Title: An Aussie Valentine
Author: Gail Christison

(notes and disclaimer with part one)

Part 3

Giles slid and arm around her shoulders and drew her close when she rested her head against his throat.

"I think we proved with your SATs that you're not *quite* an idiot, regardless of the empirical evidence," he said, deadpan.

"Remind me to get you for that later," she muttered against his warm skin. "I did get pretty close, though, didn't I?"

He sighed a long, meaningful sigh. "You are certainly capable of much better judgement than you showed through that period."

"The only good judgement I've shown since Mom died was trusting you..."

Giles opened his mouth to remind her bitterly about the gaping flaws in her statement, and paled instead.

When he returned to Sunnydale after her resurrection, she had, indeed, trusted him implicitly...until he walked away. The reason for his departure was one issue they'd avoided dealing with almost completely after their relationship had changed. Even before that, the only real acknowledgement of the strong feelings she had about that time had been occasional jokes and sarcastic comments. The notion that her hurtful subsequent rejections of him during the fight against the First might have been born out of...

"You didn't trust my judgement in leaving," he finally ventured, aloud.

"You were wrong," she said quietly. "So wrong."

"Was I? Was I, really? Do you really think you'd have stayed away from Spike if I hadn't left? I believe Angel is an example of how well that works. In all likelihood the difference would have been that I would have become Dawn's full-time keeper and you would have continued to rely upon me financially while still pursuing that...that..."

Buffy's face was sullen as she pulled away. "You know, I hate how we always seem to do this...every time something's really, really, good, we seem to end up back in the same place again."

It was Giles' turn to look away. "Perhaps because, like infection, if the hurt's not entirely excised, it won't heal."

Her shoulders dropped then. "Yeah, I know. And it's really my fault we're talking about it, anyway. I was the one who said I was ready to talk. It's just..." She turned her head back to meet his gaze. "It's just...it's not like there's any high ground for me, outside of the job. When I came back, I was horrible...and I kind of stayed that way. I know that. I just...I just couldn't deal and then I didn't want to...and...have you ever felt like you dug yourself in so deep in something that you're never going to get out, so you get mad, and you hurt people, and you do stupid things...anything except admit that you're wrong?"

The soft green eyes turned as dark as stormy ocean and his expression became very distant. "Oh yes," he said softly.

Her expression changed from open curiosity to comprehension.

"That was a long time ago."

"Not long enough to forget how it felt."

"And it doesn't make what I did right."

"No, it bloody well doesn't," he agreed sharply. "I had hoped you'd never be that damned stupid...but you may have surpassed even my youthful idiocy."

"Oh you don't know the half of it," she was surprised into shooting back.

He didn't look up. "If you're talking about 'the incident' with Spike...I already know."

Buffy lost all colour. "You never said...who told you?"

"It doesn't matter," he said quietly, but the steel in his voice spoke volumes about his true feelings on the subject. "Did it teach you nothing?"

Her fists clenched. "Obviously not enough."

"No. Not enough." He finally looked up at her. "I almost stopped believing in you."

Buffy looked as though she'd been hit in the stomach. "A-almost?" She whispered.

He nodded. "When you chose him...again...over all of us, despite...I couldn't respect you anymore. And later I couldn't even like you anymore..."

The moisture slid down her cheeks. "So what stopped you from going all the way? Everyone else stopped believing in me. You even let them kick me out of my own house."

His large hands closed tightly. "I thought it would make you realise exactly what you were doing. What you'd become. Of course it was ludicrous for Dawn, or any of the others, to be expelling you from your own home, but who better to make you face yourself, and the consequences of your actions? You certainly wouldn't have listened to me."

"I was doing what I thought was right. With the safety of the world at stake, I didn't think *we*... you, me, the others, mattered a damn, only the mission."

"You thought Spike mattered...and was apparently all that mattered...more even than any of us...more even than your own sister," he said quietly. "At every turn."

Buffy opened her mouth, but no words came out. After several beats she exhaled with a great weariness of soul, unable to argue with the bitterness in his voice.

"My instincts were right," she said quietly, dragging a hand over her face. "We needed him. No matter how much of a bitch I was, or how stupid, I was right." The errant moisture, untidy and uncontrolled, continued to obscure her view.

Giles' voice trembled. "You didn't trust us. You didn't trust me...but you were willing to put your life...*your life*, and everyone else's, in the hands of that...that vampire!"

Buffy blinked and scuffed more dampness from her eyes and her cheeks. The silent rage in his voice...a kind of incredibly controlled emotional violence, stunned her.

"T-trust? Trust who? *Willow*?" She shot back through her teeth. "The SITs? Dawn? Or maybe you mean my loyal protector...?" Her voice continued to harden, and then to shake with anger. "The guy who was sworn to me until I died the usual grisly Slayer death...you know him...the guy who said he'd never leave me...the one who used to lecture me about *my responsibility*, *my destiny*?"

And then the slender shoulders dropped and her voice dropped almost to a murmur. "The one who took one look at the train wreck Willow dragged out of that coffin and caught the first plane to as far away as possible." Her voice shifted from hardened anger to plain hurt and misery. "Why, Giles?"

Giles didn't move for a long moment, then he spoke quietly, flatly. "I couldn't do it any more." He held up a silencing hand when Buffy made a disbelieving sound and moved to ask the obvious question. "I was tired. How many years had we been together?" He tried to half smile and failed. "And then I lost you...my Buffy."

"But I came back," she whispered.

He nodded. "You came back. There you were...and yet..."

Buffy frowned. "I-I don't...?"

"The girl I found...the one Willow had so cruelly plucked from her rest...was not the Buffy I lost." His knuckles were white with the effort to get those words out.

Grey-green eyes widened in shock. "I'm not...you don't think I'm the real Buffy Summers?"

His gaze locked with hers. "I think a part of you was lost and that it took a very, very long time for you to find her again."

Her eyes flashed. "You thought I was broken, so you left?"

Irritation creased his features. "Did it ever occur to you that so many years of putting the pieces back together, of being picked up and discarded by the lot of you on a whim, was more than enough for any man? I thought nothing could break my heart as much as Willow's utter contempt, but watching you essentially give up...watching you slip away...again...watching you drifting toward that...that..." He looked away.

"You knew." It was a statement, quiet but definitive.

He nodded. "Even then. Rather well equipped to recognise the signs, actually."

The reference to Angel was quite pointed, but Buffy chose to ignore it. "You want me to say I'm sorry again? You don't get any more messed up than I was. I hated being dragged back...I hated what they did to me...so much so that I nearly went under. Most of all I hated how alone I was...after. Not to mention...everything was such a damned mess. Willow...don't get me started on Willow, and Dawn..." She shook her head. "I dig myself out of my own grave to find out all the money's gone, my sister is a mess, you're nowhere to be found and my so-called friends can't even look me in the eye because of what they did, *but*...and get this...I was supposed to be grateful...thrilled, even, that they helped me out of heaven and into a buried coffin. The one person who actually understands how I feel...who actually *gets* it because...hey, been there...and wants to be there for me, and isn't judging me, and you want me to tell him to take a hike? Yeah, the old Buffy would have kicked his butt, but hey...not the old Buffy, remember? Besides, apparently I was so broken I wasn't even the 'real' Buffy, anyway," she added, throwing his words back at him, "which is why I guess everyone, even you, bailed on me."

"That's not fair." The words were torn from him. "When I came back after...after..." He swallowed. "I tried to reach out to you. I did everything...everything to try to help you, to connect with you...and all you did was walk away. It was as though I didn't exist."

She shrugged. "Giles, I was a rutabaga. When you came back my nightly entertainment was re-runs of waking up buried alive in a very dark box six feet under the ground, and my life was in chaos. Nobody was helping me. I was supposed to deal, to raise Dawn, magic up money out of thin air...even get the house fixed, all by myself. My God, Willow even wanted me to worship her for bringing me back...for leaving me in that box..." Her voice shook. "Total rutabaga," she repeated. "If you *were* my mother, it probably still wouldn't have been any different. Didn't you ever feel so empty...like nothing mattered anymore...like there was no point...that just waking up in the morning was a punishment, without having to get through another day as well?"

He looked at her helplessly.

She shook her head. "I wanted to let go, to go back...I just wanted to make it all go away. But I had to keep trying to deal...over and over until I thought I was going to go insane. So what if I leaned too hard on you? Everyone was leaning on me. I was back from the dead for five minutes and everyone had their name on my ass. What did you all think was going to happen? That I'd wash the dirt out from under my nails, sing the hallelujah chorus, and make it all better...the bills, the demons, Dawn, the plumbing, all of it, with a snap of my cute little Slayer fingers?" She wriggled them expressively and was sorry when she saw in his eyes that he was still back with her in that dark coffin. "Never mind," she said quickly.

Giles sighed. "So...what? So...you should have turned to me then, instead of almost allowing yourself to be swallowed whole by..." He shook his head. "Why wouldn't you let me in? Just answer me that. After everything we'd been through together...all those years. Why him, and not me? Why a bloody vampire...again?"

"Because I needed someone who was on my side."

"Buffy! I've *always*...!"

She shook her head. "No. I know you, Giles. Maybe better than you know yourself. You're always on the side of what's right, no matter how much badness it involves. Always. You were right about sacrificing Dawn and you were right about sacrificing Spike. Hell, 'he did the right thing' is probably going to be your epitaph." He was about to retort vehemently but she shook her head. "I was wrong...but that doesn't stop me needing someone to be there with me...not to be wrong, exactly, but to be there, on my side, no matter what."

A thousand retorts and angry denials leaped to his lips, but Giles spoke almost eerily quietly. "I've always been there, Buffy, regardless of right or wrong. You've just chosen not to notice most of the time."

Buffy slid out of bed and paced to the window, suddenly edgy. "Not always."

He sighed a long, slow sigh. "Is my decision to leave always going to stand between us?" He asked sadly.

The harried, unhappy features flashed at him again. "You mean like my stupidity? What do you think? Is it too much? Angel, the Initiative...Spike..." She started to pace again, faster than before. "God, Giles, why are you even here now? What if this is just another one of my 'errors of judgement'?"

"You don't really believe that."

"I don't know what I believe," she rasped. "No matter how many stupid mistakes I've made, I keep having to make decisions I don't want to make, choices I don't want to even think about. And I just keep getting it wrong, even when I'm right. Giles, I love you so much...what if I get it wrong again...what if I hurt you again?"

"None of us can guarantee not to make mistakes. All of us have faltered badly on more than one occasion since we've been together...but we all go on."

She almost smiled a little, her expression wry and a little wistful. "Yeah, well, I guess it is true that I haven't actually tried to *destroy* the world yet, and I generally stick to one love interest at a time...and there's the handy plus that I haven't actually raised any badass demons lately...un...less you count Angelus...and I haven't exactly jilted anyone lately either, so I guess I'm still in the game, even if I have kinda 'faltered' more than everyone else put together, huh?"

At that he did finally smile a little. "Nobody ever said we weren't quite flawed in our own ways...all of us."

Buffy's eyes dropped. "Yeah, but not going to change anything, huh? It's still me...the former 'One', now the mostly lame-o 'One of many'...and yet...so far the only Slayer who couldn't decide whether to slay'em or lay'em," she finished disparagingly, rolling her eyes but continuing to regard her feet.

His smile widened further. "Also very good points. One would hope, however, that a decision about 'laying them' has been well and truly taken by now."

She made a face at him. "Absolutely, on my soul: No...More...Vampires, *ever*. I've decided that at the very least I'd like my lovers to be room temperature...and have a pulse."

"Lovers?" His tone was teasing and dry, but the question was loud and clear.

The momentary amusement faded as her eyes locked with his.

"Lover...person I love. Figure-of-speech. No plurals...just you, and only you...if we get through this in one piece. Giles, there's never going to be anyone..." She frowned profoundly, searching for the right words. "As we've just established, getting things wrong seems to be my field of expertise. Well, I got things wrong...a lot of things, about us, about love." She reached up and touched his face. "Now I've finally got something right...so right that if anyone tried to take it away I'd probably stake them on the spot. Giles, until *us*I didn't have a clue who Buffy Summers really was, or what real love could be. For the first time in my life I know what it's really supposed to feel like...be like...and...and it's warm and sweet...and strong and powerful...and sometimes it hurts, and sometimes it's harsh, but I want it...I want you...for always. If I lost you again..."

The green eyes darkened almost to the colour of the patch in one of them, sadness making them painfully bleak.

With the hurt in them, came gradual awareness for Buffy of the import of those last five words from his perspective. Slowly, she reached up and touchedf his cheek again. "I know," she said softly. "But I won't ever go away again, I promise...at least, not if I have any choice..."

He drew her into his arms. "Then we must make certain you always have a choice."

After a tense silence, Buffy spoke. "You mean like I have a choice about these stones?" She asked dryly.

Giles kissed the top of her head. "Of course," he smiled at last. "Your choice is to win."

Buffy snorted and pulled away gently to look up at him. "Have I told you lately how much I love you?"

He tilted his head to one side. "I must say I'm having trouble remembering..."

She looked almost comically disappointed.

Giles chuckled. "I think you might have mentioned it a time...or ten...in the last few weeks. And I think perhaps the whole building might have heard your appreciation when we tried that lovely posit-" He couldn't speak anymore for the lips that crushed his into silence.

As always, within moments a thrill went through his body, repeated when her soft one arched against him and they were once again swept away on a tide of passion...

Giles chuckled. "One wonders."

Buffy stretched and smiled. "I can't believe how good it feels to actually wake up and look forward to the day...all day...and all night. It's been so long I really can't remember what it was like, y'know? I think there was ice-skating involved, and possibly the buying of clothes..."

"Possibly," he agreed dryly, well aware of her former clothes obsession and the often unlikely, even ludicrous outfits she would appear in to train or go on patrol.

"What would you like to do today?"

"You mean I don't have to go fight the good fight for these stones of yours today?"

He slipped another piece of melon into her mouth and another into his own, before picking up his tea again.

Buffy swallowed. "Do you want your toast?" Giles shook his head and watched as she moved it to her own plate. "So we can do anything we want today?"

He nodded. "Anything, even shopping, if that's what you really want to do."

She looked up from pouring milk on her muesli. "What about you? What do you want to do?" She frowned then. "God, that felt so weird, which is really, really bad. I can't believe you put up with the three of us all these years. I mean, I can't remember any one of us ever asking you that...not even once. "

"Well it was excusable when you were all still children and preoccupied with effort of addressing your approaching adulthood-"

"Not to mention addressing approaching vampires, demons, monsters, gobl-"

"...AS I was saying," Giles interrupted, "I understood. And I knew you all cared, for all that. On the other hand later on, it became more and more difficult to tell..."

"Points for subtlety there, Rupert," she drawled, sliding a strawberry over his impossibly sensual lips and watching him draw it into his mouth.

He inclined his head as he chewed the fruit. "Thank you. I thought so."

"So...tell me what you want to do today. I think I'd like to do that, whatever it is, more than anything."

Giles leaned forward and trailed another strawberry over lips, her chin, down her pale throat to her cleavage and traced circles around the soft globes, and the small pink nipples already standing erect and dimpled.

"Oh, I don't know," he said idly and trailed the small, chilled, piece of fruit down to her navel, circled it lazily then continued downward. "I can't really think of a thing..."

Giles watched his companion stretch and turn her face up to the bright, late afternoon sun. "Then you didn't mind not leaving the hotel room until after lunch?" he teased.