Good Intentions

Giles came awake slowly. The threads of his dreams let go of his consciousness only reluctantly, but did not leave any clear memory behind. For a change, though, what fragments that did remain were not born of nightmares. His head wasn't pounding with his usual morning hangover and facing the day didn't seem like such an overwhelming prospect.

There was more to the difference than that, though. More than just the clearness of his head as he stretched and tried to put off opening his eyes lest this feeling slip away with the greeting of the light. There was the knowledge, though nothing was touching him but sheets and duvet, of someone else in his bed.

The image splashed across his closed eyelids, crisper than it could really have been in the dimness of the unlighted loft last night. Pale limbs folded up, straining beneath him. Burning yellow eyes in an alien, yet familiar face. Without opening his own eyes, Giles flexed his fingers, and felt the ghost of tight, responsive flesh surrounding them.

It had been a very long time since he'd engaged in that particular act. Memories of the last time floated to the surface of his mind -- loud music, rooms full of smoke and the dark pleasure of Eyghon’s presence on his soul. A shiver that wasn't as much of revulsion as he would like ran down his spine. He'd avoided this kind of intimacy ever since because of just that reaction. But last night... Last night had been something different.

If he kept his eyes closed and just laid here in the self-imposed darkness, he'd start thinking about *how* different. About what it had been, what it might mean. Where they went from here. Things he wasn't sure he wanted to examine in the claustrophobic confines of his head. But if he opened his eyes, he'd be faced with the real thing, in the curtain-filtered light of day. Perhaps he could convince himself to fall asleep again?

Giles had just counted his second sheep when he felt the cold finger teasing its way down his spine. "Someone doesn't want to get up for school today," Spike sing-songed in that dreadful mélange of half-familiar accents. "Shall we call your mum and ask her to write a note for teacher?"

Giving in, Giles opened his eyes to find Spike propped up on one elbow, staring down at him, mocking grin firmly in place. The sardonic effect was ruined, however, by hair so mussed from sleep that it made Giles imagine counting white-blond vampires jumping over fences, instead of sheep. He grinned back. "One of the advantages to being the owner, I can take a day off when I want to."

Spike held up a finger, his expression never faltering. "Half owner. And the other half's not likely to be best pleased when she finds out it's just the *day* you're taking off, not the rest of your life. You might want to smooth the way a bit, actually show up to drop that tidbit in person." The corner of his smile did waver, when Giles didn't answer right away, still digesting that thought and wondering if he shouldn't go back to sleep after all. "It *is* just the day, isn't it?"

"Yes," Giles answered immediately. "I'm staying." And didn't it feel good to have finally made that decision once and for all? A part of him had never wanted to leave; he just had needed a reason for staying. Though the reason he had found wasn't one he could've predicted.

"Really staying, or just staying til you change your mind again? Because Anya might put up with that on-again-off-again crap, but if you think I'm gonna play Scheherezade for you every night, just to make sure you don't pull a runner in the morning..." Spike looked dangerously serious for a moment - then he snickered. "Well, I suppose I could get used to the indignity of being shagged blind every night, come to it."

"I'm really staying." He kept his expression perfectly serious as he added, "Though if you want to play Scheherezade, I'm sure we can find you some silks to dress up in."

Spike sighted down the length of his own body, half covered in rumpled sheets, as if he was considering the suggestion. Then he shook his head. "If you're gonna make me go drag, I want leather. Flatters the figure, *and* it doesn't get ruined by bloodstains." He looked up, and the cheeky grin was back. "Which there would be, if you tried to make me go drag."

It was on the tip of Giles' tongue to remind Spike of his chipped status, but somehow he couldn't bring himself to do so this morning. Instead he merely said, "Duly noted," and left it at that.

Spike nodded, as if he'd scored some sort of victory. He rested his hands behind his head and regarded Giles. "So, never done the honeymoon suite before. Does it come with Continental Breakfast? Belgian waffles? Egg and chip?"

"You think I'm going to cook for you?"

Spike stretched and yawned in a manner that was positively decadent, and made Giles want to either smack him, or drop his head to the pillow and give in. Fall back asleep and let Spike, indeed, phone in his absence to Anya. That should make for an entertaining morning of gossip at the shop. At the pinnacle of his stretch, though, arms high above his head and toes pointing forward beneath the sheets, Spike winced. "Least you could do. Show some sort of human decency to the poor bugger you so brutally...er, buggered, last night."

"You weren't complaining last night." He wasn't going to fall for it, Giles told himself. With the rate of vampiric healing, any residual...effects should have long since faded.

Spike looked a bit pained, in more ways than one. "In the moment, wasn't I. Wasn't really thinking about how that whole super healing factor slows down a bit when you're living off pig's blood. Specially when you didn't even stop off for any of that, last night."

He was laying it on a bit thick, Giles thought, but even so he found his resolve wavering. Sighing, he sat up. "I can manage coffee, but I fear I don't have much else in the house."

"S’pose that'll have to do. Unless you're keen on opening a vein." Somehow Spike managed to sound as if he realized how ridiculous the comment was, yet if Giles had been insane enough to say yes, he would have nodded sagely and pretended he'd been serious all along.

However much Giles was questioning his sanity, he still hadn't reached *that* level of craziness. "Sorry, but I need all my blood where it is." He got out of bed and reached for his robe, feeling Spike's eyes on him the whole time.

The vampire said nothing, but he didn't need to - one indolent smirk was all that was required to substitute for any comments that Spike might have come up with concerning Giles' sudden need to be clothed in front of someone he'd had sex with only hours ago. Or perhaps Spike was simply waiting for his store of sarcasm to be refueled with caffeine, and then he would get to the snickering. No matter. Giles wasn't about to go wandering his flat in the altogether in broad daylight. It just wasn't...proper.

Though he supposed that fucking a vampire probably wasn't written up in any etiquette guide either when it came to that. Not much of what he did, even on his most 'normal' days was, of course -- not even in the Council of Watchers' guides, which seemed to know as much about actually *being* a Watcher as Giles knew about actually being a vampire. He descended the stairs, and headed for the kitchen, not looking back at the primary source of vampire lore who was lounging in his bed. The things they left out of those manuals...

Spike had been right to think they were excised. Unique as Buffy might have been, there had to have been Watchers who faced *some* of the sort of things they encountered on the Hellmouth, and they had to have written their experiences down. Their thoughts and feelings. Not just a dusty collection of reminiscences that list the size, weight and colour of that day's monster, but nothing about what happens when you realize it might not be trying to kill you. Or, god forbid, when you let it into your bed.

The coffee maker was still unpacked at least, though Giles hadn't been lying when he'd said that coffee was about all he had. He'd been living off takeaway for weeks now, unwilling to buy more groceries when he might finally decide that day that it was the right time to go. He set it to brew, a bit stronger than usual, and leaned against the counter, surveying what was left of his flat.

It was, as he had said the night before, a mess. The spray of shattered glass in the corner only caught his attention because of the faint scent of wasted whiskey, the angry crash echoing in his memory. A stranger would never even notice the souvenir of last night's conversation amid the rest of the disarray. His belongings were all over the place, half in boxes, half in piles waiting to be boxed. Looking at it now, he could see clearly the indecision he'd been battling with. His life and mind had been a study in halves for months: half done, half committed, half here, half gone.

Now he'd done something complete and whole, hadn't he. For the first time since he'd laid his hands over a young man's mouth and felt the all too human body struggling beneath him until the movement stopped. He'd known then, what he was doing. Why he was doing it. That it had to be done. This time, the only thing he was sure of was that he *had* done something -- and that he had a hell of a lot of unpacking to do.

And that, as Spike had pointed out, Anya was not going to be thrilled by his news, when he'd drummed up the courage to relay it. Giles shied away from that thought, not up to considering the others' reactions -- at least not before he'd had some caffeine himself. He'd make a list of everything he needed to do later -- starting with going grocery shopping.

"Head off to Brazil for that coffee, did you?" Giles heard Spike's voice rather close at hand for him to be still lying about in bed. He looked up to find a bedhair-topped face peering down at him over the wire loft railing, grinning. Attached to a thoroughly naked body.

"You'd think that someone who had over a century under his belt would have learned patience by now," Giles retorted, sounding remarkably normal, even in the face of this rather blatant reminder of what he'd done the night before.

"Nothing under my belt at the moment," Spike pointed out. With visual aid. "Besides, patience is a myth. You wait for things you can't do anything about, and the rest, you go out and take."

Giles continued to look up at him, in spite of himself. "Unless you're being a lazy sod and pretending you're too worn out to fix your own coffee."

Spike nodded. "There is that." He made no move to come down the stairs and take what he was so concerned about not waiting for, though. Just continued to lean lazily on the metal railing.

Giles was struck suddenly at how...comfortable this all seemed. Not a hint of the awkwardness that he would've surely expected, if he thought about it. Having Spike there, trading verbal ripostes with him, felt...well, not normal. Having a naked vampire in one's flat fit no definition of normal that he knew of. But...comfortable. Like it was something he could get used to.

As if he could read Giles' thoughts, Spike began, finally, to descend the stairs, still sans clothing. "You might find your trousers, at least." Giles pointed towards the door. "The others do still occasionally barge in without knocking."

Spike put a hand on his heart, obviously wounded to the quick. "You mean... you're ashamed of me, Rupert?" The quaver in his voice was the sort that small children used when asking, 'Mummy, don't you love me anymore?'

"Do you really want them to see you in the-" Giles broke off. "What am I saying? Of course you do. Just because it would embarrass me, and them." The disturbing thing was, he wasn't sure if it would embarrass him -- beyond the 'caught doing private things in public' embarrassment that would wear off quickly. But not because of *who* he had been doing those private things with.

"Maybe they need a nice mind-melting," Spike said, though he was shaking his head and walking back up to, hopefully, locate his jeans. "Give Anya a good distraction from the fact that you'll be a bit of a louder partner than she thought."

"I don't think there's anything that could be that distracting to Anya." He watched Spike's retreating form, privately admitting it was a very nice view. The coffeemaker beeped at him, and Giles walked back around into the kitchen to pour. Problem -- only one mug that wasn't packed away. God only knew which box they were in.

Then he recalled where he'd last seen a mug besides his own, and grinned, reaching into the open box of 'deliver to the thrift shop' items. He was just bringing the steaming cups out when Spike stomped barefooted down the stairs, shirt in hand, but jeans thankfully in place.

"Better," Giles murmured, handing over one of the mugs.

Spike took one look at it and smirked. "Is that a proposition?"

"No. 'Would you like to come upstairs and look at my etchings' is a proposition. 'Kiss the Librarian' is a gift from Buffy that you've forever tainted by habitually drinking blood from it -- so I thought you might as well have it." Giles took his own mug and retired to the sofa while Spike was still sniffing his experimentally.

After a moment, Spike dropped down beside him, and took a drink. Grimaced. Took another drink. "Swill."

"You're welcome," Giles said pointedly. He took a sip of his own, the heat being enough to somewhat numb his tongue to the strong, bitter taste. He took another sip, contemplating his companion. "What are you going to do now?"

Spike gave him a quizzical glance over the top of his cup, then took a large swig of it, swill or no. When he'd swallowed, he said, "Well, I thought I'd go out and rent a U-Haul. Just the thing for carting my gear over here, right?" He snorted. "Course, the housewarming party with the big pile of dust as guest of honour might confuse your friends, since it's broad daylight out there..."

Giles felt his mouth strain with the smallest of frowns. Nothing to do with the vampire's ever-present sarcasm, and he couldn't think why, which words had snagged at the corner of his mind, until his fingers twitched with the sudden urge to rub his eyes. Buffy and Spike here in his flat, disgustingly, artificially in love. The unpleasant memory of his own spell-induced blindness faded to an ironic sort of nostalgia, in the face of all that had happened since. The two of them, bickering over wedding invitations. Checking in as Mr. and Mrs. Big Pile of Dust.

He felt a brief pang of the grief that had so often been all-encompassing in the last months. His Slayer was dead. Every time he thought about her, remembered anything, bad or good, that realization struck anew. He rather suspected it always would, tainting the sweetest of memories so that they left a bitter aftertaste in his mind.

"I meant--"

What had he meant? What was Spike going to do with his day, stuck here in the flat unless he decided to brave the outdoors under a blanket? Giles shuddered to think what he'd get up to if left alone.

But then, he hadn't been planning to leave Spike by himself, had he. He'd been planning to call in and take the day off. It was *Spike* who seemed to be so insistent that he go in, that he speak to Anya and the others. What was wrong with a day of relaxation, before he had to come up with any more definite plans than 'yes, I'm staying in Sunnydale?'

"I meant," he began again, "What did you plan to do with your day, if you're so concerned that I go in and tell Anya the allegedly happy news?"

"Was thinking I might come along." Spike's tone was a study in casual. "Watch the fireworks. If I were you, I'd make sure anything with sharp edges was locked up before you tell her."

Giles looked at the vampire, knowing the surprise had to be showing on his face. "You want to watch."

One bare foot crossed over the other on the coffeetable, and Spike rested his mug on his knee. "Of course I want to watch. The lot of us may be the only thing standing between Sunnydale and a nightly redecorating party that makes this flat look like Martha Stewart's been in, but it doesn't mean I don't still get off on seeing you go at each other hammer and tongs. One of my few remaining pleasures in death."

"I'm so pleased that we can be a source of entertainment for you," Giles said dryly. Some things, it seemed, weren't going to change.

"It's that or stay here and watch telly -- and I'll bet you've had the cable turned off."

"Well..." He added turning the cable back on to the growing list of things he needed to do now that he was staying.

"Right -- got a decent blanket? I assume the top goes up on the midlife-crisis-mobile; I'm *not* riding in the boot."

Giles pictured Spike being tossed around in the small trunkspace, hitting his head repeatedly on the tire-iron, and allowed himself a small smile. Should he pretend the top *wouldn't* go up, just for the enjoyment factor? He took another sip of his coffee, stretching out the moment, making Spike squirm for a bit before answering. "I think I can get it up," he finally said, choosing his words deliberately.

Spike just gave him an arch look, and jumped to his feet. "No time like the present, eh?"

"Without finishing the coffee first?" He glanced at Spike, trying to figure out from looking at him if he meant what Giles thought he meant.

Spike raised an eyebrow, then drained his coffee mug in one gulp. After a second of staring at the logo on the side of it, he gave Giles a look that said clearly, 'It's your move.'

Giles finished his own mug, regarding Spike. He considered what that move should be, knowing it would partially define how things would stand between them now. Did he want what had happened last night to be something relegated to the dark and the shadows, or...

He stood up, walked over, and kissed Spike.

No hesitation; Spike showed not the slightest sign of being surprised, just slid the tip of his coffee-flavoured tongue over Giles'. Strange, how the taste of coffee in Spike's mouth was stronger than the memory of it in his own. Like the night before, Giles found himself getting lost in the act, in the flavour and feel of Spike's mouth beneath his.

It would be very easy, he realized, to give in to this. To tug Spike back upstairs -- though he doubted much tugging would be required -- and prove to them both just how worn out Spike wasn't. It would be very easy to not quite make it up the stairs, in fact, though his sofa wasn't exactly made for that sort of thing.

He'd known what he was doing, Spike had. If he'd known, that is, when he'd let Giles convince him to convince him to stay. Whatever they'd been thinking or not thinking last night, Spike was *good* at this. At using his body, his mouth, his voice, to make Giles forget everything. To hold him here.

And that was what he'd been looking for, after all. Giles felt like he should be know this was wrong, that he should be drowning in guilt and shame, but he wasn't. All he felt was a vague worry and an overwhelming relief that he had found the connection he'd been looking for.

Aside from the pleasure of the act itself of course. And he was back to 'too easy.' With Spike's mouth against his, Spike's hand in his hair -- the hand that wasn't holding the mug with the logo that ordered him to do what he was, in fact, doing -- Giles had almost forgotten what they were *supposed* to be doing. Getting ready to leave, unless Spike was just planning to drive him mad all day by reminding him he should go into the shop, then distracting him from doing so.

More reluctantly than he cared to admit, Giles broke away, and smiled wryly. "No time like the present, yes. As to a blanket, I believe most of them are packed in that box by the counter." Leaving Spike with a slightly befuddled look on his face, he headed to the bathroom to shower and get ready himself.

*****

He dropped Spike off near the front door, and watched him rush, smoking, inside. Giles still marveled at how -- or why -- Spike had the courage to do that. Walk about in semi-broad daylight when most vampires hadn't the stones, or perhaps had too much intelligence, to try it. One of these days, there was going to be a locked door, or a spot of shade that wasn't where Spike remembered it was, and then where would he be?

After parking, and waiting a few moments (Because God forbid they show up together at the same time, and was he really thinking like a sixteen year old who didn't want his parents realizing he'd been knocking about with the rough boy from down the street? Rubbish. He'd *been* the rough boy from down the street.) Giles followed. The shop bell sounded into a rather silent room.

"Good morning," he said, looking between Anya, Xander and Spike and wondering what he was walking in on. He moved over to his desk, where he'd been working on the books for the last couple of days.

"Fancy meeting you here," Spike said, deadpan.

"I was under the impression that I work here," he answered, just as dryly. "That gives at least one of us a reason for being here."

Anya looked up at him. "Spike said he passed you outside, and you looked perplexed. Why did you look perplexed? Perplexed is almost always bad."

"Really." He shot Spike a brief look which had no effect on the slightly smirking vampire. "I'm not sure where he'd got that idea, because I wouldn't describe my mood as perplexed. Quite the contrary. I've finally come to a decision that I've been wrestling with for some time."

Anya's face lit up. "You're finally going back to England?"

"Anya!" Xander put a hand on her arm, then looked at Giles. "Really, she doesn't mean it the way it sounds."

"Yes, I do. I mean it to sound like I'm happy he's really leaving after worrying about it for so long. Not just because it means I'll be in charge. Finally." She turned her smile from Xander back to Giles. "I'm glad you decided you could trust me with our business." She did, indeed, look in addition to her misplaced joy, rather proud. He almost hated to rain on her parade.

"I do trust you, Anya, really," he assured her. "You've a genuine talent for this kind of work." He took a deep breath, steeling himself for her reaction to his next words. "But I'm not leaving."

Xander's face, always made of rubber, moved so quickly through a series of expressions that it was hard to pick them out - shock, worry, disbelief? - much less guess what thoughts they might be prompted by.

Anya, on the other hand, laughed. Actually, she giggled, for rather a long time. When she finally caught her breath, Anya stood up, walked over, and punched Giles lightly on the arm. "And Xander thinks I have no sense of humor just because I thought his joke about the three nuns and the vending machine repair man wasn't funny."

Xander was looking...perplexed, as if he didn't get *this* joke, but he took the time to mutter, "You said you thought it was funny. You laughed. You laughed in the wrong place, but you laughed." He looked at Giles. "You're not kidding, are you?"

"I'm not joking. I'm staying, here, in Sunnydale." Giles braced himself.

Anya looked less sure of herself, though she still wasn't exploding at him, as he'd feared. "You *have* to be joking."

"I think he's serious, hon." Giles couldn't tell if Xander was unhappy, or relieved -- the tone of his voice said one thing, the look his face had finally settled on, another.

"I know that. That was the kind of 'you have to be joking' where you know they're not, but it's more polite than saying, 'Are you out of your freaking mind?'" There was the fluster, not quite out of control yet, Anya looking nervously back and forth between Giles and Xander.

Giles continued doggedly onward. "You will of course still be a partner in the store-"

"See?" Xander put his hand on Anya's arm again. She shook it off. "It's not like you're losing anything, Anya. We're just..." Xander looked up at him confusedly, apparently torn between pacifying his girlfriend and trying to make Giles feel...what -- welcome in his own shop? "keeping Giles."

She shook her head sharply. "Because he doesn't trust me." Rounding on Giles she pointed a finger. "This is about the statues of Erishkegal, isn't it. Just because I bought one little shipment of cursed icons, you think I can't run the store by myself."

"No, it's not. I told you that I trust you, Anya. That has nothing to do with--"

"Xander, make him leave, so I can show him how well I can get along without him!" She stared at Xander as if he really had the power to do something about the situation. She also sounded, beneath the waspishness, truly hurt.

"Anya..." Giles walked over and rested his hands on her shoulders. "I *do* trust you and I'm absolutely certain you would do a wonderful job running the shop by yourself. My decision to stay has nothing to do with that." Out of the corner of his eye he could see Spike watching them, his expression curiously blank. Shouldn't he be grinning happily, nay, demonically? If indeed he'd come along to enjoy the fireworks, he didn't seem to be getting off on them the way he'd said he would.

Anya looked at Giles warily. Unsure if she should trust *him*, it seemed. Lower lip slightly extended, not in a pout, but in the typical brow-furrowed confusion of a worried child. For a moment, he could see her as she must have looked a thousand years ago, a straggle-haired urchin in brown homespun, tugging at someone's hem less for attention than for confirmation that things were going to be all right. He couldn't guarantee her that, unfortunately. Couldn't guarantee any of them that, himself least of all.

"I highly doubt that I could've run the store for this long without you," he said, trying to give her what reassurance he could. "And I am certain I wouldn't want to try. I still need your help, Anya."

"Yes, but.." She looked doubtfully at Xander, who shook his head quickly. Whatever private communication went on between them, Giles couldn't read, but after a second, Anya turned back to him. "It's not that I don't *want* you to stay," she began. "I didn't want you to go in the first place, but then you said you had to, and told me how good I'd be at being in charge, and I believed you, but then you kept not going. And now you say you're staying, but what if tomorrow you decide not to again?"

She raised both hands in a 'give me something here...' gesture.

"What if we get all used to having you here, and thinking we can depend on you, and you change your mind again? It's like the boy who cried wolf. Sooner or later you're going to go, and the sheep are going to eat us."

"Ahn, that's not exactly the way the story goes..." Xander started to tell her.

Giles was trying to think of some way to reassure her, when he caught sight of Spike's face. The vampire was leaning against the counter, immeasurably distant from the small group standing in the middle of the room. The blank look was gone, and in its place was something so similar to what he'd imagined while looking past the adult woman to the iron-age child, that it made Giles' breath catch in his throat.

Not that Spike looked like a child - it was just the sheer open uncertainty and fear on that face, that was usually twisted in a smirk or a scowl. He hadn't come for the fireworks. Giles searched for something he could say, something he could promise to make that look go away. The memory of words from the night before gave him the answer. "I promise I won't leave as long as I'm needed here."

There was something, just for a second. A tiny flash of something that might have been relief, or determination to hold him to his word, or some completely alien emotion that only another demon could hope to understand, and Anya had her back turned to Spike, so she'd be no help in interpreting it even if Giles were insane enough to ask her. Then, just as quickly, it was gone, and Spike was curling his lip. Playing at being amused.

"Well, I know I'm relieved. Otherwise, who'd go all anal-retentive on me and tell me not to light up in the shop?" Spike fished in his jacket, presumably for his lighter.

"I would," Xander and Anya both replied at once.

"We'll take it in turns," Giles said, sending a half-smile Spike's way.

Spike rolled his eyes, but didn't pull the lighter out of his pocket.

Xander was the first to back away from the little knot they'd formed, drawn together by some unconscious gravity, then finally freed of its pull. He shot a brief glance at Spike, then another one, the couples-only sort, at Anya, who seemed like she still wanted to say something. She frowned, but nodded, and walked silently over to the cash register.

"So, have you talked to Willow and Tara yet?" Xander asked.

"Not yet." Giles headed back over towards his desk. "Given our business arrangements, I felt I should tell Anya first."

"Sure you want to follow it up by telling the Wiccas?" Spike asked, crossing his arms and smirking. "Another heartwarming reception like this one might send you into a diabetic coma."

Xander turned on him. "Is there an actual reason why you're here? Besides the annoying undead comedy hour, I mean."

Anya reached over the counter and tugged at his sleeve. "Xander? We actually *wanted* to see him, remember? To ask him if he'd do the thing."

Spike raised an eyebrow. "The Thing? If this involves watching cheesy horror flicks... actually, yeah, sounds good. I'm in. Long as I get to laugh when the hero gets eaten."

Xander blinked at Anya for a second, then comprehension bloomed. He turned to Spike. "The babysitting thing, Blood Breath. As in watching Dawn, Which means *no* cheesy horror movies."

The sneer that would normally have coloured Spike's voice was mild, when he answered. "She's fifteen, Harris, not five. In case you haven't noticed, her *life's* a cheesy horror movie."

"But you'll do it? Stay with Dawn tonight?" Anya sounded worried, as if Spike hadn't done so every time they'd asked him to, since Buffy's death. He'd volunteered more than once, actually, Giles realized. It wasn't something he would've ever expected of the vampire -- at least not before this summer. Now, it seemed...normal. Expected. They were all protective of Dawn, but none of them more so than Spike.

Who looked rather insulted that Anya needed to confirm it. "Like I have anything better to do?"

Unbidden, the memory of what they'd done the night before flashed through Giles' mind, and he had to fight to keep his expression composed. He carefully didn't look at the vampire, knowing that he would let something show if he did.

"Obviously not, if you're hanging around here in the middle of the day," Xander answered immediately. "What *did* you brave the tanning rays for? Here you see me showing appreciation, but I assume you didn't show up here on the off-chance that we'd ask you if you wanted to make three-fifty an hour plus all the cookie dough you can eat."

Spike was nonplused for a second, obviously expecting the confusion of Giles' announcement to have wiped any questions about his presence from their minds. "Burba weed," he said finally, a bit gruffly.

"Huh?" from Xander. "Was that English?"

Anya perked up. "You came to *buy* something?"

Giles was beginning to worry about how familiar -- and comfortable -- that sarcastic snort of Spike's was becoming. "No, I came to watch you lot get all fussed about whatever had Giles in a twist, and shoplift some when you weren't looking." His expression grew calculating. "But I'll be happy to take it in trade for my three fifty an hour."

"You weren't going to *get* three fifty an hour," Anya responded immediately. "What do you want Burba weed for, anyway? It's only good for wart removal and cramps, neither of which I assume you have." She looked him up and down. "Well, you might have warts, I suppose. Just none that I can see."

"I don't have warts." Spike winked at her. "Though if you want to check me out to make sure, you're always welcome."

He had to have known Xander would bristle like a wild boar, and glare at him like he was one step away from seeing if Burba root could be sharpened and used as a stake. Spike got off on it, Giles realized. Or, he amended -- as just for a moment, the smugness of Spike's grin threatened to soften into a smile -- it gave Spike comfort. One thing stable and familiar, in a world gone mad.

Cool again, Spike looked Xander in the face. "Oh, calm down, Harris. I'd let you watch." To Anya he said, "Seasoning, love. Just seasoning. Makes the bagged blood taste better."

"Ever the gourmet," Giles said dryly. He was, surprisingly, enjoying watching Spike wind the others up, and for much the same reason -- a glimpse of something like normality.

"I dunno that there's anything gourmet about making crap taste like ginger-flavoured crap, but if you're allowed to do it with non-dairy creamer, I'm not ashamed to grind a little Burba root in my blood."

Anya nodded sympathetically. "I do understand. It's a big change, not being able to eat the things you like best. I used to love a good boiled Cartarrhka Grub, but these days, I just don't have the digestive system for it." She smiled generously, heedless of Xander's bilious expression. "You can have all the Burba root you like, Spike."

Spike blinked at her. "Really?"

She nodded. "For three dollars a pound."

"Thank you, Lady Bountiful." Spike reached in his pocket, then pulled out his empty hand. "I'll just pop back in when I win the lottery, then." He managed to sound, somehow, both righteously aggrieved that she hadn't handed over free inventory, and completely innocent despite the fact that he'd baldly admitted to intending to shoplift the stuff. He grabbed the dark blue blanket from the counter behind him, and wrapped it around himself, then started for the door in a dignified huff.

Spike had one foot poised to step out into the sunlight, when Anya called, "Don't forget you're Dawnsitting tonight!"

"Not about to. Least she gives me cookie dough." Spike wrapped the blanket tighter around him, and rushed out into the sunlight, heading for the nearest patch of shade. Giles peered around the doorframe after a moment to see Spike crouching in the shadow of the car.

Anya walked over and shut the door with a jingle of bells. "I don't know what he's so huffy about. I was going to give it to him at employee discount."

Giles looked over at her. "We have an employee discount?" He wasn't sure if he was more surprised at Anya offering a reduced price or the concept of Spike as an employee.

She nodded. "Staff don't get charged for wrapping."

"Of course." He smiled, and for the first time in a while, felt sure he meant it.

******

The night felt different somehow. It was more real, the darkness almost a palpable feeling against his skin. He took a deep breath and held it in his lungs for a moment before letting it go. Giles hadn't realized how much he had shut down as he had struggled with leaving. Now that he had decided to stay it was like nerve endings that had been asleep were coming tingling awake.

Three cemeteries, and there'd only been a single vampire, buried this morning, rising at dusk. Nothing like the gang they'd had to fight last night. Nothing that required Willow playing lookout and shouting directions into their minds. Tonight's one vamp had been dispatched by a single strike of the Buffybot's arm, without the rest of them doing more than standing about and watching for a sire or gang who might be showing up to welcome the fledgling creature.

There was nothing, and still, he felt as if he'd done more than last night, just by being here. Being completely here, in mind and body.

"Quiet night," Xander remarked as they finished the last sweep.

"Yeah," Willow agreed. "We could probably even let the Buffybot finish on her own."

Giles looked up at her, and found himself oddly disappointed. "Are you sure? Not that I don't trust your skills with reprogramming it--"

Willow gave him a look, then nodded her head towards the Bot, as if it would be insulted by hearing him imply that it was...what it was. An object. But she had a point -- it had to think of itself as Buffy, if it was to act like Buffy.

"With training her," he corrected himself. "But is she ready to be trusted on her own?"

"We've sent her out alone before," Willow answered, her voice tinged with defensiveness. She almost sounded angry with him, and Giles had to look closely at her, wondering if there wasn't something else.

She and Tara had both smiled and hugged him, when he'd told them he was staying; nothing like Anya's initial reaction. But there'd been a certain strain, something he'd sensed from all of them tonight, even as he'd been breathing the invigorating charge in the air. It was like a flicker against that energy. Crosswise, like lightning about to strike, but never quite building up enough electricity to finally *do* it.

"Yes, of course we've sent her out before... but only on test runs, with us following, ready to assist if anything went wrong." Giles held up a hand to still Willow's protest. "But this seems like as good a night to try it as any; you're right."

"We have to do it eventually," Willow pointed out, tone slightly mollified now that he'd agreed with her. "Besides none of us have had a night off for weeks." She smiled at him suddenly. "And I'm sure you have lots of unpacking to do."

"Well, I-"

"Great," she cut him off, smile widening. "Then it's settled. We let the Buffybot finish patrolling on her own, while the rest of us get to go and pretend we have lives for a night."

"In other words, go home and study," Tara said with a small smile.

"And let Spike off the Dawnsitting hook," Willow added.

"Right, because *he's* got a life to pretend to have," Xander snorted.

Giles refrained from pointing out that Spike might, in fact, have a life to pretend to have, since it would imply that he'd spent time considering the subject. Instead, he let them go. Watched the younger ones walk off in the direction of Xander's car, of Buffy's home, and turned around to return to his own. He did have a lot of unpacking to do, truthfully. And Spike did have a life to pretend to have. The two might even coincide.

At the edge of the cemetery he looked back, to see a lone figure still standing, staring at a grave a few yards over from where the vampire had risen. Small. Slim. Long blonde hair, and a stance, one hip cocked, that almost, almost looked right. Willow had been fiddling. Improving. From this far away, if he squinted, he could almost believe.

Giles turned away, and walked in the direction of his flat. He didn't want to pretend. Not for himself. For the world outside, yes. But not for himself.

Not that there hadn't been moments when he'd wanted to pretend so badly it hurt. Wanted it as much to prove he still had a purpose as to alleviate his guilt and grief. Buffy had been the reason he'd come here in the first place, and the reason he'd always given himself for staying. There'd been moments he'd needed to pretend, so he could stay just a little longer. Time that he needed to decide if leaving was what he truly wanted to do.

Now that he knew it wasn't, there was no need to pretend. No excuse, more importantly. And a sharp-voiced vampire who Giles sincerely doubted would allow him to do so, if he did give in.

Spike hadn't let him lie to himself, or to Spike, last night, and there wasn't much chance that would change. He walked all the way to his flat without looking back, now matter how hard he wanted to see that small figure, receding into the darkness.

The piles of boxes that confronted him when he entered were enough to drive pretty much all other thought from his mind. Facing the mess that was his flat drove home how daunting a task getting it livable again was going to be. It was almost -- he thought as he opened a box of linens and stared at the contents, trying to remember how long it had been since he'd actually *used* any of them -- a sort of penance, for living in indecision for so long.

Looking at sheets, folded neatly away, reminded him. Brought back the knowledge that for the first time in too long, he needed to change the ones on his bed for some other reason than laundry day. At least, then, unpacking this box had a practical purpose, beyond just making the place look like home again. He went about the business of putting things into place, including the changing of sheets, though he suspected they were likely to need changing again in the morning.

There was something soothing about all of this. It was a physical reinforcement of his decision to stay. A metaphor, as pretentious as he felt in naming it such, for what he hoped to do with his heart and soul, his life in general. He lost himself in the act of unpacking and tidying, time passing without his really noticing.

It was only when he stood up from emptying the last box of baking pans and trays into the cupboard under the sink, that his aching back made him question how long he'd been at it. A glance at the clock made him blink several times, and take off his glasses just to be sure; it hadn't seemed like two hours had passed.

It was almost pathetic, but not quite, that his next thought was, 'I wonder what's keeping Spike.' It wasn't as if they'd made some sort of date for tonight, or Spike was indeed planning to rent a trailer and arrive at the doorstep with whatever meager possessions the vampire had. But Giles had, somehow, been expecting him. That Spike would be here tonight, would be here every night for the foreseeable future, seemed almost accepted in his mind, without ever having been examined.

Briefly he wondered if perhaps he'd made a wrong assumption about Spike's plans for the night. After all, the others had headed home two hours ago, and he couldn't picture Spike hanging about the Summers house after Willow and Tara had returned. He might not have anything against them, but his very Spike-ness would make it unlikely that he'd stay for tea and a round of Monopoly with the girls. So where was he?

All the reasons someone might be delayed walking at night in Sunnydale flashed through his mind. Of course, Spike was more than capable of taking care of himself, but even the best of them could be taken by surprise. Giles stared at the door, wondering if maybe he should go out and look. Spike would look at him like he was an idiot, though, if he came across the vampire on his way over after stopping off for a beer. He'd seem at best a fool, at worst...

But at worst, what was he? A man who'd already admitted he needed Spike as much as Spike needed him. For an anchor, a reason to stay. A reason to be what he was needed to be. He stood up, and walked toward the door.

Just as he was reaching for the knob, the door opened and he found himself face to face with Spike -- who looked just as startled as he.

"Er..." Giles stepped back. "Come in."

"Yeah, I think we established that bit last night." Spike slipped past him, tossing his jacket at the coat rack with more energy than strictly necessary; the wooden pole tottered, but didn't quite fall over, though Spike didn't look as if he cared. He flung himself down on the sofa, frowning, but not saying a word.

Giles shut the door and contemplated the scowling vampire on his couch. If it had been one of the others, he would have at least known how to approach them to find out what was wrong -- years of trial and error had given him that hard earned knowledge, little as he might have been using it recently. But with Spike, he didn't even know where to begin. He was down to guesswork.

Well, he could always fall back on how they had begun last night. "Drink?" he asked. He certainly had enough of that remaining, despite the loss last night of the bottle whose shards he'd cleaned up not an hour ago.

Spike nodded curtly, then stood again. Walked to the door, and opened it, looking out at-- what? Whatever had kept him so long?

"Spike?"

"What?" His voice was hard, a palpable wall of sound against anything Giles might have been intending to ask.

"Scotch or gin?"

Spike looked at him blankly for a few seconds as the question registered. "Scotch," he finally answered gruffly, though it was still in a more friendly tone than he had used before. Giles merely nodded and poured him a glass. He handed it over without comment. Spike was far too defensive right now; Giles knew he had to wait until he relaxed his guard before asking anything.

He'd hardly seemed to be in a bad frame of mind when he'd taken off from the shop this morning, beyond his posturing for Xander and Anya. But there were any number of things in this town that could put a reasonably sane person into a piss-poor mood. Like this town itself, for instance. Giles retrieved a new bottle of scotch from a half-unpacked box, and glasses from the re-filled cupboard.

He poured, and set his glass on the coffeetable before carrying the other over to Spike, who was still staring out into the darkness. "If you weren't a vampire, I'd point out that you're asking for trouble, standing in an open doorway in Sunnydale in the middle of the night."

Giles held out the glass just as Spike turned around to look at him, expecting some variation on 'if I weren't a vampire, I'd have been dead a hundred years ago.' Instead, he got the glass snatched from his hand, and a flash of blue eyes so full of rage that Giles thought for a moment Spike was going to toss the drink in his face.

A prey-creature's instinctive fear of predators skittered along his spine, and it was an effort of will not to take a step back. Keeping his expression as much the same as he could, he continued to hold the glass out. Spike didn't reach for it, didn't do anything for a moment, except continue to stare at him-- until Giles realized that it wasn't even him Spike was seeing.

With that realization, he must have given off some sort of signal, a sudden lack of fear, a secret body language that said he was something besides dinner. Spike's gaze focused on him, and Spike reached for the drink in his hand. Held it for a moment, and again, Giles expected violence, though this time he was picturing a repeat performance of his own impromptu Greek toast last night, the glass flying across the room to shatter in the much-abused corner.

But Spike only held it tightly for a second, then bought it to his lips, pouring it down in one swallow. Then he slammed the glass down on the arm of the chair next to the door, and before Giles could fathom what was happening, there were liquor-covered lips against his own, wet and demanding. Fingers clamped around his arms almost hard enough to hurt, but not quite, drawing him in.

Taken by surprise, Giles was frozen for a few heartbeats, then opened his mouth, letting Spike's tongue slip in to brush against his own. He could still feel the violence in Spike, coiling just under the surface, that could explode any second. It made the kiss all the more intoxicating.

Spike only pulled away long enough to slam the door shut, slide the lock into place. Then he was pushing Giles towards the sofa. Backwards. Down. One knee between Giles' planted legs, and hands on his shoulders, pinning him against the cushions. Lips on his again, hard. Insistent. Angry and desperate, and Giles hadn't a clue for what, unless every night with Spike was going to be like this.

That could be true, he realized. Wasn't every night with Rupert Giles the same, before the last one? Lonely reading, one elegantly sipped drink too many, and a long slow climb to the loft, where he'd lie awake trying to hold the nightmares off as long as he could, trying to convince himself to go or stay or do *something* to take him out of this half world he'd been living in.

He returned the kiss with less desperation than Spike, but hard enough to let him know that whatever it was, Giles wasn't going to argue, wasn't going to ask until Spike had found what he needed to find. Reaching up, he wrapped a hand around the back of Spike's neck, pressing hard, holding him in place as much as he was being held.

It was easy to give in, to give as good as he got. Easy, when with every touch Spike bestowed on him, tinged with that desperate need, he felt more and more alive -- body tingling as if awakening after a deep slumber.

One hand disappeared from his shoulder, and for a moment Giles felt off-balance, as if the pressure were the only thing holding him to earth. That righted itself soon enough with the feel of Spike's fingers digging at his shirt, pulling it from his trousers. Fumbling, he almost thought, at his fly, but there was nothing clumsy about it, just hasty. Scarcely a moment before he felt Spike's hand on his cock, warmer than the air in a room still half chilled from the night wind.

Giles groaned at the touch, feeling himself harden even further under Spike's hand. He arched up, his hands sliding down to cup Spike's buttocks. For a moment only, Spike's hand disappeared from his cock, to the tune of a zipper being undone, feel of denim brushing his skin as Spike opened his fly. Then there was hand and cock and cock, and Spike pressing himself close, trapping all three between their bodies, grinding himself against Giles almost violently.

Hard enough to hurt, almost, and Giles saw the grimace on Spike's face. Wondered if the chip gave him some sort of warning buzz when he got near the edge, or if he was just guessing. Sensing how far he was pushing it. In the bright flash of blue eyes, Giles saw an anger that burned past any fear Spike might be feeling.

It made the terror shimmy up his spine for a moment, to guess that there was a level of rage that might let Spike move beyond the controlling leash upon his mind, if only for a second, before it knocked him to the ground. It hadn't happened yet, and it wasn't what was happening here, but sometime, somewhere, Giles could foresee. When it did, he hoped to god that whoever was on the other end of that one-second spark truly deserved what Spike was capable of doing. Sick, probably, that the thought only made him harder.

It wasn't in his nature to be so passive, but under Spike's gaze, Spike's hands, he found himself held motionless -- save for the involuntary tensing of muscles as he was driven inexorably towards his climax. Spike looked away as he thrust down against Giles, and it was only in the loss of that gaze that Giles realized Spike *still* hadn't been seeing him, not really.

Giles understood all too well, the need to fuck wildly, hungrily, painfully, more about the world outside than the body beneath you. He didn't mind serving that need. What else were they doing with each other anyway, if not that? But he'd be damned if he'd let Spike not *notice* who was giving him what he needed. Who he was grinding into the sofa.

He squeezed hard with both hands, and raised his mouth to the side of Spike's turned-away throat. The sharp nip got him an angry glare - but it was a glare at *him*. Giles would have nodded, pleased, if Spike hadn't thrust himself downward. Both of their cocks were crushed in his hand and between their bodies in a movement so tight, so sharp, that Giles could only breathe, then not breathe -- then come so violently that if it hadn't been his own body responsible for the sensations, Spike would probably be writhing on the floor right now.

And Spike *was* writhing, but not from any chip induced pain. He was thrusting against Giles desperately, almost brutally, not pausing for a second even as Giles' climax ripped through him.

He continued, blue eyes bright with hunger, maintaining that glare of awareness by the narrowest of margins, fading rapidly as Spike drove himself towards his own completion.

When he came, his grip on Giles' arm was so tight, his body so rigid, pupils so wide and fixed, Giles thought for a moment that Spike *had* managed to fry his brain somehow. His limbs were frozen, and the contortion of his face was nothing like what Giles had seen last night, with Spike beneath him looking up.

Spent, Giles resisted the instinct to relax, instead holding tightly to Spike's unmoving body as his orgasm seemed to fight its way out, as stubborn and angry as its owner. It seemed more of an ordeal for Spike than a pleasure, and Giles braced both of them, Spike's climax crashing down like a tidal wave breaking against a insurmountable cliff.

When it was over, there was another moment of connection, when Spike was looking at him again, just for a second. Seeing him. Still angry, but not at Giles, or no more at Giles than he was the rest of the world. Then that moment broke, and Spike was rolling off him. Zipping up and starting to stand, then when his legs didn't seem to want to oblige him, shrugging, and dropping back to sit next to Giles.

Spike let his head fall back, and Giles watched the muscles in his throat tighten as if he were going to speak, though he didn't. Giles watched him, not speaking, waiting with a patience honed by the years of being Buffy's Watcher, for him to find his voice.

It was a long wait, punctuated only by the sound of Giles' own breathing, but eventually, it ended. Without looking at him -- still staring at the ceiling, in fact, head resting against the wooden back of the sofa in a position that couldn't have been comfortable -- Spike took in a breath, and let it out in a single word. Odd. Nearly inflectionless, though Giles could still feel the anger simmering within the body next to him. "Bitch."

Giles waited for something further, and when nothing came, ventured, "Buffy?" It was, after all, the word behind every other word spoken between them, between any of them, since she'd been gone.

"No." Spike paused. "Well, yeah. But no. Willow."

Giles considered that for a moment, mentally running through what he knew of Willow's actions lately, and was unable to come up with something that would cause this kind of reaction. "Why?" he finally asked.

Spike's jaw clenched, but he spoke through it, his words tight, clipped. "She was supposed to make it stop. That...thing."

"I don't--"

"The Bot. She was supposed to make it stop...saying things. Doing things."

"Things," Giles repeated, frowning. "What do you mean by th--" He stopped as his brain put it all together. "Some of its...original programming still exists?"

"Not supposed to. Red said she'd cleared it all out. Made room for all the knock knock joke routines." The shape of a laugh was in Spike's words, but his voice didn't fill it. "Christ. It's not enough of a reminder, to have to look at it, apparently. No matter what gets done to it, rip its head off and spit into its sparky bits, doesn't matter. It's like that thing knows what it does to me, to hear that crap. Bitch."

"You don't really mean Willow, then."

An abbreviated snort. "Any of them. All of them. Does it make a difference?"

"Not really," Giles agreed. "Since it's not them you're really angry with." He hesitated before continuing but was resolved to give Spike the same brutal honesty he had been gifted with the night before. "No one likes to have past mistakes shoved into their face."

Spike looked down at him for a moment, sharp and unpretending. Then he laughed. Short and harsh and too small to fill up the hole where something more real belonged. "Very subtle, Rupert. But I didn't come here to get my head shrunk. I know what my issues are, thank you much."

Giles shrugged, not letting himself feel insulted. "You came here for more than a mutual wank on the couch, or you'd be gone by now."

"What, I don't get the chance to catch my breath?"

"You don't breathe."

There was silence, then a sigh that seemed to give the lie to that. "Right." And silence again.

Was it permitted, for him to offer comfort? Like this, not in the middle of sex? He didn't even know if he *wanted* to give in to the ludicrous impulse to draw Spike into his arms, much less if Spike would accept it. In a place that wasn't very far beneath the surface at all, Giles thought perhaps it was only right. Perhaps Spike *deserved* to have that lifelike reminder of her walking about, speaking with her voice, looking at him with eyes that he'd specified be filled with mindless, uncomplicated love.

Perhaps they both deserved her presence, for all the failures and foolish choices, and outright cruelties in their lives. Their penance, as much or more so than the grave hidden in the woods. An image of what they had both loved, so real that they could reach out and touch -- only to have the illusion shatter when they did.

Giles felt his lips curl up into a humorless smile. This level of maudlin was usually only achieved with half a bottle of scotch inside him. Mostly because he couldn't bear to think so deeply about these things without the cushion of alcohol to blunt the pain. God knew what it was about Spike, that he could bring this out; there was certainly nothing blunted about him.

Blunt, yes, in his directness. There were moments when Giles could imagine locking Spike and Anya in a closet together, and coming back an hour later to find them bored out of their wits, because they'd said everything there was to say in the first five minutes. But there was nothing in Spike that dulled the senses. Everything about him was designed to scrape your nerves, your memories, your patience, raw.

Even when he was only sitting silent, staring at the ceiling. Giles had a vision of Spike staying exactly like that the rest of the night, not moving, not speaking. Just brooding. "Why did you come here?" Giles asked, the need to break through that motionless silence and provoke a reaction suddenly overwhelming. There were all kinds of ways of making a connection.

Spike looked at him again. Surprised, this time. "Thought you'd be expecting me."

"I was." The admission was less difficult than he'd imagined it would be, now that he knew Spike had been thinking the same thing. There was nothing patronizing in Spike's tone, to make him feel stupid for his expectation -- rather, Spike had almost sounded as if *he* was suddenly unsure of his welcome. "That wasn't what I asked. Or even what I meant. Why did you come here tonight, now? What do you want, if not a quick shag and out the door? Or free unqualified psychoanalysis? You must've thought about it for a while, before you came over; it's been hours since the youngsters headed home."

Spike's look of surprise changed, somehow. Shifted into an everyday sort of confusion, as if Giles had just told him his boot was on fire, when it obviously, visibly, wasn't. "I came straight here."

Now the confusion was Giles' as he frowned. "We finished patrolling over two hours ago. The others said they were heading straight home..." He trailed off, frown deepening. It was evident now that they had lied to him. And that was not a comfortable feeling.

Spike laughed again, this time with a bit of amusement in it. "They ditched you. Snuck off from the old man to go play in the pool halls."

Giles shook his head. "Far be it from me to point out that they ditched you as well, or that you're older than me..."

"But better preserved." Spike did something illegal with his eyebrow, and it was almost as if he suddenly wasn't angry or upset at all. Impeccable timing, as always, now that Giles wanted to be taken seriously.

"Possibly. Better preserved or not, you still weren't told that they were off somewhere, when they said they were going home. And I can't see them taking off for a lark, leaving you with Dawn."

Spike's brow furrowed. "Well, they know she's safe with me. And they don't give a beggar's penny if *I* know what they're about, unless they need me."

Giles couldn't dispute that -- he hadn't treated Spike any differently before meeting him at Buffy's grave last night. But that still left the fact that they were keeping something from him -- going as far as lying to do so. His frown deepened. Unless they hadn't been lying -- perhaps they'd run into something on the way home? "They didn't mention anything unusual happening?"

Spike shook his head. "The Bot came home before they did, actually. Sparks fizzin' out of her head, and walking into walls. Only my good looks and charm kept the thing from going back out to look for Red, once it figured out there was something wrong with it. That and Dawn convincing it to play rummy with her."

That left out some unexpected bogey having ambushed them on the way home. They would surely have mentioned it to Spike, if the two girls had encountered something nasty enough to delay them for hours, without the robot to protect them. Which still left Giles with the question, which he vocalized: "Why would they lie to me?"

Deep inside a voice was whispering an answer -- that he wasn't needed anymore. That they had got so used to the idea that he was leaving that they had stopped thinking of him as a part of the group. But then, he'd had that suspicion for a while, hadn't he. It was one of the reasons -- only one, or he'd probably have been packing tonight instead of unpacking, despite Spike's good looks and charm -- that he'd been ready to leave in the first place.

Spike gave him a look, and Giles came close to laughing, because it was the sort of look that said, 'I swear to God, if you utter some piece of boring, self-pitying crap right now, I'm going to forget about this chip and bash you over the head with the nearest fertility statue,' without a word being spoken. "Because they're up to something," he said flatly.

Well, that went without saying. At least it did when he stopped thinking it was about him, Giles amended silently. "Of course they are. But it begs the question: what?"

Spike folded his arms. Crossed one leg over the other. Looked as if he was thinking deeply about it -- and the thought struck Giles that all it had taken to get him out of his Buffybot-induced funk was a problem to solve. A trick that seemed to work frighteningly well for the both of them. "S'not your birthday coming up, or anything, is it?" Giles blinked at him, and Spike gave a small grin. "Well, I know this is Sunnydale, but every once in a blue moon, there's a less than sinister explanation."

"No, it's not my birthday coming up. Nor can I imagine, given the mixed reaction, that they're making plans for a Thank You, Giles, For Not Leaving party." He could perhaps be forgiven just a *tiny* bit of self-pity, couldn't he?

Spike shook his head, letting it pass, seeming intent on the puzzle they were trying to solve. "You're right. If they were, Dawn would be in the thick of it."

"Does she even know?" Giles hadn't gotten the chance to tell Willow and Tara until they'd met at the shop for patrol, and neither of them had called home, to his knowledge.

Spike rolled his eyes. "Of course she knows; I told her."

It wasn't germane to the matter at hand, but Giles couldn't stop himself from asking. "How did she react?"

He expected a snicker; perhaps a comment about Spike asking her if she liked Giles, check yes or no, the next time he was called on to Dawnsit. Instead, Spike looked far too wise. "She said she'd believe it when she saw it."

That had the ring of truth to it; with all she'd been through, Dawn had become cynical of everything and everyone -- far too soon for someone her age. And all of this wasn't bringing them closer to figuring out what had happened in those hours where the others had been missing.

Spike scratched his chin. "So let's say it's something of a non-party nature. What would be so bad that they wouldn't want you involved in it? Or wouldn't want you knowing about it at all?"

Giles searched his memory for other times when things had been deliberately hidden from him. Angel, of course, times past counting. But that had been Buffy, whose life had been his to watch over; it was unsurprising, really, that she'd kept parts of it from him, from fear of disapproval, or just the need to have something of her own. The rest of them, though... "The only thing I can think of is that it's something that might put them in danger."

Giles closed his eyes and let the technicolour scenes flow by him. Xander, panicking his way into the library, a trail of women beating down the door after him. Willow, sheepishly baking cookies and testing his returned vision by lying about which one she was handing him. Tara, in the shop, face twisted into the image of guilty horror as the rest of them fought for their lives against invisible demons, and she muttered a prayer of undoing to eyeless Cadria, as fast as her lips would move.

Himself, twenty years ago, standing before his father and promising that there was nothing from his days as a reckless youth that could come back to haunt him, now that he'd given in and joined the Council of Watchers.

"It's magic." It would have to be. What else would they think he wouldn't approve of, or wouldn't believe they could handle?

"Maybe." Spike was thoughtful. "Or they're messing about with somebody they shouldn't trust. There's some pretty heavyweight nasties around here who aren't deep into the mojo -- doesn't mean they're not trouble. If those kids think they can go up against something that *you* wouldn't touch..."

"It could just be them overestimating my disapproval," Giles said, trying to think of the least disturbing reason, but he didn't even sound convincing to himself.

There were just too many dangers out there and, despite everything, the children had too little fear. They'd seen everything, done everything, fought everything. They weren't really children, had passed that age of innocence long before they should have -- but their experience had given them a dangerous sort of cockiness, as well. They'd saved the world, and the worst it could do to them now was kill them. It occurred to him, with a small tremor of sad fear, that he and Spike might not be the only ones for whom the worst no longer seemed like so much of a threat.

"They're not frightened enough, anymore," he said quietly. "They're afraid of the little things -- will we fool Dawn's school into believing a robot is a proper legal guardian for a fifteen year old girl, will the shop make enough profit to add a coffee bar... But they're not afraid of the big things. They've seen the world almost end, and they've seen death come to them and take what they love most-- so what else is there to be afraid of?"

Spike lifted his head and gave Giles a sharp look. "If that's how they're thinking, then they really are in trouble." He was still slouched in his seat on the couch, but there was a tenseness, a watchfulness to him now. "They, hell. All of us."

"Indeed." Giles didn't even want to think of all the things that would be worse than mere death, but his brain was providing him with a long and detailed list regardless. He stood and walked towards the door. "I should go talk to them. To Willow. If it's magic they're playing with, she'll be the one in the lead." She wouldn't -- none of them would -- intentionally cause harm, or put each other in danger. But he'd lived through enough to know what good intentions were useful for, when it came to untempered power: paving stones.

Spike looked at him quizzically, then did the thing with his eyebrow again that was, if not illegal, should at least require a three day waiting period and background check before use. "You're going out like that?" He pointed to the front of Giles' trousers.

They were rather... yes, well. Perhaps not. "I'll change, then."

"Giles, it's after midnight. Whatever they're up to, it's either done, or they're not doing it tonight."

"And if it *is* done? And the city's overrun with yog-sothai when the sun rises, because I don't go talk to them now?"

"Then you get to tell me 'I told you so' and we go yog-sothai hunting."

He gave the vampire an exasperated look. "That's not exactly helpful."

Spike corrected himself. "Well, you'd get to go yoggie-hunting. I wouldn't get very far in the sunlight. Not that they live in sunlight. Not that they can live out of *water*." He stood as well. Giles wondered if he'd suddenly changed his mind, but Spike leaned down to pick up the drink that Giles had poured for himself earlier, then walked over and handed it to him.

Giles studied it, rather amazed that it had survived being so near the both of them for that long without being drained -- but he didn't drink.

"If you really think they've conjured up something that can't wait until you've slept, we can walk out the door right now," Spike told him. Then glanced down. "Well, after a little judicious application of club soda. But I don't think you do. I think you're just trying to convince yourself they need you again, right now, this instant."

Giles shook his head and opened his mouth to deny it, but the words wouldn't come. He sighed, shoulders slumping, and sipped at the scotch, barely tasting it. "You're right," he admitted, voice soft with defeat.

Spike looked at him for a moment, then grinned, and walked close to him. Very close. Whispering in his ear close. "There's something you need to know about me, Rupert."

"Do tell." He heard the flatness in his own voice, but was it any wonder that he couldn't quite manage to get up the enthusiasm for whatever game Spike had suddenly decided to play?

"I'm evil." He said the words as if now that Giles knew, Spike might have to kill him.

That made him, against his will and mood and all that made any sort of sense in the world, laugh. "I'd never have known."

"I'm also extremely talented at cutting off my own nose to spite my face." Spike gave his nose a tap, a sign that stood for a different 'something secret and understood and mustn't be spoken aloud' in every city Giles had ever lived in. "In this case, letting you go off into a funk thinking your brats don't need you, just 'cos I'd rather have you here."

Giles looked into the shaded blue eyes so close to his own, trying to sort out his own feelings. When he found himself smiling, he decided that the words had been more comforting than disturbing. "You'd rather have me here," he repeated, still smiling.

"Well, I could have you at the witches' place too--" He never called it 'Buffy's place.' Never the Summers house. Not aloud. For all his sharpness, Spike had his own little denials. "--But I wouldn't want to wake Dawn up on a school night."

"You're impossible. You wanted me to think they don't need my help, so I'd stay and shag you?"

"Put a little more surprise into that tone, Rupert. Try pretending I did something selfless and noble."

"I fear my acting skills aren't up to pretending that," he replied, dryly.

"We'll have to work on that. You'll need 'em pretty sharp tomorrow, if you're gonna put the screws to the younger generation, without letting them know how you figured out they're up to something." The hint of a smirk, though there was the same flatness in it as Giles had heard in his own voice.

"Then you think I should? That there is something going on? It's getting hard to keep track, with you."

Spike worked his jaw through a frown and back to that same half-smirk. "That's what I meant by cutting off my nose. Do I think they need you to stop 'em from getting their heads bitten off by something nastier -- and there's always something nastier -- than they ever expected? Yeah. They need you."

He tugged lightly at the collar of Giles' untucked, half unbuttoned shirt, and said nothing further. He seemed to be waiting for Giles -- but if there was an expected response, something that would address both what he'd said, and what he was doing, Giles didn't know what it was.

Spike shook his head, and tugged the drink from Giles' hand. "Honestly, this stuff is wasted on you." He drank it, as he had the last one, in one swallow -- but this time it was slow, smooth. A silken movement that lasted so long, a human would have been choking on the gold liquid that disappeared from the glass and into Spike's mouth.

Then Spike was pulling him down and that mouth was on his, and Giles couldn't for the life of him think where the glass had gotten to. He might have heard a dull thud as it landed on the carpet he'd unrolled when he was unpacking; it was difficult to separate other sounds from the blood roaring in his ears, as Spike pulled at him. A deep, drowning kiss, sucking at him as hard as Spike's lips had pulled at the liquor a moment ago.

When Spike let him go, he knew what he was supposed to have said. "They need me -- you just need me more?"

Spike shook his head. "I'm just more selfish."

Giles tried to be angry with him. He really did. He worked at it, attempting to think anything but 'This is what he is -- how can you fault him for it, when you've known for years? When you knew last night, before you ever set foot up those stairs?'

Spike saw it, and grinned. "If it makes you feel any better, I'm also more pragmatic. When it comes to things that might rise up and bite *me* in the arse, or hurt the Niblet..." His expression grew more serious. "Well, you can bet *your* arse that if I thought there was a chance of anything happening tonight, we'd be over there right now. Without stopping for club soda."

That much he could believe was honest, and accept without having to look at his own reactions too closely. "That is...comforting, in a disturbing sort of way." Moreover, Spike was probably right; if anything had already been done, it hadn't been cataclysmic, and he could find out about it in the morning. More likely, given the collective nervousness, they'd gathered to talk about whatever it was they couldn't say in front of him.

Spike's grin shifted from affable to truly demonic, without pausing for breath. "Want to go upstairs and I can disturb you some more?"

Giles' body reacted to the suggestion, before he really had a chance to think about it. "You're disturbing wherever you are."

"Yes, but the bed's comfier than the couch." The statement, matter of fact as it was, for a moment no overtone of seduction in it -- or no more than Spike always carried in his voice -- made Giles laugh again.

"I thought the whole point of being disturbed was to *not* be comfortable?"

"Well if you'd rather be disturbed down here..." Spike moved impossibly closer, their bodies touching at more important points than Giles could coherently count.

Giles had to stop himself from automatically taking a step back, or reaching out and grabbing hold. "I never said that."

Spike watched him for a moment, a smirk playing about his lips -- then it disappeared, to be replaced by a simple, rueful grin. "Do I actually have to seduce you again, or can we just shag now?"

Thank god for Anya. Something Giles had never thought he'd be thinking with a male vampire practically molding his body against Giles' -- but working with that woman for one year had taught him more than the previous forty-seven about how to deal with sexual directness. He'd think about why that disturbed him, later. "Are you trying to tell me that episode on the couch was you seducing me?"

"Not romantic enough for you?" It was rather frightening that Spike actually managed to sound serious.

"I've had more romantic experiences with my hand and a Mantovanni record," Giles responded sincerely. Somewhere across town, Anya was applauding. Somewhere a bit closer, Spike was looking at him incredulously, then bursting into appreciative laughter. "Oddly enough, I wasn't expecting you to bring flowers, Spike."

Just the thought of Spike showing up on his doorstep with a bouquet of flowers was enough to put a smile on his face at the ridiculousness of the image. Utterly straightfaced, Spike said nothing, but hummed a bit of something. It took Giles a second to recognize "You Don't Bring Me Flowers Anymore."

"You're disturbed," Giles muttered, trying to squelch his smile.

"And you're making conversation when you could be shagging me," Spike replied, and pressed him against the door.

"Am I?" The smile escaped as his hands came to rest at Spike's waist. "What are you going to do about it?"

Spike grinned back, rather evilly. "Stop talking," he said just before he covered Giles' mouth with his own.

*******

It was odd, the sense of deja vu, as he drove towards downtown and the Magic Box.

Of course it was familiar -- he'd been taking this same route for a year, after all. Nor was it that different from the path to the high school -- just a left turn a few streets further up, instead of a right. But this was more than just the casual familiarity of a town in which he'd spent the last five years living and working, driving and walking, on the streets and in the sewers. It was an immediate sense of 'I've made this same trip before. *This* trip.'

The trip to the shop, with his heart annoyingly lodged in his mouth, for all he was trying to pretend that he was calm and clearheaded. The trip he'd made yesterday, rehearsing in his mind how he was going to tell the others that he was planning to stay, and trying not to let the blanket-wrapped Spike in the back seat realize how nervous he was. The feeling was the same, even with the top down, the radio on to give him some pale approximation of company, something to stop his thoughts from spinning a mile a minute, and no vampire in the car at all.

Said vampire was blanket-wrapped again, but the back seat was empty. Spike was, judging from his protesting noises when Giles had asked if he was coming along, still curled up in the bed upstairs in Giles' flat. Giles had laughed this morning, despite his misgivings about the day's plan, to see Spike instinctively grab at the duvet when Giles stood up. He'd spun himself a blue flannel chrysalis, with not even a wisp of whitish hair sticking out at the top. Just a silent human-shaped lump in his bed, that Giles was close to wishing was here with him instead, because the radio was doing nothing to distract him from the familiar heart-in-throat effect.

If Spike had been cowering in the back seat avoiding the direct sunlight, he might at least have laughed at Giles, for being afraid to speak with Anya yet again. The circumstances were different this time at least. Instead of trying to figure out how to impart information, he had to figure out how to get information out of her. Which, given Anya's propensity to speak her mind no matter what the subject, shouldn't be all that difficult.

It wasn't the act so much as what he might find out that had his heart in his throat.

"Tell her you're worried about Red," Spike had advised last night, sometime between sex and sleep, or possibly sex and sex; it had taken quite a while to work the edge off his thoughts so that he could even try to sleep. "Think she's getting in over her head."

"I am. I do," he'd replied.

"Yeah, but let on you know something's up, and you don't trust Willow," Spike had insisted, leaning on one arm, looking at him as if the complexities of ferreting information out of people were something one only picked up once one passed one's century mark. "That way Anya thinks you trust her more, and she's never been all that keen on Red anyhow."

"Or I could just ask her, and leave the Machiavelli to you." Spike was to put the bite, as it were, on Willow, somewhat later in the day. He had some idea that she was feeling guilty about the Bot's programming problems, and might be willing to talk to him if he pressed the right buttons.

As Giles pulled into his usual parking spot at the Magic Box, though, the direct approach began to seem more and more intimidating. Not that he planned on playing Spike's sort of mind games with Anya, but to simply ask her what was going on? It had him standing outside the door to his own shop like a nervous schoolboy working up the gumption to walk in and buy his first packet of condoms. Or in the case of this shop, his first guaranteed no fail or your money back from the home office in Bangladesh, love philtre and spot remover.

Perhaps easing into the conversation instead of an out and out question would be a better course of action, he thought as he forced himself to step inside. Braving the lion in its den. Or at least the ex-demon behind her cash register.

"Good morning," he said as stepped through the door, forcing a chipper tone into his voice.

Anya looked up at him, surprise turning to false smile, then to perplexed frown. She stared at him for a moment, squinting.

Eventually, his grin faltered a bit, under the weight of her scrutiny. "Is something the matter?"

She continued to look at him, tapping her finger on the glass countertop thoughtfully. Quite irritating, but that was hardly new.

"What?"

Anya pointed that finger accusingly at him. "You had sex."

"I--" What? "What?" He looked quickly around the shop, and was somewhat relieved to see that they were alone. As relieved as a completely discombobulated person can be. "What?"

"You think I can't tell when somebody's been having that knock the lamps off the tables, rug burns on your elbows, think you'll have to call in sick but you manage to stumble into work anyway just so you can show off that smile you can't get off your face, sex? This is wrong. Very wrong. You shouldn't have that smile."

Amazingly, Giles managed to frown at her. "I'm not smiling, now." Had his smile really been *that* one? It had certainly been forced, but he couldn't very well deny having worn the real version, somewhere around four o' clock in the morning, when Spike had finally dropped off to sleep. God help him if that was the only one he could come up with now, even when trying for fake good morning cheer.

Anya was still frowning at him. "Your eyes still are. Stop it. Are you trying to make trouble?"

His eyes? Giles set his face into as disapproving a frown as he could manage, only hoping that would carry to his apparently overly expressive eyes. "I have no idea what you're talking about," he stated gruffly.

"You're trying to make me crazy. Upset the status quo. Then I'll do something stupid because I'm too worried about what weird thing will happen next, or I'll get into an argument with Xander about accusing people of having had sex, and you'll point at me and say Ha! I knew Anya couldn't handle this place on her own."

"You think I slept with someone just to unnerve you?" The frightening part was that he was almost able to follow her reasoning, which meant that he knew her far too well, and perhaps he should go back to the flat and hide in the bed for a few more hours.

"So you don't deny it?"

Giles looked at her in disbelief. "Anya, I can safely assure you that whatever might or might not happen in my bedroom has absolutely nothing to do with you." The conversation was definitely getting away from him -- if it had ever been in his control in the first place. One good thing -- it made confronting her about what was going on last night seem like a pleasant prospect, compared to continuing the current line of conversation. "I did want to speak with you, though, if you have a moment."

She continued to look at him suspiciously, but after straightening up the pile of receipts near the register, came out from behind the counter and followed him to the table. He gestured for her to sit down, but remained standing himself, having the feeling he might need every little iota of psychological advantage he could get.

Giles also didn't speak right away, letting the silence stretch forebodingly before he broke it. When he did, he kept his tone pleasant and conversational. "How was your night off?"

She looked confused for a second, then pasted on a cheery smile that did *not* look like lamp-knocking, elbow-burning sex had been involved in its development. Thank god. "Wonderful. Xander and I had a great time."

He continued to watch her, and when she volunteered nothing further, said, "That's all?"

"What do you mean, that's all?"

"Just that you're usually more effusive about such things."

"Well, if you want details-"

"Actually," Giles interrupted, taking the opening, "I do want details. About--"

Anya's eyes grew wide, and she cut him off. "You *want* details? About *my* sex life? You're not going to polish your glasses and pretend you can't hear me?"

"No, I'm not," he said shortly, somewhat taken aback, somewhat annoyed. "And anyway, when I do that, I'm pretending I can't see you."

"Oh. What do you do when you're pretending you can't hear me?" she asked with what appeared to be actual interest.

"There is unfortunately no dignified way of doing that, short of carrying my guitar about and bursting into impromptu musical interludes."

Anya looked at him suspiciously again. "You *are* trying to make me crazy. You obviously *don't* want to hear details, so why--"

Giles was about to interrupt her, when the bell over the door did it for him. He sighed, resigning himself to trying the conversation again later, this time hopefully without accusations of having shagged someone, however accurate they might be-- and looked up to see the Buffybot standing in the doorway.

"Willow says I'm supposed to train with you," she told Giles. "I had an accident last night. She says she thinks I'm all better, but she wants to make sure she didn't screw anything up."

The Bot frowned, not an unfamiliar sight on Buffy's face, but the innocent confusion of it was never quite right. Even when Buffy hadn't understood something, there was always the ready ghost of a joke about her lack of comprehension, hovering around the edges of her frown. The Bot had no such self-awareness, and aside from the knock knock jokes, all of her humour was accidental.

"I'm sure I don't have any screws in me, though. All of my panels are attached with wingnuts."

Giles smiled sadly, feeling his heart break just a little bit more as it always did when faced with the Bot. "Of course," he said, stepping forward. There was no use continuing questioning Anya right now; she was already standing up, walking over to tidy behind the counter. Scanning out the shop window for potential customers, one of whom seemed to be heading towards the door.

Giles shook his head, and followed the Bot to the training room.

In the room that he had outfitted for Buffy, that Xander had filled with pieces of homemade equipment, and Riley had supplemented with military surplus whose origin none of them had wanted to question -- Giles had been teaching the Buffybot things that he'd taught Buffy in high school. No, things she'd already known in high school, that he'd pretended he needed to teach.

The physical moves, the robot had down. This boy, Warren, had indeed been an amazing craftsman. An amazing observer, to pull together so much information about the way she looked, the way she fought... Not, of course, the way she talked, but that was down more to Spike's now-regretted specifications than the designer's ability to imitate a walking, talking, breathing woman.

That was it, though - part of it. "Remember your breathing," he told her now as she aimed dead-on kicks and punches at his padded hands.

She...it...looked confused again, then nodded, and took a deep, long, completely unnatural breath. Blew it out as she punched his open palm again.

"Yes, that's it, but you want it to look more natural. Think of the breath as chi, as a life force, moving through your body."

Cocked head. Almost. So close to the real thing. "But I don't require oxygen to live."

"But you must be able to act, and fight, as if you do, in order to look like the real Buffy."

More confusion. She pointed to her hair, her face. "But I do look like Buffy. I *am* Buffy."

The dichotomy made him blink, and ache, and pull the glovelike pads from his hands. It knew it was a robot. It could talk about wingnuts and subroutines, knew that Willow was a programmer, that she'd been made by Warren, for Spike. She even knew, understood, that there had been another Buffy, before her, who wasn't here anymore, and yet...

And yet, at the most basic level, no matter how much Willow tried to tweak her programming to make her understand, she still believed herself to be Buffy. To be, in some sense, real. Even he couldn't stop thinking of it as she, so why was it surprising to see the Bot itself with the same confusion?

No wonder it tore Spike up when she still professed to love him, or find him attractive, or whatever it was that had set him off last night; not only did it remind him of his mistakes, but it was so close... Giles sat down on the sofa near the wall, feeling the weight of more years than just his own.

The Bot came over and sat beside him, head cocked as she looked at him curiously. "Why do you do that?" she asked.

"Why do I do what?" he asked, rather afraid he was being drawn into one of her apparently unerasable riddle routines.

"Want me to act like her. And when I do you get all frowny." The Bot wore a childlike expression of puzzlement that once again fell short of being Buffy's.

Part of him wanted to lash out at her -- at it -- verbally. Say that it was a private matter. A human thing, that it could never understand. Another part, no matter how well he knew that the Bot was a machine, saw a young woman before him who wanted to know something very simple, and very complex. Who was trying to understand, and what was he meant to be, if not a teacher?

"We need you to be like her," he explained slowly. "Because there are bad things that could happen if other people, or demons, knew that you're a machine. But at the same time, it hurts us to see you, because you look like her. Hurts us to see you act like her, even more."

"Why?"

"Because it reminds us that she -- the other Buffy -- isn't coming back. And we loved her."

She frowned. "But that's not true." He looked at her, wondering what she could possibly mean. That they hadn't loved her? Or simply that she didn't, couldn't, built for mindless adoration as she was, understand the concept of love. Then she surprised him. "She is coming back. The other Buffy. Tonight."

Giles froze -- could swear his heart actually paused in its beating. "What?"

If not for last night, he would have simply assumed she'd misunderstood something. That he was only thinking the worst because, these days, it was far too likely for the worst to be true. But there *was* last night.

"What do you mean?" he asked more slowly, more gently. Trying to calm his own irrational surge of fear, as much as anything.

"Willow said she was coming back tonight. If she comes back, then will people stop frowning at me? Will Spike like me again?"

"Willow told you that Buffy's coming back?" His voice sounded strained even to himself. He couldn't believe that they would be so foolish to even think -- but it did fit everything he'd found out.

The Bot looked...guilty? What could it have to feel guilty about? How could it even *feel* guilt? The ludicrous questions spun in his head, taking up the space of the ones he couldn't even begin to consider. "She didn't *say* I couldn't tell anybody, but I don't think she knew I heard her."

"When was this?" Last night? Longer ago than that? How long had they been planning this, without saying a word to him, just waiting for him to finally leave?

"When I was in my recharge mode, after she fixed me last night. She put me in my bed, and I think she thought I was asleep." The Bot shook her head. "I don't sleep. I'm never asleep. Sometimes I'm turned off, but I'm never asleep."

In Buffy's bed, she meant. Giles had seen her in recharge mode, staring lifelessly at the ceiling. He, too, had assumed that her -- sensors? -- were switched off.

"She leaned over and touched my face. I didn't know why she did that - she'd already covered up the hole where I was broken. And Willow said, 'It'll be okay. Everything'll be okay after tomorrow night. We'll get Buffy back, and we'll all be okay.'" The Bot cocked her head the other direction. "Aren't we all okay now? Why do we have to wait for the other Buffy to come back?"

He stared at her, unable to find words to answer. They weren't okay -- they were even more not okay than he had thought if Willow was actually planning.... To bring her back. It hadn't really sunk in yet, Giles knew, because when it did, he would be feeling something more than this dismay and muted horror. Nothing would be muted, or soft, or quiet; he could feel it in the way his stomach was already roiling and clenching.

She couldn't possibly think... But, he realized, Willow could. His reasoning last night had been sound. Willow -- all of them in their way -- had reached the end of their fear. It was still there, but possible to overcome, by the knowledge that the worst thing they could imagine had already happened.

Willow knew the risks -- they all must have known the risks, since Buffy had told all of them what Dawn had tried to do with Joyce. But Joyce was one woman, lost to natural causes, and Buffy was the Slayer, lost to something that seemed so senseless and tragic, so world-toppling, that they thought it was different, somehow.

It wasn't different; there was still a body in the ground. And if they were trying to bring her back with means more sophisticated than Dawn had used, trying to bring back something that might actually be Buffy, not just a shambling horror, then they were playing with forces that they had no concept of. All the possible outcomes of such a spell ran through his mind, each worse than the one before.

He couldn't let that happen, for all their sakes. Giles thought of walking out to speak to Anya, now. Confront her, beg her to tell him he was wrong. He thought of it, and pictured the child he'd imagined, grown into a woman he thought he'd trusted, turning her face away from him as she spoke. Because... if they'd been willing to hide this from him, to plot behind his back, why *wouldn't* they be willing to lie? Had he never lied to a friend, when he thought he was doing the right thing?

As he stared at the woman who wasn't a woman, wasn't his Slayer, wasn't anything but a pile of wires and circuits with the face of someone he loved... Giles saw an artificial worry there that almost matched his own. He swallowed the feeling that he was somehow lying to a friend again, or at least manipulating one -- then caught and held her eyes. "I need you to do something for me."

*******

He found Spike in the kitchen.

He'd been expecting the vampire to still be curled up in bed, sleeping the day away, trying to get back into something like his natural rhythm after two nights of acting like a human. Well, like a vampire keeping time with a human.

Giles thought of Anya's accusation this morning and almost allowed himself a moment to worry about small, silly concerns like what the others would think if they knew about what was happening between himself and Spike. Almost. Except it wasn't worth thinking about now. What the others thought might not even be an issue if they did something so stupid tonight that they didn't survive.

Spike rose from behind the counter as Giles made his way across the room. The fingers of one hand ran through mussed blond curls; the other hand held...a toaster?

"Er. Snuck out for some blood, thought I'd heat it up, and figured out you'd not unpacked the kitchen yet. No microwave. Once I got started..." Spike shrugged. "If I'm gonna be cadging food off you properly, need to be able to find the good silver, yeah?"

Normally that would've pulled at least a smile from Giles, but not now, not with the knowledge that was weighing on his mind. "I found out what they're planning."

Spike set the toaster on the counter with a clunk. "You look like the canary that got et by the cat. What could be so bad, after bringing down the odd end of the world or two?"

"That's exactly what *they're* thinking. Don't you start too." Giles shook his head, and found the words almost impossible to get out.

It suddenly occurred to him that he had no idea how Spike would react. His drive home had been filled with the swirl of denial, worry, anger, desire to turn the car around and talk to Anya after all -- his only thought of Spike had been to get back and *tell* him. Share it with someone who'd see the danger for what it was.

"They're going to try to bring Buffy back."

Once he said it, once the words were there in the room between them, the thought hit him with the force of a sledgehammer. Who said Spike would be on his side? Spike might have been the old one, the thoughtfully nodding one, last night, but now it was about Buffy. About the chance, however slim, of having her back among them. Giles knew what was right -- and he was almost certain that the vampire did as well -- but since when was Spike *concerned* with what was right?

"Bloody hell," Spike muttered, turning away, shoulders stiff with anger. "*Bloody* hell," he repeated, voice almost a growl, shaking with emotion.

Giles stood tense and silent, waiting to see if he had an ally or another opponent.

When Spike turned back around, his face was blank. *Blank*. Empty of all emotion, not even that sneering superiority that usually fell into place when he couldn't think of anything else to pretend to. Blank and white. Giles wondered for a moment, until Spike opened his mouth. Then, there was no wondering, because it was all there in his voice.

"What do they think they're doing?" Less a growl than... a plea, of some sort. Actually asking Giles to make sense of it. But it came out so tense, so controlled, so... If Giles were willing to walk across the room and touch him, he suspected that a single whisper of air across his skin would make Spike explode.

Giles stayed where he was and did his best to answer Spike's question. "They want to make everything...okay. The way it was before." He was a bit surprised at the bitterness in his own voice, the depth of his anger at the children's unthinking choices.. "They don't understand that there's no way things will be the same, even if they-"

"Okay? They want to make everything *okay*? They *can't*. Hell, even I know they can't, and I've--" He cut himself off, with a look that on anyone else Giles would have taken for guilt, then picked up again, looking away. "She's been dead too long. It'd be..." Spike laughed, low and painful. "It'd be a monster that looked like her. Don't we already have one of those?"

Giles had a brief urge to defend the Bot, which had been trying in its own limited way to understand and help, but he didn't think it would do much good. Plus it was rather beside the point at the moment. "We need to stop it," he said instead, a simple statement of the obvious.

Spike stalked around the corner of the kitchen and towards the door. "Right." He reached for his coat.

Giles stood where he was, and Spike looked back at him.

"You coming? A hell of a lot easier to get there by car, mate."

Considering it was barely one, Giles didn't doubt it; he was rather amazed Spike had managed to find enough shadows to lurk in to get to wherever he'd gotten his blood, and back. "Spike, if we confront them now..."

Spike stood with his coat half on, black leather hanging from one arm like a courtier's cape. "Yeah?"

"They'll just deny it."

A frown, and Giles could read the indecision in his body. Half there, half not, as Giles had been for so long, this summer. The wanting to *do* something, and realizing that there mightn't be anything to do, yet. Not knowing what he should do, anyway. "Yeah."

That Spike believed him so quickly, was that cynical, didn't surprise Giles; he was more surprised by his own heavy hearted knowledge that it was true. Confronted, the four of them -- he couldn't imagine Dawn was involved -- would most likely continue the half truths and outright lies they'd been giving him for however long they'd had this planned.

That was something he was going to have deal with -- after they dealt with the more serious crisis. "We'll have to catch them red-handed. Before they can do anything, but with the evidence." Giles took a deep breath. "At Buffy's grave."

"They'll want to be there. When she rises." Spike's voice was hard. Unrevealing.

Giles nodded. A moment, when he thought Spike might actually change his mind -- when he could see, like a ghostly reflection in Spike's eyes, the image of that lonely grave, of everything that it could mean, for it to be emptied.

Then it was gone, and Spike was nodding as well. "It'll have to be you. I'm on Niblet duty again tonight." He didn't look happy about it -- if there were degrees of unhappiness, at this point.

"Actually, I've made arrangements to take care of that. The Bot's going to double back after they've left and look after Dawn tonight." He couldn't quite bring himself to look at Spike as he said that, quite certain that collaboration with the Bot was not something that the vampire was going to easily accept.

Spike said only, "You think we can trust it?"

Giles gave himself credit for not looking at the floor, now. For not hesitating, as he met Spike's gaze. "I told her that you didn't wish her to say anything about it to the others."

Spike blinked. Seemed about to frown, then laughed shortly. "Nice."

"No, not particularly. She seemed to take it as a sacred duty."

"It's still a thing, you know." The tone was less harsh than Giles expected, after last night. The anger was still there, but it was muted.

"Perhaps," Giles allowed softly, studying his own hands as he remembered the earnest confusion and hurt on the Bot's face earlier, "but it is self-aware and who can say what it...she...feels."

"It doesn't--" Spike started, then shook his head, and slipped his coat off. Hung it back on the stand. "Of course it does. Why wouldn't it?" He laughed, and it sounded like rocks tumbling in his throat. "This whole thing is so fucking ridiculous. Here we are, using each other to make ourselves believe there's a point to being around here now she's gone, and plotting how to stop them from bringing her back. The bloody Bot's just one more bit of pie-in-the-face, to top off the rest of the farce."

Giles grimaced at that blunt recitation of his reality. "It's enough to drive a man to drink," he replied sarcastically, heartily wishing at that moment that it wasn't far too early for just that. He was on the verge of not caring.

Luckily, or so it would seem, Spike was well across the verge, and tumbling into the abyss. "Scotch or gin?" Giles heard as he sat down on the sofa. He frowned and shook his head. "Oh, come on," Spike said. "You might as well join me. It's that or shag."

Without looking up, he answered, "Gin. Scotch, I've found, tends to make the 'or shag' rather a moot point." There was a glass in his hand, far too quickly for Giles to wonder if anyone would care how early in the day it was, besides himself. He stared at the liquid for a moment. "I guess, considering the circumstances..." He raised it to his lips, then drained it in one smooth motion, grimacing again at the strong taste and welcome burn.

"Short drive, then, was it?" Spike asked with a laugh that was only a tiny bit less gravelly. Giles looked away from his empty glass in time to watch Spike drop easily onto the couch beside him, while managing to hold the open bottle in one hand and a full glass in the other, spilling neither. In another time and place, there would have been a part of him that secretly envied that natural grace, no matter the price one paid to receive it.

Now, it was just part of Spike, something neither frightening, nor entirely safe, and lifetimes away from the venerable, but untrustworthy books in which he'd first read about such things. "Drive?"

"To drink. You gave in quick enough."

Giles laughed, the sound as rough as the gin had been smooth. "You're a bad influence on me." It was rather comforting in a way to have a bad influence to blame. Someone who would share the destructive behavior with him.

"Well, there's something to make it all worthwhile, at least." When he looked up, Spike was holding out the bottle, ready to pour. "As long as you're under the influence anyway..."

"One would almost think you were trying to get me drunk for some nefarious purpose." Despite his words, he held out his glass for a refill.

Spike poured, and Giles drank. Spike poured, and Spike drank. When he'd finished swallowing, Spike set the bottle on the coffee table. "One would, yeah. But m'not." He laughed. "Pretty damn scary, if you ask me."

"What is?"

"That we're the force of right and good in the universe right now. Well, you, me, and the Bionic Slayer."

"Scary? That's bloody terrifying." He reached for the bottle, pouring them both another glass when he got it.

It *was* terrifying. But it was also...reassuring. To know it wasn't his responsibility alone. He caught Spike's eye, as he handed over the glass, and Spike nodded. "Yeah. Here's to the farce."

When their glasses touched, the ring of sound was almost hopeful -- though of course, he could have been imagining things, since he was, after all, fast approaching rather drunk. But at least he wasn't the only one.

*******

He was stone cold sober that night, standing in front of Buffy's grave. Waiting.

The air was so still, so silent, it felt as if he could reach out and take it in his hands, warm and summer-moist. The night before last -- had it only been that long? -- it had been cool. He'd pulled his jacket close around him as he'd looked down at the headstone to say his goodbyes. Here, now, though, it was damp and humid as a jungle, in the darkness beside her grave. Every breath a chore, struggling not to drown in the watery air.

Perhaps it was just him. Giles looked across to the shadows of the stone where Spike leaned, silent as the night air. Though he appeared at ease, Giles could sense the tension running through the vampire, a match to his own.

It was a cold whisper on the back of his neck, an itch at the base of his spine. The knowledge of why they were here, what they were waiting for, what they had to stop, loomed large in his mind, threatened to wrap him in knots if he dwelled on the why. He was deliberately not thinking about it, deliberately focusing on such inconsequentials as the weather, because thinking about it would be too much. He would deal with it when he had to; he would stop it.

Afterwards he would think about it. Afterwards he'd fall apart.

"I don't like it." Spike's voice was a shock of icewater on his skin, a cold slap. Enough to make him blink, squinting into the darkness to focus on two glittering eyes, and lips that Giles hadn't seen move, in the shadow.

"It's not midnight yet; they'll be here. Unless you chase them off by talking, of course." Perhaps he bit too hard, snapping out at his own nerves, his own fears, but Spike only shook his head, eyeglints disappearing and winking back into place.

"I mean leaving Dawn with the Bot."

Giles let his breath out in a controlled sigh, trying to let some of the tension go with it. When he answered he had managed to soften his tone a little. "I know you don't. But they'll be all right."

"I said I'd look after her. What if something happens and I'm not there?" It didn't take standing above the grown-over grass to hear that he wasn't only talking about Dawn.

Giles knew there was nothing he could say that would be assurance enough. "Go, if you can't stay. I'll handle this myself if I have to." He was sharper than he had meant to be, but the idea of facing this alone left him little extra energy to be civil.

"No. I'm not leaving *her*." And this time there was no doubt he wasn't talking about Dawn, when he pointed to the grave, white finger extending out of the rock's shadow,

Giles looked at him for a moment before turning back to the tombstone and the stark reality it represented. "Nor am I," he murmured, the words a promise to a memory. He and Spike were alike in this: determined not to fail her again even if all they could offer was letting her rest in peace.

He brought his watch close to his face, peering at the little glowpaint-tipped hands. Almost midnight. If they were coming -- if he was right, and how he hoped he wasn't, and feared he was -- it would be soon. They'd need her body, and any magical undertaking this large, this dark, would be best done as near the witching hour as possible.

"Can you--" Hear anything, he was about to ask, but Spike cut him off with a sharp upswing of his hand. Pointing. Towards the forest, from which Giles could hear nothing, for a few moments. Then, in the distance, breaking sticks, branches being shoved aside. Faint, familiar voices.

Giles closed his eyes for a brief moment, his stomach sinking as his suspicions were confirmed. For a moment he grieved for the loss of innocence -- his own, no less that that of these children -- and the hard truths they would have to face. Then he squared his shoulders and hardened his resolve, turning to face the entrance to the clearing where they would appear.

Louder, and closer. They were being what they'd think of as quiet, of course, but obviously not silent enough to avoid a vampire's hearing. Anya's voice, strident with nerves, even as she tried to whisper. "There's a bug on my shoulder. Xander, get the bug off my shoulder, before it makes me scream, and do unpleasant things to it."

"It's a leaf, Anya."

"Are you sure? It could be a bug pretending it's a leaf. A leaf bug."

"It's a leaf. See?"

"Oh. Well it could've been. Shouldn't we be there by now?"

"We are," Willow replied, sounding calm and assured, just as they stepped into the clearing.

Giles could see their shadows moving through the trees now. He stood where he was. Waiting for one of them to look beyond their feet, beyond each other. Beyond the ground that they wanted to raise her from beneath.

Willow saw him first. The only one who looked ahead, hair a dusky red cloud around her sharp white face. Eyes nothing more than dark pits, at this distance, though he could see her outline as well as he could Spike's.

"Yes, you are," he agreed. He watched the shock of recognition run through them at the sound of his voice, the realization that he was there.

It was Xander who found his own voice first. "Giles! You're here. Why are you here?" High-pitched and nervous, it would've made Giles suspicious even if he hadn't already pieced together what they were up to.

"Hoping that you weren't going to come," he replied, then more softly, a prayer that had been denied, "hoping that I was wrong."

"You're supposed to be unpacking," Willow said. An accusation, that he was in the wrong place, not they. Then she blinked, and schooled her voice into a reasonable tone. "You told Anya you'd be home all night."

"It didn't take as long as I thought it would." Not with Spike having decimated the few boxes left, in his haphazard search for toasters and toiletries and god only knew what else, or what he'd put away where. "And you're supposed to be patrolling. But you're not."

"No, we're not," Willow agreed. For a second, he thought he saw her eyes clearly, though perhaps it was just the set of her chin, that told him. She knew, though she wouldn't say it. Knew they'd been found out, and she wasn't going to stop. "We have something more important to do." Willow seemed to draw herself up, trying to project assurance and confidence, Giles assumed. What he saw, though, was someone in the clutches of an obsession.

He shook his head. "No. This isn't going to happen."

Willow looked doubtful, for a second, then shook her head. "You don't know what we're doing, Giles."

"I do." This wasn't the time for games, for pretending between them, on his part any more than hers.

"No. You only think you do. I knew you wouldn't understand. That's why--"

"I do understand. Willow, it's you --it's all of you, who don't understand. Do any of you have a shred of an idea of how dangerous -- how *wrong* this is?" He looked out at four white faces, uncertainty plain on three of them, and on Willow...

Anger. Anger at him, for daring to tell her what to do. "*Wrong*? And the way things are now is *right*?" Voice full of indignation, Willow pointed at the tombstone. "Buffy being gone is *right*?"

"It's the way things are. It's not *good*, but it's what happened. Trying to bring her back, playing with the sorts of powers that could accomplish that -- even if you *could* do it, it's still not the answer, Willow."

"You think I can't do it? You think it's too *hard* for me?" Somewhere in her voice, behind the arrogant, angry young woman, he heard the bright, inquisitive child he'd known not so many years ago. Trying to please, trying to show that she could be just as smart, just as useful, as those with more physical skills than she possessed.

Was there a moment when he could have stopped this before it started? A moment when he could have -- instead of telling her that certain books were too dangerous, and locking them away -- taken the time to teach her *why* they were dangerous?

Willow wasn't his charge, he told himself as he stared at her. Wasn't his responsibility. He was there, had been there, to guide Buffy. That her friends had joined the fight was admirable, but it wasn't part of his task to teach and guide them, as well.

Except-- when he had allowed them into the circle he was supposed to be sharing alone with his Slayer, when he had accepted their help, given his own -- hadn't he taken responsibility? Once his Slayer's friends had become his own, wasn't it his duty to act like a friend? To use his own experience to protect the people he'd grown to care about? Wasn't it still his duty now, to try, and hope that he wasn't too late?

"It's too dangerous for anyone," he said, trying to get through to her. "And it's not only you who'd be at risk. I've never heard of a resurrection that's gone well -- for the caster...or the subject. I won't let you subject Buffy to that kind of...desecration."

"Won't *let* me?" She stepped closer, and he could see her eyes grow dark with rage and chained power.

"Will, maybe he's right." Xander spoke clearly, only a tiny jump in his voice. None of the high, nervous laughter that usually spilled out when he was frightened or off-balance.

"No. Xander!" The maelstrom in Willow's eyes died down, though Giles could still see it lurking beneath the surface as she turned her head away from him. "You agreed. You guys *all* agreed. We have to do this. We can't leave Buffy to suffer somewhere, if we can bring her back to us."

"But what if it's...not Buffy?" Xander stepped forward towards his friend. "Maybe we should at least let Giles see--"

"No! Xander, it's going to be her, we can do this, we can rescue her."

"Rescue her from what?" Spike moved out of the shadows. Towards Willow, towards Giles. For the first time since Spike had been ready to stalk blindly out the door into the sunlight, Giles saw doubt on his face again. He wondered if that same uncertainty showed on his own.

The others seemed to have been startled into speechlessness by the vampire's appearance. "Spike?" Anya finally said, breaking the silence sharply enough to make Xander jump, then grab her shoulder, though Giles couldn't tell if he was steadying her, or himself. "What are you doing here? Where's Dawn?"

"Safe," Giles answered for him. "The Buffybot is looking after her."

Spike spared him a quick, skeptical glance, then shook his head and repeated his question. "I said, rescue Buffy from what?"

"From wherever she is," Willow finally replied. "Who knows what kind of hell world she's trapped in?"

"Why would she be in hell?" Giles had watched Willow's face, as she said it. As he asked it. She seemed, for all her hubris, to really believe what she was saying. "Buffy died a hero's death."

"She died closing the portals to a thousand demon dimensions," Willow countered. "Her lifeforce passed *through* those portals. We don't know where it got trapped."

"I can't believe that. Buffy knew what she was doing -- the First Slayer told her that death was her gift, and so it was. This was meant to happen, no matter how terrible it is for us." It would help, probably, if he were as sure of the words coming out of his mouth as he hoped Willow would be. "I can't believe that Buffy is...anywhere that isn't a fitting reward for her sacrifice."

"Right. Because the good guys always get a fair shake in this town, when they die." The voice was dark and aching, and it didn't come from Willow. Spike took another step toward the little group gathered before the grave -- and shot Giles a look so unreadable, there was only one thing he could possibly read in it.

Giles closed his eyes for a second, and wondered, again. But this time, he was wondering why it had been so easy. Why he'd assumed. Why he felt so betrayed, the taste of it bitter in the back of his throat. He stiffened his spine, bracing himself as if for a physical confrontation. He wasn't going to let this happen, even if he was fighting alone. "Willow--" He opened his eyes to look at her.

"Angel had his soul back, and he still ended up in hell." She said it simply. Firmly. And somehow, pridefully, the credit unspoken for who had returned that soul to him, but there all the same.

"Soul or not, Angel had done many unspeakable things." Somewhere in the back of his mind an image flashed of roses, death and broken dreams. Jenny. "Buffy has always been a hero. She has done nothing to deserve that sort of punishment."

"If people got what they deserved," Spike said, and the step was made, five faces looking at him from the foot of the grave, and Giles alone at the head, "she wouldn't be dead at all, would she."

"There are worse things to be than dead," Giles countered.

Willow nodded. Smiled. It took him a moment to know what he'd said. "That's why. That's why we *have* to bring her back. Can't you see? What if she's someplace that's *worse* than dead?"

"If there's even a chance she could be suffering..." Tara echoed softly. There was the same uncertainty in her eyes that Giles had seen in Xander's, but she shook it away, looking at her girlfriend with a trust that no amount of pleading from Giles could ever break. "If anyone can bring her back, Willow can."

"There is far greater chance that doing this would cause more suffering. Have you done no research? Resurrections rarely work and when they do, the subject comes back changed. Wrong." He let his gaze linger on each of them in turn. "Would you condemn Buffy to that?"

Willow shook her head. "Not this time. This isn't some zombie dust and monster egg thing." Giles saw Spike wince, and look away. "This is the Urn of Osiris." Willow held up the bowl in her arms.

"That's...There aren't supposed to be any of those left." What she was holding was an artifact whose very existence was questioned by most of the magical practitioners Giles knew. Like phoenix feathers or hen's teeth, the Urn of Osiris was a scarcely believed fable.

"This is the last."

"I found it," Anya said proudly. "On E-Bay. I even got--"

"A free novelty item that you don't need to mention again because there are actually still people in the world who are unaware of the fact that I'm a complete dork." Xander looked around nervously, as if anyone knew or cared what sort of questionable toy Anya had bought him.

"I was going to say, I got excellent feedback for prompt payment."

Giles blinked, wondering why he felt any surprise at the conversation turning surreal and just a tad absurd. It happened more often than not after all. Even when it was Buffy's soul they were fighting for.

"What's it do, this wondrous mystical ashtray of yours," Spike asked Willow, stepping closer to her, and the sense of loss, acrid and hot, bit at Giles' throat again. As if, truly, he'd had anything with Spike except a temporary alliance against loneliness and the need to feel needed. What else could there have been, and what right did he have, after all, to expect anything else? To expect Spike to turn down the chance to have Buffy back in this world, no matter what the risk, when...

When even Giles was a hair's breadth away from turning his back, and letting it happen. To see her, warm and alive again, the currents of light and sorrow in her eyes that the Buffybot could never duplicate with a million years of tinkering and training. What if it *could* work? How could he blame Spike for crossing to join the others, when it took every ounce of courage in the soul of a tired, lost Watcher, not to follow -- and Spike didn't even have one of those?

"It's used to invoke Osiris," Willow said, answering Spike's question. "Once that's done, there's a ritual to let a departed soul come back." She glanced at Giles pointedly. "I have done my research."

Giles shook his head, feeling weary and old down to the bone. "You've done nothing. You've not taken into account anything but what you want to see. You never have." He recalled Willow spitting those words, almost exactly, into his face, after she'd done her infamous My Will Be Done spell. You don't see anything. And because of her magic, unintended as it was -- because of what *she* hadn't seen -- she'd been right. He'd been blinded, literally, by her words.

"*I* never do? Me? You never wanted to see, Giles. You always wanted to treat me like I was some little kid playing with things that were too big for her. Put away the books with the scary pictures, because Willow can't handle it. But I *can* handle it, Giles. Don't you see? I can do this."

"This isn't about whether you *can* do it, Willow. Christ, if you don't want me to treat you like a child, don't act like one!"

She stared at him. They *all* stared at him. Whether it was the language or the tone, he didn't know. Probably both. The sheer frustration and yes, anger at her, at all of them, at whatever passed for gods for putting them in this situation in the first place. He could feel it in his mouth, as if the words had scorched his tongue on their way out. And he didn't, couldn't, stop.

"Magic is not a toy. It is not a test of your skill. It can be a religion, but neither you nor I subscribe to it, for all that you mouth the words to please Tara. You see it as a tool, Willow, but it isn't. It's a hundred thousand separate forces, most with wills of their own, and minds so different from yours or mine that you couldn't even fathom what they're thinking. And you believe that because you've controlled one such force, said the right word, drawn the power to throw up walls or toss people across a room, that you can bargain with creatures of which you haven't the slightest concept, and control them as well. *Even* if you can. Even *if*..."

He broke off, seeing nothing in her face that looked like comprehension. Only anger, and hurt, and a desperation he knew all too well. The misplaced confidence, at least, was gone, but not the strength of her intent.

"Even if, what?"

"Just because you *can* do something, doesn't mean that you should. Have you never, in all this time, learned that?" But he could see in her face, in her eyes that she hadn't. He might as well have been speaking Fyarl for all the impact his words were having. The thought was utterly alien to her.

"But you can't tell me why. All you say is *should*. Shouldn't. That it's wrong." Willow was just as loud, as angry, as he'd been. "Buffy's gone, and that's wrong. Buffy could be hurting, and that's wronger. If I can bring her back to us, and I don't, that's not wrong? You're telling me that I *shouldn't*? I can't believe that. I can't -- I won't let you stop me." She clenched the fist that wasn't holding the urn, and looked him squarely in the face -- not even glancing about her, to see if she still had the support of her friends. Their friends.

"Every action has consequences. If you fail in this. Even if you succeed. It's wrong because you can't predict what those consequences will be," Giles said, holding her eyes, looking for the flicker that would tell him she was about to lash out. "And yet you're willing to inflict them on Buffy. On us. You don't have that right -- and you will have to go through me to make it happen, because I won't let you do this while I still breathe."

"Giles, I don't want to hurt you. I won't let you *make* me hurt you." There. The darkness, rolling in like fog in the usually bright green eyes.

"Won't let me?" he echoed her words quietly, waiting for... something. For hell to break loose, as if he'd forgotten they were already there.

"You think you can stop me?" Her voice was rising again as Giles could feel the power gathering around her, like static electricity in the air. "You're wrong this time, Giles. Bringing Buffy back is the right thing to do. You'll see. I'll make you see."

So. Crackling of her hair, lifting on the wind that was magical, but real, lightly brushing around her, coming from nowhere but her own center of power.

The things he hadn't seen, Giles thought, were huge as Willow's own willful blindness. "Don't do this."

"Haven't we done t