant concern impelled him to try to stand. His legs were like cooked spaghetti, but he managed to at least stay up long enough to duck out of the enclosure and scan the encampment.

A fire was still burning, flames reflected by the water in the turtle shell. Little else had been disturbed. There was no sign of Buffy. Giles shuffled a small way into the undergrowth and did what he had to do. He still felt weak and occasionally light-headed, but he was relieved that the nausea appeared to really be gone as he shuffled back to where he could see the whole clearing, or at least the part visible in the glow of the fire.

Several moments later she emerged from the darkness of the forest, once again pants-less, and carrying two large fish.

"I guddled," she announced happily, obliviously, holding up the fish, "Slayer style. They're easier to see at night...at least when there's a moon. That blue streak is kinda like a neon 'here I am' sign."

Her voice immediately became concerned and she drew to within just a couple of feet of him.

The silent exchange lasted for a long moment, understanding softening Buffy's expression. Finally, she nodded awkwardly. "I-I'll just go get rid of the fish and wash up."

By the time she'd managed to get rid of most of the fish smell, he'd disappeared back into the shelter. Undecided about what to do next, her gaze eventually lighted on his pants and shoes.

Giles was resting on his back, staring up at the stars through the gap above the door of the shelter when Buffy poked her head in.

"I brought your clothes. I thought you'd like to get dressed. I'm...I'm going to wash out my underwear tomorrow, so if you wanna leave the shorts...I can do them with mine," she offered awkwardly.

He shifted uncomfortably to pull himself to a sitting position before taking the jeans. "Thank you."

Giles felt like a fool. How swiftly the embryonic new intimacy between them had seemingly hardened into a barrier...

When he finally emerged from the shelter, blissfully clothed again but still wobbly on his feet, Buffy was sitting by the fire. She didn't appear to have heard him yet, and was staring into the flames.

Despite the fact that her hair, like his, was pining for some civilized care, she looked somehow small and vulnerable and lovely in the firelight...everything, in fact, that the Slayer was not. It was one of the things that he'd always loved about her...that everything about her was a contradiction: tiny, vulnerable, rebellious and prone to howling errors of judgment in her personal life...and yet, ultimately, the greatest woman warrior ever born, with all the weight of the world screwing her down and sapping her humanity...in spite of which, she endured...even prevailed beyond even his wildest expectations.

"I heard you get up, inside the shelter...the leaves. Slayer hearing has its uses."

Giles studied her profile since she hadn't turned her head from the fire. "It suits you...the sun."

He half smiled at her bemusement and touched her nose with a forefinger. "You've spent so long consigned to the darkness that I'd never thought to see you in the sun. You were meant for the sunlight, Buffy. I will never be able to tell you how sorry I am that I was the one sent to keep you from it."

Her eyes smiled back, though her mouth remained sombre, his words bringing unhappy memories.

"He said I belonged there: Spike...in the dark, with him...with them...with all the evil things. Am I evil, Giles? I mean, really. What is a Slayer, exactly? I didn't get from the First Slayer that being the 'Slayer' had very much to do with truth, justice or shiny white hats. I kinda got that maybe we're even more scary than evil is."

"You are not evil," he said quietly, watching the fire. "You are an instrument of great power. The question of the source of that power has been around since time immemorial. In truth, the moral righteousness of any great power is ambiguous at best...all I know...all the Council has ever known, is that you were placed on earth on the side of light...even if it meant that every Slayer would be consigned to a life of darkness and pain."

He turned to look at her again, surprised by the amusement in her voice. He was not surprised to see that it hadn't reached her face.

"Too much," he admitted. "From the first day you came to me in the school library, that question has, to all intents and purposes, been my whole life. *Why are you...Why am I*? Why did I have to send you out to almost certain death, day in, day out? What right did I have? What right did anyone have...?" He dragged a hand over his face. "I still don't know the answers. All I know is that we have to do this...because there is no one else."

His voice was bitter. "One who cannot be called while Faith is alive. It is the great irony of our lives that you should in fact be the first retired Slayer. You are no longer the 'Chosen One,' Buffy. You are simply stuck with the job by default."

Giles turned to find himself looking deep into eyes as dark and as green as a stormy ocean. His voice was very quiet.

"I wish we had," she said sadly, reaching out to touch his face again, because somehow, she just needed to. "I really wish we had."

The silence closed in...and the overwhelming need. Buffy felt it take her and carry her...to his lips, her own brushing them softly, asking...and being left wanting.

He pulled back just enough to look at her, to push the ever-wilder strands of hair from her face, and to lay the backs of his fingers against a now fiercely flushed cheek.

"So do I," he told her gently, then, ignoring her bewildered stare, rose with difficulty and retreated on rubber legs to the shelter, where he went down into a hunker, his whole body trembling, not just from the exertion in his weakened state. He lifted his hands and watched them shake.

She slipped into the shelter, dropped to her knees and answered the question in his eyes. "You almost didn't make it, Giles. I had to make sure you were okay. In case you might possibly care, I'm not."

When she didn't answer he made himself look up again, and was jolted to see the hurt in her eyes.

He reached out instinctively and took her face in his hands, then leaned forward and deliberately brushed the sweet, tender lips with his before searching her face again.

Her eyes were rolled up to look at him, as big as saucers now, and as blazing with emotion as he felt.

"Oh." She sat back, confused. "You'd think after seven years of not being the right time, that maybe..."

Giles watched her get up and dust herself off. "I only wish it was," he said quietly.

His eyes travelled her lithe form, remembering every tiny detail of it and feeling his body react accordingly.

Buffy's eyes narrowed. "This isn't Stockholm, Giles. I took psych in my short college career...remember?"

"Perhaps, not," he conceded. "But it's not Sunnydale, either. Things that seem right...that seem easy and uncomplicated here...back in Sunnydale they'll be more complicated than you can ever imagine."

Her chest hurt, as though an unseen hand was squeezing her heart into the space of a walnut. She wheeled and ducked through the entrance before running blindly out of the camp.

Giles opened his mouth to call after her then closed it again, lips pressing tightly together, strain dragging at every muscle in his face. He lifted his hands then closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to watch them trembling again, nor be tempted to look down at the evidence of what it had cost him to send her away. Not that it wasn't fading swiftly now that she was gone and in such pain, and fast being replaced by a combination of illness and misery.

Buffy finally slowed down about a mile from the camp. She was on one of their several newly-beaten tracks leading upstream, lucky that she hadn't tripped or stumbled in her flight amid all the creepers and bushes and other organic debris always in their path, little or none of which was visible at high speed even on this moonlight night.

She looked up at the pale orb, then, still breathing hard, bent, hands on knees, and wept.

In spite of his resolution to wait up for her, a combination of exhaustion and illness saw Giles find himself waking at daybreak, events of the previous hours flooding back to him as he sat up. Exasperated, angry, and then alarmed when he realized that he didn't even know if Buffy had come back at all, he swore several oaths and got himself to his feet.

The camp was deserted. Even the fire was cold...as cold as his blood was now running. He was still weak from the residual of his illness, but he made himself move swiftly, finding his sword and a stake then following in the direction he believed Buffy had run the previous night.

It hurt...pushing himself. He had no energy, and little strength in his muscles. His lungs burned and his chest ached, but he kept going, all the while conscious of the fact that he had no guarantee that he wasn't hurtling away from her, instead of to her aid. There were now at least four tracks out of the camp, not including the one across the stream and he knew she could be on any of them...or none.

Twice he stumbled, before he finally caught a staggering foot in a bush that had become strangled by an opportunistic vine, and went sprawling. For a few seconds he struggled to force his body back up...then everything went black.

When he roused from the faint some several minutes later he immediately became aware that he wasn't alone. He swallowed, unsure where the sword was. Very slowly, by necessity as well as caution, he moved until he was able to sit up and look around.

They stared at each other, Giles once again aware that he was being sized up. It flicked its tail once, without batting a lash or moving a muscle, but made no move to attack.

Sweat pricked out on his brow, Giles inched his hand toward the sword he'd finally located about a foot from his right hand side, without looking at it. When his fingertips brushed the hilt, the cat growled a low, lazy growl. He snatched at the handle. The cat roared as he picked it up and pointed it defensively, its eyes boring into his. As though mesmerized, Giles found himself driving the blade into the ground in front of him without knowing exactly why, his eyes never once leaving the powerful yellow ones.

Giles wanted to find Buffy. Hell, he wanted a good stiff drink. Buffy could be anywhere, lying ill, or dead, or in trouble and here he was playing chicken with an uncooperative feline, and quite helpless. Well, there was nothing for it. He was going to have to do something. Without taking his eyes from his captor, he pulled himself up, using the pommel of the sword to steady himself.

Giles swore silently. Another cat had emerged...or appeared...from nowhere to come to a halt a few feet away, blocking the pathway that he hoped would lead to Buffy. It held his gaze briefly then sat down, as though deferring to the other, larger animal.

He didn't understand their behaviour, bizarre by known solitary, or even pack or pride, hunting patterns. He supposed they might simply be more intelligent: holding him until the whole group...pride...whatever...arrived to share the spoils.

Though, strangely, that primitive inner sense that guided all prey animals on a raw, instinctive level was no longer screaming his impending end to every nerve ending and muscle in his body.

Giles looked from one cat to the other. For the most part they looked disinterested, even bored, but when they caught each other's glance there was a connection between them...a look that was eerie in its intelligence and recognition.

"I-I can't stay here," he said, making no assumptions about the creatures, but taking no chances. "I have to help her." He drew the sword from the ground, carefully turning the handle so that he held it in his hand with the blade pointing behind him: a neutral position, and took a step away from both cats...and then another. The only escape was back the way he came. He had a choice: stay and continue the stand off, and perhaps become brunch, or flee back toward the camp and hope that by some miracle he could evade them long enough to get to the shelter and use it to protect his back, while fending them away from the door with his sword.

He rolled his eyes. It was a horrible, futile plan, but if he was going to die anyway, he was going to die trying to get to Buffy...

They followed him unhurriedly all the way back to the clearing, and kept coming, moving between him and the shelter, so that he was forced to continue to stumble towards the stream.

He was now certain it was some bizarre hunting ritual or game and that he was going to be cat food long before he had a chance to find Buffy. When he crested the top of the slope down to the bank, both cats came to a halt there, one after the other dropping into a sitting position.

Giles took a deep breath and slowly stopped trembling. He wasn't sure what the hell was going on, but if they were going to keep playing this game, he wasn't going to have the energy to do his part much longer.

He turned around and staggered down the slope, thoughts of fording the stream followed immediately by visions of getting halfway across and either having his legs collapse from under him or the big cats, tired of playing with their food, arriving to begin dinner.

When he reached the bottom, he slid a little down the bank and stepped in the water...still no movement. He began backing into the stream. One of them yawned tidily. He kept backing, knowing it wouldn't go over waist height. By the time he was halfway across he knew he'd have to turn around to continue. The cats seemed to be dozing.

He barely managed to crawl out on the other side, sitting down to catch his breath, and fervently wishing there was a defibrillator close by. After a couple of minutes he made himself get up, his legs still trembling violently, and started down the almost-path created when they had beaten and chopped their way through to the stream on their first day of being lost. He was considering what the hell to do next, and where Buffy could possibly have gone, when he heard a noise...a distinctly human-sounding noise. He waited for several torturously long moments. And then he heard it again.

A surge of adrenaline lifted him and carried him into the undergrowth, stumbling toward it on failing legs. He broke into a vast clearing and found himself staring into yellow eyes yet again.

"You!" He exclaimed in a startled voice. Then his brows drew together. No. Another...this with a notch missing from its right ear and a fine scar across its nose that had turned the hairs white along its length...at least where they still grew. It was sprawled on a boulder, seemingly unconcerned, the ear in question flicking occasionally as it watched him.

In reply it got up lazily and strolled, almost literally, off its boulder, drawing his attention with it as it crossed the clearing.

...And then Giles saw it: an arm. He ran, his legs barely carrying him, completely oblivious to the big cat disappearing into the undergrowth. He slewed to a halt alongside a crumpled figure not far behind the rock. He half-knelt, half fell, at her side.

There was a pulse. Her tank top was bloodied and torn and her face was slashed; even the backs of her hands were gashed and torn, dried blood on both of them. He ran gentle hands up and down her arms and legs. No breaks. One ankle was swollen and on her right tricep...almost like an impact point...deep bruises were darkening. Instinct made him unzip her jeans and slide one side down enough to look at her right hip. A large area of bruising on the point of it was already a mass of purple, red and blue. She had to have been in a fight and, somehow, she must have fallen. Yet the boulder was hardly high enough for this kind of damage...

He lifted the tank top and ran even more gentle hands over her ribs, her collarbones and the hip in question. There were no obvious signs of fractures. Fingers, just as gentle, smoothed hair from her face, stroked her cheek tenderly.

"Buffy? Buffy, can you hear me...?" He took one of her hands in his. "Buffy, love, you must wake up." His voice shook but he was too uncertain to risk lifting her into his arms without knowing for sure if there were any injuries to her back or neck.

He'd been sitting there for several minutes, exhausted and overwrought, trying to decide what he could possibly do, when her fingers finally tightened around his, and a low moan issued from her lips.

He stroked her hair, her cheek, and her brow, very gently. "Buffy, can you hear me?"

"Yes, love, it's me. You must tell me if you think anything is broken. Can you move at all?"

Her brow furrowed, as if it were too hard to take in, but her feet began to shuffle a little in the dirt and the fingers again tightened around the hand which had held them the whole time he'd been there.

Giles breathed a jagged sigh of overwhelming relief. "Can you...do you know what happened to you?"

"You..." It seemed like forever before she formed the next words. "...didn't want me..."

His eyes grew very bright and he couldn't stop himself from trailing a loving finger down a pale cheek once more. "I want you, Buffy. I want you more than I've ever wanted anything my life."

The soft brown lashes fluttered, her whole face scrunching up against the glare of the morning sun as the lids finally cracked open, eyes reluctantly revealed as they adjusted to the light.

"Oh yeah," she croaked, "don't...don't piss off the...Oroku'ahni." She swallowed and closed her eyes again, this time against the pain she'd discovered the moment she'd tensed her muscles to instinctively try to sit up.

He was lost for a beat then he remembered. "A-are you saying you pis—upset one of those huge birds? What did you call it?"

He pulled his thoughts from raptors and mysterious cats and focused on her question, comprehension soon cascading across his drawn features.

She shifted again, painfully, drawing a sharp breath when her bad hip touched the ground.

"Me too. Better things..." She took a moment to allow another stab of pain to subside. "Better things to do than fight weird giant birds."

"I-I thought I'd screwed it up...like I screw everything up. I ran and I bawled and I got angry. Then when I cooled down I was still too mad at you to come back, so I decided to explore. I figured there might be some good stuff that only comes out at night...like those fish." She tried to move again but a squeaking gasp was all she managed. "I want to sit up," she grumbled crossly.

With great care, Giles supported her back with a strong arm, lifting her into a sitting position, unaware that Buffy was biting her bottom lip ferociously, tears of pain crowding her eyes.

He leaned in to look properly at her face. "Damn...why didn't you tell me I was hurting you?"

"I wanted to sit up. Now I'm sitting up," she explained in a voice that wavered between exasperation and tears.

Giles shifted so that he moved one leg around her, and drew her back against his chest.

"I went out into the open. I wanted to go back to the spot where we...I don't know... arrived, I guess. I wanted to see...I suppose I was hoping there'd be a new portal or something. Stupid, I know." She shrugged. "There was nothing there. Squat. Nada. Anyway, I was still mad so I kept exploring...and I found these gorgeous cubs...and we were playing...and then it came."

"The giant raptor?" He felt her head moving in the affirmative. "And you fought it?"

"It wanted the babies. I wouldn't let it. It got pissed and took me instead. Quite the ride...Universal would be proud."

He curled his arms around her protectively and kissed the top of the fair head. "Obviously you got 'pissed' right back at it," he observed, a smile in his voice.

"Damn straight. We...disagreed. And I found out that things don't fly too good when you have your arm stuck up the egg delivery chute."

She chuckled feebly. "Damn straight. Of course that got me a joy ride at canopy level...you should have seen some of the stuff up there...anyway, it's trying to make me one with the forest...literally...I'm now hanging by what little grip I've got on its ankles, because it's been trying to drop me for the last twenty minutes. None of this is doing anything for birdie aerodynamics...so it gives up before it becomes one with the forest and goes back to trying to dump me out in the open. The 'up' here is that it was flying almost ground level to try and scrape me off. When I hit the rock I didn't have quite so far to fall."

Buffy felt Giles' embrace tighten protectively. "I'm okay," she told him softly.

There was little Buffy could say to that. "How exactly did you find me, anyway? What exactly *are* you doing all the way over here? You're supposed to be sick." There was a moment's silence. "You are still sick. I can feel you burning up right through your shirt!" she croaked.

"Yes, fine, we're both a right pair," he conceded...but I want to know how you knew that bird's name. Did it tell you?"

Buffy remained silent for a time, before she finally spoke again. "They told me."

He looked up. All three of the elegant felines were watching them from the edge of the clearing. After a beat, they turned, and were gone as silently as they came, leaving him to stare after them.

Buffy's shoulders moved in a faint approximation of a shrug, accompanied by a small gasp of pain.

"I dreamed about them and they told me. They said the Oruku'ahni takes a lot of juveniles. The ones I was playing with were the last surviving ones for this season. They said thank you."

"Indeed." *That sounded more like Buffy*. His glance flicked to where the mysterious predators had been standing moments before.

He shook his head. "Nothing. Just um...wondering how we're going to get back to camp. You're horribly bruised and battered and I'm not at all sure I can stand up again."

Buffy giggled. "I feel like crap and everything hurts like hell, but if we can get one another up, I think I can get us home."

Both of them froze for a moment, the word almost painful to hear out loud. Then they were moving again, as though nothing had happened.

Buffy arranged the saturated clothes on the all-too-frequently used drying rack, it's crossed branches starting to char at their extremities from the amount of use it was getting. "You know, I'm getting really tired of being wet and cold and having to get naked, ergo colder, while I wait for my clothes to dry."

Giles didn't even dignify that with an answer. He was barely holding his own after the effort required to walk back, including crossing the stream and the torture of getting back up the slope on the other side. Were it not for Buffy's stubbornness, he probably wouldn't have got up again after toppling over in the stream. It was cool and soothing and he just didn't have the strength or energy to move another foot, until she hauled him up.

Buffy shuffled over to him and put a hand on his forehead when he didn't speak. "You're still feverish. I hope you're not going to get delirious again after your little swim."

"I'm fine," he said gruffly. "You should be resting. Those contusions are severe...you don't want any complications."

"Giles, I'm the Slayer. You know very well I've had worse at least a couple of times a year since I started this job. Do we remember the fun sparring match with Faith when she thought Angel was evil? Or that really great warm up with Glory...or here's a good one: fun with Travers' pet vampire."

The slight amusement at her efforts to convince him washed from Giles' face and he looked away silently.

A thousand words danced on her tongue to make amends, but she didn't trust any of them to come out right. Instead she sat down and rested her head against his arm.

He was the one who finally broke the tense silence. "We never really talked about it."

"Did we really need to?" She asked before she could stop herself. He slowly turned and raised his gaze to hers. She shrugged. "Travers was an asshole. The rest...well, we dealt. It was over."

His eyes grew very warm and he turned further, to cup her face with his hand, the atmosphere around them charged as his head bent and his mouth touched hers.

Buffy shivered, her body igniting at his touch. She could barely breathe as his lips caressed hers almost teasingly, before taking them with more raw passion than any before ever had.

A part of Giles was holding back...but the taste of her, the feel of her kissing him back, was almost his undoing. He knew now that, in spite of everything, he wanted her more than he'd ever wanted anything in his life...but there was no way that could happen...not here, perhaps not ever, which meant this was all he would have to remember...

Buffy felt the kiss deepen and responded, her fingers loving the feel of his hair, his lips, their mouths and the fiery sharing of his, and her body loving the feel of his chest hair against her soft flesh. It seemed to go on forever, and she didn't want it to stop...

Giles felt her move, felt her hands trail down his back to the band of his boxers and froze, using both of his hands to cup her face and end the kiss.

A part of Buffy choked with emotion at his first words, and a part of her crashed with the second.

"A thousand reasons. A thousand reasons why I refuse to cause you more pain, simply because I happen to be in love with you," he told her hoarsely.

He closed his eyes. "You don't care that I'm nearly fifty years old? You don't care that when we get back you might discover that this was a just a pleasant dream...that you still have feelings for that...that vampire? You don't care that your sister will likely need therapy after she finds out? Or you don't care that half of Sunnydale will think I'm a pervert and that you are not fit to raise a teenage girl? Or perhaps..."

Buffy laid fingers on his mouth to shut him up. "I. Don't. Care," she repeated. "I didn't care about Angel and Spike being very, very dead or very, very evil...so why should I care that I love someone who is warm and alive and good? I worked at the Doublemeat Palace and they didn't take Dawn away from me. I gave myself to Spike in public places, in filthy places...because I didn't care...and they didn't take Dawn away. Willow almost got her killed because I wasn't taking proper care of her." She raised her free hand. "Still got her. So I really, really doubt they're going to storm the place because a good...a very, very, good...man has come into my life. A very, very good man who loves me as much as I love him."

Moved beyond words, Giles couldn't speak for a moment. Then his eyes grew warm again. "This from the woman who said she didn't know what love was."

They kissed again, this time slowly and passionately, moving into each other's arms, claiming each other in every way...until finally they separated again, each aware that they were now poised on a knife edge.

Giles let his fingers trail down her cheek, her throat, and caress the curve of her breast above the damp bra.

"Yeah, and I'm black and blue and you've got a fever of about a hundred and three again. You don't know how much I want this, but I'm going to let you win this time because there's heat..." She touched his brow. "...And there's heat. And I am *not* going back in that stream again any time soon, especially not to stop you from bursting into flames."

He chuckled, his body aching for her, but his soul more relieved than he could say. Slowly, he bent his head again and kissed her, as though he could show her how much he adored her, and all of his heart, in that long sweet touch.

"Yes you are. And so am I. A-and strangely enough I don't find it at all disturbing... Well, okay, maybe a little. But it's a good thing, right? He's not a vampire. We know they love each other."

Xander's head snapped around. "That was uncalled for. I'll have you know I've moved on. Moved a long way...across the continent, actually...across the species divide even..."

Willow watched him fondly. He was still in love with Anya. Anyone could see that, but he never really did get over his crush on Buffy. Not completely. He wasn't the only one, she realised with a pang of nostalgia...a part of her would always be owned by Oz...forever. She suspected that it was the same with Buffy and Angel. Maybe even Giles and Jenny...but people moved on. They all moved on. Except maybe with Giles and Buffy, they weren't so much moving on, as much as coming back to the beginning...

"Are we going to break this up before it gets ugly? They're in their underwear, Will. You know when you decided not to bring Anya with us? Good call."

Willow giggled, thinking about the ex-vengeance demon's reaction. "We'll give them a couple more minutes. I can't believe we found them."

"I can't believe Willy wasn't lying about 'knowing a guy,'" Xander added, still amazed.

"Willy's not such a bad guy, for a scaredy cat. Thank God he heard that demon bragging about getting rid of the Slayer..." She giggled. "And that he believed you when you said you had a nail gun with his name on it."

Xander smiled sheepishly without taking his eyes from the other couple, then shifted uncomfortably, his voice rising a couple of octaves. "Will, I...um...I don't think they're going to stop."

Willow shook her head and looked across the clearing at her friends. She knew them far too well.

Reluctantly, Giles lifted his head. He didn't want to relinquish the sweet fire or the illusion of having her, even just for these few short minutes, but if he didn't stop now, he didn't think would be able to stop at all...

Both Buffy and Giles snapped their heads up and turned towards a voice they had both privately never expected to hear again.

A split second later they both realized the position in which they'd been caught. Buffy looked down at Giles' boxers, dragging his gaze with hers.

"Oh, Lord," they said in unison. Then Buffy was wriggling around, ignoring the pain of her bruises, until she was sitting between his legs, her back leaning, or possibly more like collapsed, against his chest and providing him with the perfect cover for the disorder she'd caused...disorder that she could now feel pressed into her tailbone.

It wasn't until Willow and Xander were only a couple of feet away that his ardour had completely subsided.

"Jeez, you guys are a mess," Xander announced as he came to a halt, his voice filled with emotion.

Buffy made a face. "You guys look great. You'll have to excuse us. We've had a bad day...and night and day...and night. It's kind of a long story."

"He almost died," Buffy announced matter of factly, "and he's still got a fever."

At that point Xander zeroed in on all the bruising down Buffy's right side, which in turn prompted him to register how scratched and cut she was.

Willow, realizing things might not be quite what they seemed ten minutes ago, decided to get things moving. "Time later for campfire stories and stuff. You guys, we can take you home now."

Willow shook her head. "It's okay. You don't have to walk anywhere. I can open a new portal right here."

Buffy and Giles turned as one to look back at their camp and the shelter they'd built together, their clothes still drying by the fire and the turtle shell they'd found. Buffy thought of the fish she'd worked so hard to catch, but only briefly. At least they'd eaten all the crabs...

After a long beat, they looked at each other, each of them nodding in turn before turning back to the others.

Giles and Buffy, supporting each other to keep from falling over, looked around when reality solidified again. They were in Xander's apartment.

Xander shrugged. "We didn't want Dawn to know. If it didn't work...or you were...it was better to just let her think you were still missing." Willow touched his arm in silent support.

Xander finally broke the silence. "You guys wanna get cleaned up before we take you home to Dawnie? To be honest, you look kinda scary right now."

After a beat in which there was another silent exchange between Buffy and Giles, both of them nodded and headed for Xander's bathroom.

When the door to the bathroom clicked shut, they turned to one another automatically.

Giles smiled down at Buffy wearily. "Whatever happens, remember that I will always love you."

The stolen kiss was tender but brief, Giles' exhausted legs beginning to wobble before they were done.

Giles looked at Xander's bath, trying not to remember any of Anya's more unfortunate tales about it, and then at the shower.

"I'm not sure I could get up again if I sat down for too long...but a hot shower and a lot of soap..."

"Shower it is." Buffy helped him to it and then hesitated. "You want me to turn around while you go first?"

They stared at each other silently for the longest time. Then Giles shook his head.

As if by silent assent, Buffy began unbuttoning his damp shirt. There, in the realm of civilization, it seemed a thousand times more intimate. Her hands shook as she struggled with each button, and not only because she was favouring one side more than the other. Finally, she drew the battered item off and dropped it on the floor. For all the time they'd spent in the river, in the bright bathroom light it was easy to see he was filthy. Buffy looked over her shoulder into Xander's shaving mirror. Then again, so was she. The stud on his still-wet jeans pulled undone as easily as always, and she pulled the zipper down slowly.

"Shoes," she said softly and waited for him to kick off his boots before drawing the jeans off his hips so that he could step out of them. At that point she hesitated, unsure what to do next.

Giles moved then, taking hold of the equally damp tank top and drawing it gently over her head. Then he undid her soggy jeans and pushed them down a little.

Buffy kicked off her ruined sneakers and finished removing the pants, tossing them across to where his lay, aware that it wasn't a good idea for Giles to bend in any way at this point.

Their eyes locked as they hesitated once again. Buffy was about to reach for the faucets when Giles touch her arm. She dropped it to her side and he reached around her to unfasten her bra. He stopped, his eyes asking permission before slipping it off and throwing it on the pile of spoiled clothes.

Once again Buffy stood before him near naked, as she had back in the jungle, only this time she felt infinitely more vulnerable. He smiled reassuringly and she smiled back. After a beat she reached for the band of his boxers and drew them down over his narrow hips, pushed them down to his knees and straightened again. From there Giles, trying not to think about the caress of her skin against his, only had to move his legs a little to let them drop to the floor.

Then he was sliding his thumbs into the elastic of her g-string and pushing it down very slowly.

Buffy could feel herself trembling as the skin of his knuckles grazed her hips and her groin on the way down. And then they too were on the floor. When she could move again, she turned the faucets on in workmanlike fashion and adjusted the temperature, resisting the sigh of pleasure rising in her throat at the feel of actual hot water.

Buffy instinctively took his arm to help him balance as he lifted his left leg and stepped into the tub, and then wobbled on it as he lifted his right one. Once he was safely in, she followed.

Giles gave a hiss of pure pleasure as the hot water ran over his shoulders and Buffy echoed his sentiment in a low moan as it coursed over hers. When he put his head back to let it run through his hair, he swayed again, and Buffy swiftly slid her arms around his waist, partly to keep him from toppling over and partly because she needed to. As she rested her cheek against his chest, he circled her shoulders with a large arm and used his other hand to loosen her weather-battered hair so that the water could soak into it.

Buffy closed her eyes and smiled. The feel of his fingertips on her scalp was bliss and the feel of his warm body against hers...didn't bear thinking about just too much. A moment later she smiled again. Giles had picked up Xander's shampoo from it's resting place in the soap rack hooked on the faucets and was working it into her hair. He was leaning heavily against her now for support, but she didn't care. For long minutes she just lost herself in the physical pleasure of having her hair washed ...

It was a long, slow, sometimes halting process for Giles to wash and rinse Buffy's long hair the two or three times needed to bring it back to its former cleanliness, but neither of them cared. The furthest Buffy moved away from him was to put her head back so that he could rinse, and the closest he came to letting her go was to reach down to pick up the conditioner.

When he was done, he kissed the top of her wet head and closed his arms around her, smiling as she nuzzled into his chest hair while the water continued to merrily cascade over her.

Giles' legs gave out. Buffy eased him down until they were both sitting in the tub, under the shower, Buffy kneeling between his bent knees.

He rested his brow on her shoulder. "Let's just say I've rather neglected the bed rest part of my recuperation, of late."

"Let me do your hair," she suggested between chuckles, glad he'd left the bottles on the side of the bath.

It didn't take anywhere near as long to do the several rinses required, and he seemed to enjoy the pampering and the special attention Buffy paid to massaging his scalp as much as she had enjoyed his ministrations earlier, rarely raising his head from her shoulder unless she asked him to lift it to wash out the rounds of shampoo. When he was finally done they were both very tired.

Buffy wearily picked up a ducky shaped soap and started lathering Giles' shoulders, back and chest, and then did her own body, before handing it to him.

"Wash," she ordered. "I'm guessing you don't have the energy to shave, but the rest of you needs soap." Then she grinned. "Unless you want me to tackle all those hard-to-reach places for you, I suggest you go to it."

He snorted softly. If Buffy thought she was going to be exploring his nether regions with a cake of soap shaped like a cartoon duck... His eyes fluttered closed, then forced themselves open again, and his mouth quirked up on one side. He was almost asleep, but the notion of Buffy doing exactly that amused him enough to chuckle.

Buffy watched Giles struggle to stay awake, and slowly, painstakingly wash himself all over with the soap. When she was satisfied that he was done, she used all of her Slayer strength to get him back on his feet again without either of them slipping in the enamel tub.

"Just a little bit longer," she told him soothingly, her shoulder, arm, and hip throbbing in time with her heartbeat now. "As soon as you're all rinsed off, we're out of here."

"Sorry," he muttered. The single word rang with the vehemence with which he hated being helpless.

It took them some time to successfully negotiate their way out of the tub, find clean towels in the cupboard under the vanity, and to dry each other, Giles noticing for the first time how difficult Buffy was finding it to use her right arm. It was obviously a great deal more painful than she was letting on. Which was not new. It was as though she felt guilty about who she was, about the fact that as bad as her injuries might be, in record time she would be healed and well again, while her friends were always consigned to heal the regular, tedious and frequently painful, way.

He worked very slowly, towelling her hair and wiping her shoulders and her back so that she wouldn't need to rotate her bad arm. And then it was his turn. Where Buffy could reach, she dried, particularly anything for which he would otherwise have to bend.

"I think we're done," she finally announced then looked at the filthy pile of rags on the floor. "Except...I just realized...clothes: no got." Then, through the fog of exhaustion, she remembered something.

It took some focusing to get her weary mind to concentrate on trying to touch Willow's. It was several moments before that familiar tickle and then Willow's mental equivalent of 'huh?'

A short time later the door was cracked open and a pair of Xander's jeans, a sweatshirt, and sneakers appeared first. Then came some training shorts and another of his sweatshirts.

"Sorry, Buffy," Xander's rueful voice came from outside. "No girly things here any more."

Willow and Xander took one look at the rosy, but utterly exhausted, battered pair and made a decision.

Neither Buffy nor Giles were really aware of what was happening. All either of them knew was that they were being guided somewhere and that very shortly they were engulfed in a three-blanket quilt, heads sinking into soft pillows...and then nothing.

Willow smiled. "Look at them. Did you see them when they came out of the bathroom? They belong together. I think they always have. I know both of them are miserable without the other one...and they secretly hate it when someone shows an interest in one of them. Like Buffy with Miss Calendar, and, a-and then she was really jealous of Kendra...it was so cute...and then Faith said Giles was cute...she hated that. And I won't even mention Olivia. Buffy didn't shut up about her for a month after she found her in Giles' shirt in his apartment."

"She found her in...why wasn't I told about this?" He demanded, miffed. "You mean, like, the shirt and nothing else?"

Willow nodded. "Why do you think she got all 'I can do this by myself' with the Sunday thing? She was so freaked out. Every time I thought she'd forgotten about it, something would make her start bitching again. Mostly about Olivia, but she picked on Giles' robe too. I liked that robe..."

"Wait. You've seen the robe? You've seen the robe *on* Giles? Again, why don't I know about this?"

Willow rolled her eyes. I was with Tara, just before, y'know, when Spike made us all crazy...just before Buffy had to fight Adam. I had to go back for my computer and he was sorta, well, hung-over, in a rumpled, sexy kinda way."

Xander covered his face with his palm. "Giles and 'sexy' in the same sentence, again. Not going there. So not wanting to have this conversation."

"You'll live. And they're safe, at last. C'mon, let's go tell Dawnie and Anya. We can ask Dawn if you can sleep in Buffy's bed tonight."

Xander's hand dropped and his eyes lit up. "I get to sleep in the Buffster's boudoir?"

Willow gave him a tolerant glare, trying not to grin. "On second thoughts, you can sleep on the couch."

"Hey...I nobly double my power bill for this quarter just from all the hot water they used, and I give up my sweet, sweet bed...and you want me to sleep on the Summers' couch? I know that couch. It has mystery bumps..."

"Giles..." he began, ready to launch into a diatribe about what the older man was willing to tolerate for the sake of his Slayer, then looked at his friends, safe and snug and once again filling the gaping hole they'd left in all their lives...and swallowed emotionally. "Okay, I'm good. Let's go."

Buffy stirred very slowly, not really wanting to wake up. She was way, way too comfy. Eventually, though, the bathroom's call was just too loud and obnoxious. She opened her eyes...and panicked for a split second.

Panicked first about not knowing where she was, and second, that all of it... everything...might have been a dream. She turned to her left. Her eyes widened then smiled. Not a dream...

After that everything came into focus, including where they must be, helped by the large, framed picture of Anya on Xander's dresser. She turned back to Giles, who was looking marginally better. There was colour in his cheeks again, where you could see them through the stubbly beard, and a lot of the deep lines in his face were gone, along with the dark patches under his eyes.

Buffy slipped out as silently and carefully as she could. He needed the sleep. The clock on Xander's microwave said ten forty-two. Well, it had to be 'a.m' but *which* 'a.m.'? And why were they alone? She got the drink of water she'd gone into the kitchenette for, then headed for the bathroom. When she re-emerged it was still in contemplation of the bliss that was civilization. She was also contemplating a breakfast she didn't have to catch, kill or cook on an open fire, or eat off a leaf.

Two spoonfuls of 'Scooby Doo' breakfast cereal, however, sent her back to the refrigerator looking for something a little less diabetes-inducing. Besides, marshmallows were for hot chocolate, and cinnamon was something you put on hot donuts or churros, *not* in breakfast cereal.

Unfortunately, apart from the milk, which she'd almost emptied onto the cereal, some really sad looking apples, and a half-eaten TV dinner, it was pretty bare. The cupboards revealed popping corn, candy bars, potato chips, pretzels, instant coffee, and, weirdly, an unopened package of teabags...then finally, next to the toaster, an open package of pop tarts. Buffy was scared to look at the expiry date.

While she waited for one to heat up, she made coffee. Instant wasn't exactly what she'd been dreaming of, but the smell of it when she poured the boiling water onto the granules was utter bliss.

After the stale pop tart and as much of the instant coffee as she could tolerate, Buffy spent some time taming her now clean hair, rooted around Xander's drawers and wardrobe for some clothes that didn't look too horrible on her and put on her semi-destroyed sneakers, since Xander's shoes were almost clown-sized on her. Then she borrowed a card and some cash from Giles' wallet, which Xander had conveniently left on the dining table. He'd gone to get all their bits and pieces from the shelter while they'd struggled to dress, before Willow created the portal that brought them all home.

Giles woke to a delicious sensation. He was warm and incredibly comfortable, and someone was kissing him. He opened his eyes, then closed them again and kissed back.

When Buffy finally lifted her head she pecked him on the nose and straightened. "Good morning...I mean: afternoon, sleepy head."

He opened his eyes again and smiled very slowly. "Then it's true. We're back and I really don't have to get up and cook you roast snake for breakfast?"

Buffy's nose screwed up. "You couldn't dream about anything more fun than that?" Then she smiled back at him. "I've got something for you." As he drew himself up, a little shakily, into sitting position, she shoved all the pillows behind him for support.

Giles looked down at the tray she slid onto his lap, sniffed and sighed with loud approval.

"My God: real, brewed, 'English Breakfast' tea, jelly donuts...lovely. And where did you find those?" he asked, delighted at the pile of toasted and buttered English muffin splits, some with Giles' favourite: marmalade, on, some plain.

"I've been out. I owe you some money. I hope you don't mind. I wanted to spare you the Scooby-Doo breakfast cereal experience...and the stale pop-tart one too, actually. Besides, we, the carbohydrate-deprived, deserve a little spoilage."

He looked her up and down, appreciating the sleeveless summer dress with its green on white print against her now very tanned skin and the white-sandalled foot curled up behind her as she sat on the bed.

She shook her head. "This is part of what I owe you. Xander didn't have a thing to fit me, or you, for that matter. I shopped a little. I hope you don't mind too much. I'll pay you back as soon as I can get to the bank."

He took another look at her and shook his head. "How can I mind waking up to a vision like this?"

Buffy giggled. "I guess it's better than the vision you've had to wake up to for the last few weeks. They should make soap a national treasure or something."

Giles chuckled and sipped blissfully at the steaming mug of tea as he systematically helped Buffy demolish the contents of the tray.

"What about you? How are your wounds today? I see most of the cuts and scratches have healed."

Buffy shrugged and swallowed a chunk of donut. "My arm hurts, and my hip aches, but another couple days and I'll be all new again." She leaned forward and rested a cool palm on his brow. "You're not so toasty today. Not back to normal yet, but not scary any more."

His voice was dry. "Well that's very reassuring. I must say I feel far more human than I have in quite a while. Still tired, but fairly comfortable, which is quite a novelty given our circumstances of late."

He grinned back then looked into the eyes that were looking at him with such affection.

Buffy played with the last piece of muffin, understanding exactly what he meant. "I don't know yet. All I know is I want us to be...us. There are so many things to think about. I started thinking about it while I was buying you...while I was shopping. I never realized before how many things there are between us and...'us'."

"I told you it was complicated," he said gently, concealing the first stirrings of disappointment, with the ease of someone who's done it far too many times before.

Buffy swung the tray onto Xander's side table and crawled onto his lap. She slid her arms around his neck and kissed him very thoroughly before lifting her head, Giles even more reluctant than she was to part again.

"It's not complicated. It's as simple as that. Everything else is just...details. The only two things that matter to me are how Dawn feels about us and how you feel about stuff like staying here now, when Willow says you have a great place in England, and friends and a pony..."

"Sorry. My point is you have this other life that you made, or went back to...or something, that's really important to you."

Giles reached out and caressed the newly brushed tresses back from her cheek. "There are a lot of things that are important to me...some a great deal more than others."

She took a moment to assimilate that, and then smiled back at him. "What will happen to the p...um...horsie?"

"He will go back to boarding where I left him to come over here in the first place."

"Roughly two thirds of it so far," he agreed. "But he's well cared at the stables. He's schooled and shown by others and there are several people, including both of them, who dote on him. He wants for nothing and will not, even if I have to leave him again."

It made him smile a little. "Not really. I want to be with you, too, Buffy, but you have to be certain about what you want. There are so many issues, not least your feelings for Spike, and the likelihood that your sister is going to make Xander look positively understated when she finds out about us."

Buffy closed her eyes. She had managed not to think about Spike for a long time. Now she had to face her feelings for the vampire whether she wanted to or not. She pulled a shopping receipt from her pocket and looked at the date: thirteenth of February. Great.

She looked up at Giles and her heart did one of its silly little dances when he focused that green gaze quizzically on her. She loved his eyes, loved the way they showed his emotions even when his face didn't, and she loved the small brown patch in the left one, that somehow made him uniquely Giles.

She owed it to him to be certain that the Spike thing was over. For the first time in her life she was really in love. She knew it, but she also know that her dark side was about as likely to just lie down as Willow's had been. Like she'd ever had complete control over it anyway, *not*...and it scared her, not least because Giles deserved so much more. In the past she might have just let it go and hoped for the best. She looked at the man in front of her. She couldn't do that to him again...not ever.

"You're right. I-I asked Spike...before we, before that patrol, to go to Diego's tomorrow..."

"Mexican food," she explained awkwardly. "I still have to deal with what happened between us, and I thought if I could see him like that and it didn't mean anything, then it would finally, really, be over."

"I don't know," she admitted honestly. "Before...it wasn't healthy. It was dark and twisted and violent and horrible...but that was both of us...not just him. A part of me understands him and a part of him understands me...the not so nice parts. I'm just not sure what that means, or if I can let go of the 'Evil Buffy monster' any more than Willow can really escape from 'Dark Scary Willow'. It scared me...it still does. I can't even look you in the eye and say 'it's not who I am any more' because, God help me, I just don't know."

His face had grown shuttered, like it used to be, and his voice was very neutral.

Dawn had provided an ecstatic welcome when Xander and Willow brought Buffy and Giles home that afternoon. Dinner had been a family affair, with everyone there, even Anya. Giles and Buffy had barely spoken to each other, but no one really noticed, too busy asking questions and listening to Giles, the consummate storyteller, recounting their various adventures and describing the world that had very nearly become their permanent home.

It wasn't until the front door closed for the last time, a couple of hours after Dawn had reluctantly gone to bed, that the two of them finally faced each other again.

Momentary surprise, instantly controlled, showed in Buffy's face. "You're not well enough to sleep on the couch. You get Willow's room tonight. She's staying at Xander's."

He nodded and then seemed to make some effort to lighten the situation. "It's good to be back."

For two hours Buffy tossed and turned, got up and looked out her window, then tossed some more. Then she dressed and went out to patrol. About halfway along her normal beat, she made a decision.

The crypt door was closed, but not locked. Buffy opened it and stepped inside. It was nothing like his old one. He hadn't even bothered to try and make it a home. It was a very old one, maybe from last century, and as neglected as his previous one.

He stepped out of the shadows, dwarfed by the statue that rose up behind him: a Victorian mother and infant.

Buffy half smiled. He was still Spike. "Yeah, well. Not dead. Giles and me...we're good at surviving...unless there's a prophecy or a god involved, I guess."

"Depends what you mean by 'bonding'." She was well aware of the innuendo in his voice, and she hadn't forgotten his earlier suspicions about them.

He regarded her for a minute. "Well, I can see you haven't exactly been shaggin' like bunnies...but something's changed. Unless of course you've come sniffin' around because you need to scratch that old itch again...?"

He looked at her with his clear blue eyes, still as easy to read as they always had been. In a way, it had been one of the things that had drawn her to him. He was easy: no complications, no reverses...at least not at first. He was what he was and he made no apologies for it...and he saw what she was, after she came back, and he didn't care.

"Definitely still a pig. And whether you get anything to eat tonight depends on what...or who, it is."

Spike drew out a cigarette and lit it up. "I can't keep anything cold here, now can I? No power. No telly and no bloody microwave, either," he drawled. "Clem keeps a supply for me."

Buffy's eyes narrowed. When Spike started making a point of looking laid back and unconcerned it almost always meant he was anything but.

He threw the barely-smoked cigarette down and ground it into the floor. "Depends on what you mean by 'okay'. I'm stuck in this draughty wreck of a crypt, wondering if you're dead or alive, and the idiot carpenter-boy decides they don't need me to patrol with them. I'm starting to wonder if it's time to move on, and Red comes to see me, tells me you're back and alive. Then she tells me to leave you alone. 'Things have changed', she said."

Buffy shrugged. "Things are different. But then, things have been different between us for a while now..."

Spike's expression grew bitter and impatient. "Since that little episode in your bathroom, you mean?" She looked up at him, and he was surprised to see that the memories of it were still able to make her look fragile, even after all this time. That only made him more frustrated.

"Anybody think something actually happened," he snapped. "Grow up. You know and I know that it would never have happened if we hadn't had...something...and if you'd been able to make up your bloody mind what you wanted!"

Buffy stood her ground, her eyes filling with long-unshed tears. "I know that," she said quietly. "I've never denied it. Funny, up until now you've never denied that what happened was still wrong, either."

"If she said that Giles was the first man I've ever truly loved, then yeah, she was right."

Vampire and Slayer stood staring at each other, both just as shocked at her statement; both for very different reasons.

"And you, Spike? When was your birthday again? Oh, yeah, Willow looked you up for me...did I tell you? You let yourself get vamped because you were this scared little guy who wrote poetry and lived with his mother until he was forty years old. Am I close?"

"Bollocks," he growled. "He's an old man. I'm not and I never will be. You want a daddy, not a real man."

Buffy hit him, hard. "I know you're only saying all these things because, somehow, you know what I'm saying is true. Don't do this, Spike. You're better than this...now."

"I'm sorry, William. I'm really sorry. I was going to go through with tomorrow. I even came here tonight because I had to know. We had something, you and me. I don't know what it was, but it was something and I missed you for a long time...after."

"The thing is, even though I truly had feelings for you, I knew that half of them were wrong, and the other half even I couldn't explain or give a name to. I still can't. I know that now. I mean, right now...for the first time, I really understand. And I'm really, really sorry. I wish I was as smart as Willow, or as all-knowing about relationships as our resident vengeance demon, but I'm not. Let's face it: I'm the Helen Keller of relationship understanding...of any kind of relationship. I didn't mean for any of it to happen the way it did and I didn't mean for you..." She stopped, emotion making her voice too hoarse.

"Bloody Slayers," he said, his voice surprisingly gentle. "The only creatures I know who can kill you without killing you." He frowned and cleared his throat. "So the sodding Watcher finally owned up, did he?"

He laughed, perhaps the unhappiest laugh Buffy had ever heard. "Like you said, Luv, you're as blind as a bat, and sometimes as dumb as one. What did you think I used to make him go to pieces back when I threw my lot in with that useless Adam git?"

Buffy frowned. "He was already feeling left out. You made him feel useless, made him feel like I didn't want...him...any...more. *Oh, God.*"

"Yeah, now you're getting it. Silly bint. I was the only one who could see that the stupid old bastard was eating himself up because he had no reason to stay, no reason to be your other half any more. All that crap about a mid-life crisis...he almost had himself believing it too. But old Spike knew better. A few words here, a few there and he was hittin' the bottle just to anaesthetize himself enough so that he didn't have to face the truth...or feel the pain."

Spike shook his head. "You still don't get it?" He was about to tell her in even more blunt terms, but she raised a trembling hand to still him.

"I get it. That's why you thought we were...and why you told me he didn't mean it that time: when we were eavesdropping on that conversation he had with Willow after she brought me back..."

He lit up another cigarette, this time because he needed it. "Red deserved to get her arse kicked, and old Rupes did right to do the kicking, but he never said anything I wouldn't have said in his place."

He shook his head, ash flicking off the tip of the smoke in his mouth. "Don't be too hard on Red, though. She's never really going to grow up, that one. She'll still be a little girl looking for someone to love her when she's ninety. Family of hers really did a number on her."

His head tilted to one side. "All right. I wouldn't have brought you back for the same reasons your sodding sugar daddy wouldn't. Happy now?"

Spike went across and rested his forehead on the wall of the crypt for a long moment, then turned and slid down it until he was sitting in the dust, head resolutely up but shrouded in shadow, and drawing on his smoke just as though he still had lungs to fill with the acrid smoke. It was a long time before he dropped the butt and bowed his head.

Giles looked up from the canister of tea he was opening. "I hadn't given it a great deal of thought, actually. Dawn tells me the rest of my belongings are still in the attic. I suppose I should bring them down, do some washing...sort everything."

Buffy stood watching him for a moment. He was shaved, but he was wearing nothing but black pyjama bottoms. Not even a robe. Not so long ago he'd have died before letting anyone see him dressed...or undressed...like that. He looked beyond wonderful...but somehow, the newly smooth face seemed only to add to the distance between them.

When Giles realized what she was looking at, he apologised. "I think young Dawn might have boxed up all of my things from the bathroom, the living room...even that closet I was using, when they realized we weren't coming back. I wore these the night before that patrol. They were in the box Willow found, along with the books I was reading, my sneakers, some mail and magazines, my shaving kit and a number of other personal items. Unfortunately they were the only nightclothes in there. And none of you are quite my size."

Her expression made it clear she was enjoying the view. "No complaints here. So have you had breakfast yet?"

He shook his head and looked up at her inquiringly, very much the Giles of old, except for the naked chest...

A short time later they sat in silence, sipping at their scalding hot drinks. When they were done, Buffy took the cups back to the kitchen and Giles went upstairs to the bathroom to shower and dress.