Rating: FRAO
Pairing: B/G
Feedback: Always love to hear what you think
Summary: Giles and Buffy are lost in a primitive environment in a dimensional rip, for what is a couple of weeks for them. Survival brings with it a lot of lessons and when they arrive back not long before Valentine's Day Buffy has to make some choices.
Timeline: This is kind of a semi-AU story set in season 7. There are no S-I-Ts. Giles is Giles. There's no Andrew, Wood is not relevant, and the First has not appeared yet. The main characters are otherwise unchanged. Phew. I think that's a record for me for a summary LOL. Can you tell I really don't like a lot of things about season 7? ...I knew you could <vbg>
Distribution: Distribution: All those who have my general permission and at my site as soon as I get it finished. :-)
Disclaimer: Joss is the destroyer...I mean owner...I'm just doin' a little building ;-)

Author's notes: This one is big and not done yet, so I don't know how many parts there'll be ultimately but thanks to Headrush and Gileswench these first ones are ready to post for Valentine's Day. Good thing there's technically 2 Valentine's Days for me to post over <g>

Dedication: To everyone who helps me to make a fic happen, either just by reading when I'm not impartial enough to know how it's going myself, or by beta-ing for me. Thank you!

Cindy, I hope this makes you feel better, mate :-)

The afternoon sky suddenly seemed to split open, pouring undulations of red and purple through the jagged orifice, and streaking the sky with the weirdest lightning she'd ever seen.

Buffy slashed at one of three angry demons with one of Giles' best swords. “What the hell is that?”

“Ask them,” Giles shot back peevishly, parrying another of the demons with his own favourite blade.

“Yeah, right,” she snorted, finally getting an opening to swing the sword above waist height and decapitating her opponent in one swift, powerful swipe, carrying the stroke through to block the downward motion of the weapon of the last demon, which was looking incredibly pissed off and animatedly shouting at its erstwhile companion in grunts and whistles.

Giles' opponent answered in the same strange language.

“I think perhaps they're considering a withdrawal,” he offered as the giant 'rip' behind them roiled and throbbed in a horrible, almost living 'splot' in mid-air. Neither of them voiced the fact that the anomaly was making their skin crawl…literally.

In actual fact the two demons redoubled their efforts.

Buffy, who'd been enjoying the outing with her Watcher after patrolling alone for so long, well, except for the new thrill sensation from the anomaly…much like ants crawling all over her, she decided…looked up at an opportune moment and watched Giles in action. Her eyes widened. She automatically blocked another heavy blow from her opponent without really looking away from him. He looked good. He looked really…different…or had she just not noticed before?

“Giles, look out!” she screamed.

The demon Giles was fighting lunged forward and crashed its blade down onto his, throwing him off balance and causing him to stumble backwards into the anomaly, before disappearing completely.

“No!!!” She turned and swiftly beheaded her opponent before racing to the rip and trying to see into it. “Giles!”

And then everything went black.

Buffy woke to a blinding headache and glaring sunlight. She squinted. There was someone looking down at her.

“Where am I?” she croaked, instinctively reaching for her sword and finding it lying next to his on the ground.

“That's the sixty-four thousand dollar question, isn't it? Are you all right?”

“Giles?”

“Here.”

Buffy opened her eyes wider. “Giles!” She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him hard.

Giles returned the surprise embrace, chuckling. “As bad as it looked, I'm quite all right. The question is: are you?”

Buffy pulled back slowly and looked up at him sheepishly, her eyes suspiciously bright.

“I thought I'd lost you again. And I'm okay, except for the bump on the back of my head. Where are we?”

“No idea,” He offered a hand when she started to rise, and helped her to her feet.

“Not exactly bustling with activity, huh?”

Giles scanned the area around them once again, taking in the open expanse of grassy savannah in front of them, heavy forest behind, and the smell of sea on the wind.

“We're either near the coast of, um, somewhere…or perhaps an island…”

Buffy's eyebrows rose. “Castaways?”

“More or less. Although, I suspect we're a lot farther from home than Robinson Crusoe.”

The blonde head shot around to look at his face. “Giles, I have a parent-teacher interview on Thursday night. Willow asked me to go and see the Two Towers with her again on Saturday. And I had plans for…I mean…I have work tomorrow! I can't be stuck anywhere…and you're telling me I've been sucked into another dimension or something?”

“Something.” Giles nodded, aware that she hadn't yet reached the conclusions he had about the longer-term implications of their situation.

Buffy was watching his face. Normally when she was worried or frightened, watching Giles' strong face while he talked to her, or to the gang, was reassuring and comforting. Very little fazed the time-weathered Watcher. He'd seen it all before, and if he hadn't, he'd probably seen something worse. This time, though, all she saw in the sea-green eyes was an ominously large measure of apprehension, even maybe a little fear.

“Giles, where are we?” she asked quietly.

He finally looked down at her again, and actually tried to smile. “I haven't the faintest idea, actually, except that I'm almost certain we're not in Kansas any more…”

For a moment Buffy simply stared at him. “Okay, that's it. How do I know you're my Giles and not some Doppler-thingy?”

“Doppelganger,” he supplied. “What on earth are you talking about?”

Buffy's hands went to her hips. “You made a joke. We're trapped in another dimension and you made an actual funny. So, Dorothy, what have you done with my Giles?”

“Very funny,” he snorted. “I'm not entirely without humour, you know.”

“Could'a fooled me,” she teased, watching a very strange-looking bird wheel overhead. Just then it gave a long, keening shriek. “Any idea who our spooky-wannabe visitor is?”

Giles followed her gaze and frowned. “Grammar still not your strong point, is it? It's some type of raptor, I believe, but not one I've ever seen before.”

She squinted. “So what gives it away…the shiny talons, or the fact that it's the size of a small pony? Oh, and…bite me.”

Giles chuckled. “I rather think it's time we moved away from here. It's losing altitude with every pass, and I don't think it's an accident, nor do I want to wait to find out if it wants to invite us to lunch…”

“More like invite us to *be* lunch,” Buffy shot back as they headed for the edge of the forest.

Their avian companion let out another bone shuddering screech of frustration just as they slipped beyond the low scrub and into the forest proper.

“Nice welcome,” Buffy grumbled. “Any idea where we are yet? There must be something in that library of yours about other dimensions.”

Giles shrugged. “You heard Anya the last time this came up. There are an infinite number of dimensions, all with their own peculiarities. At least this one bears some resemblance to our own.”

Buffy, who was dawdling, swiftly came up alongside him and stayed close to his right arm. “It's creepy in here and it smells weird.”

“There's nothing wrong with the way it smells. This is how a forest is supposed to smell. Decomposing leaf-litter, damp earth, tree bark, faint perfume on the breeze from forest blooms.”

Buffy sniffed as they passed a huge tree. “Eau de Men's Room.”

Giles turned his head and sniffed. “An animal, probably a predator, has marked its territory recently.”

“Who knew you were the Daniel Boone type?” she teased, jumping when something skittered, unseen, through the undergrowth.

“Just stay alert,” he told her. “If there are larger animals about, it follows that there are going to be predators…and try not to let any insects sting or bite you. There is no way to know what will or won't be toxic.”

At that moment a bright blue dragonfly-like insect the size of a stogie zipped by.

She dived even closer, almost knocking him off balance. In self-defence, he threw an arm around her shoulders and steadied himself, before carrying on.

“All right?” he asked, concealing amusement.

“I am now,” she told him, peering up at the canopy as though demon spiders might come careening down at any minute. “I hate bugs.”

He grinned to himself above her head. This was new. “I rather thought you might be the one protecting me from things with large teeth and claws.”

Buffy leaned into him even more and felt his arm tighten gratifyingly. “If one says hello, you got it. Until then you deal with the bugs.”

“Done.” He suppressed a chuckle. “I wish I knew where we were going, though. As a matter of fact…”

He brought them to a halt. The canopy had completely closed and it was more like twilight than daytime in the filtered light beneath it.

“…I think perhaps we should make our way back out of here for now. We don't know how far this forest extends or exactly how dangerous it might be. At least in the open we can see an enemy coming.”

Buffy breathed a silent sigh of relief. “Sounds good to me.”

Once they got back to open space again and made absolutely certain that the mega-raptor had left, they followed the edge of the forest, walking into the breeze. Giles was hoping it would lead them to the ocean, the scent of which had grown even stronger since their re-emergence from the undergrowth.

After an hour and a half of walking, the scenery was little changed. “Giles, I'm hungry and my feet ache.”

Giles looked down at her slender, sneaker shod feet. “One must be grateful for small mercies. You could have been wearing those monstrosities you came to training in the other day…” He frowned. “You've never complained about your feet hurting before, even when you've patrolled half the night.”

Buffy looked sheepish. “You used to be easier to slide one by. Okay, you've got me. No impending lameness. It's just…I really am hungry, and thirsty, and it's hot and if one more bug tries to bite me…” she huffed, swatting again at a forearm.

Giles took the slender arm in a large hand. “Buffy you're covered in bites. Why didn't you tell me?”

“I am?” Buffy peered at her limb. “How was I supposed to know? They're not itching…yet. What? Am I going to swell up and die…again? Or turn purple or bleed out of my eyeballs or something?”

Giles rolled his eyes, still studying the small but innocuous-looking lumps. “Heaven knows, but I suspect that something would have happened by now if your body was going to react anywhere near as colourfully as all that.”

“So…stopping and resting?”

“I think not. If your feet are up to the journey, we should at least try for the coast. There may be a settlement there, perhaps evidence of some kind of sentient presence, or at the very least more opportunity to find something to eat that hopefully won't result in a prolonged need for a latrine…or bleeding from one's eyeballs,” he added dryly.

“A settlement? Of what…jungle demons?”

Giles trailed around a large, ugly yellow and green striped bush. “Of anything that might be able to help us get home.” He looked down at her dishevelled appearance. “Something with a bathroom, perhaps?”

She looked up at him. “Look who's a laugh-riot today.” Her face fell. “Oh, God. Going to the bathroom…I have to go to the bathroom out here…I'm going to end up with as many bites on my ass as my arms!”

Giles couldn't help chuckling, even as the knowledge that they might well be talking about their new, permanent home was making his heart sink.

By the time they'd finally climbed over what Giles suspected were scrub-covered sand dunes a couple of hours later, both of them were scratched, tired, irritable and exhausted.

Buffy emptied her shoe for the fifth time. “Now I remember why I skipped girl scouts.”

Giles, however, was scanning the horizon through better than one hundred and eighty degrees. Not a silhouette of a building, a boat, or even a hut or a broken-down pier… nothing. He sighed heavily.

Buffy looked up and frowned, running her finger around the back of the sneaker to pull it onto her foot again.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh c'mon, Giles…”

His voice was tired and flat as he repeated himself and waved a hand in an arc across the horizon from left to right. “Literally nothing…”

“Oh.” Buffy stared at the blood red fingers of the late afternoon sun splayed across the pale emerald sea before them. “It is kinda pretty though.”

Giles snorted quietly. “I daresay. However, 'pretty' will not assuage hunger, nor will it house you tonight. We're going to have to find a way to build a shelter. There's nothing else for it. And since we've not found any fresh water yet, we can't even do that until we do find some.”

“What about that?”

The Watcher looked sceptical, but turned in the direction Buffy was pointing.

Several hundred yards up the beach there appeared to be a stream mouth. It was too small to be a river.

“It's probably just a saltwater estuary or creek.”

Buffy was already heading up the beach. “Whatever. All I know is, I'm thirsty enough to drink pig's blood which…gross… so if that estu…ester…*creek* could lead to drinkies, I'm so there.”

As they approached, it became obvious that it was the mouth of a decent-sized stream. One large enough to have carved out one side of the mouth into a deep trough, while the side closest to them was relatively shallow, spreading out as tidal flats, allowing them to see the bottom a few feet down, and the activity of the creatures that dwelt there. The deep side seemed to flow into a mangrove-style swamp that appeared to run for miles.

“Not moving too fast…lots of rocks. Won't get a boat up there.”

Giles smirked. “Now who's the frontier woman? In case you haven't noticed we don't actually have a boat…”

“We're going to have to follow it upstream, though, aren't we? To see if there's fresh water up higher?”

Giles stepped carefully from rock to rock to reach something a few feet out into the water.

Buffy watched him bend and scoop it out, then turn again as he rose, before stepping back across to her. For some reason his grace surprised her and made her feel a little small. It was such a little thing, and yet it made a mockery of much of the gang's, and her own, attitude to Giles…the sure knowledge that they'd all have made bets on him falling in. Worse was the realisation that, back in Sunnydale, he probably would have, not because he was really any kind of a klutz…*obviously*, but because the weight of their expectations would have toppled him in the end…

She shook herself and took the wet object he handed her. She was getting entirely too introspective… Her nose twitched. *Introspective, with big words, no less…*

“Wow…wet, slimy, plant-type…er…stuff.”

Giles nodded. “It's a seedpod and small branch from a large tree. Do you see any large trees here?”

Buffy looked up and down the coast and upstream. “That would be a nope. Are we going somewhere with this?”

He nodded. “It must have come from upstream, and it isn't the type of plant known to grow in genuine salt water or estuarine conditions. The seeds from that pod would have to fall, not on seawater-saturated sand, but good earth to germinate. We must hope that farther upstream the water is fresh enough to sustain this tree and others like it.”

Her nose wrinkled up. “Can I throw it away now? You don't actually want to eat it or anything, right? It smells kinda bad…”

Giles nodded and started picking his way along the stream edge.

Buffy hurled the branch back into the water and wiped her hands on her jeans as she followed him.

Ten minutes later they flushed their third snake, only this time it was a vivid red, black and yellow striped creature and not very happy about being disturbed.

Buffy watched it vanish into the undergrowth, adrenaline still pricking in her fingertips. “That was exciting.”

Giles, ignoring his own accelerated heart rate, was negotiating his way around a giant spider web, and watching its plate-sized occupant carefully.

“Bracing,” he agreed dryly. “I wonder if it's edible.”

“Eiew, Giles. I'm not cooking pulakoo stew for you.”

“What on earth are you talking about? How do you know that particular arachnid is a…what did you call it…a pulakoo?”

“Years of brain-numbing TV watching with Xander Harris. He was watching Major Kira's goodies. Will and I were watching her eat giant spiders.”

He shook his head but didn't comment. It seemed pointless to tell her he had in fact been referring to the snake.

They took another hour to finally reach a place far enough upstream to actually be able to drink the water. Buffy almost smacked Giles one when he told her she couldn't have any right away but drank deeply himself.

“How is that fair?” she whined, dehydrated, headachy and wanting nothing more than a nice hot bath and the casserole she'd pre-prepared the night before for their, and Dawn's, dinner.

Giles looked down his impressive nose at her. “We'll push upstream a little further and see if we can find a clearing to set up camp. If I haven't dropped dead or fallen somewhere in a convulsive heap by the time we've made camp, you may drink the water. I just wish I had something in which to boil some for you.”

She grew very still. “You're taste-testing to see if it's poisoned? We didn't even discuss it…How could you…!”

His raised hand silenced her, but Giles could see the rage in her eyes. “One of us had to, and since I had the advantage of knowing that, I chose to be…'it', as it were.”

“How could you?” she demanded again.

“I don't understand,” he said mildly.

Which only made Buffy angrier. “I'm the one! I'm the one who takes the risks. I'm the one who does any necessary dying!” She was crying as she yelled. “You…you can't leave me again, Giles. You…you can't do stuff that might take you away from me again!”

He stepped towards her, shocked by her outburst. “I'm all right, Buffy. Truly I am. It's normal procedure in an unknown environment…one of us must remain healthy, but we have to know if the food and water are edible or potable. I'm sorry I didn't talk to you about it first.”

“Just…don't do it again,” she told him awkwardly and stomped off.

Nonplussed, he followed her until she reached a spot where they could see a clearing on the other side of the stream. It was strewn with rocks and dead branches, but it was mostly grass and lichen, where once must have stood one of the great forest trees, long gone and leaving a gaping hole in the high canopy for sunlight to filter through all the way to the ground.

Giles drew alongside her on the bank. “It's a good spot. I'd much prefer to be on the beach, but until we find a way to carry water, this is the next best thing.”

“Great. So how do we get across there? I don't see any bridges or stepping stones for nimble Watchers to skip across on and there's no way to know if it's infested with piranha or anacondas or something equally fun-tastic.”

*So she was still talking to him*. He sighed gratefully. “It's not deep here. I'll wade across first and if nothing…”

Buffy turned very quickly, caught his arm and searched his eyes, his face for any signs of distress. “No queasies? No urge to head for the bushes yet?”

He shook his head, only to watch her turn and wade into the stream. By the time he'd opened his mouth to yell she was across it and climbing out on the mossy bank that sloped gently down to the water. A few moments later he was alongside her.

“Buffy—”

“My turn,” she told him. “It's what I do, Giles. You Watch, I risk. That's how it works.”

“No it bloody well doesn't!” he yelled at her. “Not on my watch. Not ever again!”

She blinked, the tears returning as she absorbed the pain in his eyes, aware that it was about a lot more than just the stream, the blaze in them mirroring her own, earlier. After several interminable moments of stand off, she lifted an ineffectual hand.

He stared at it for another long moment, then took it almost roughly and drew her into his arms, her instinctive, almost desperate, embrace as fierce as his own.

“We'll get out of here, I promise.”

Buffy felt his breath on her ear as he spoke the gentle words, and shivered. “I…I'm sorry about before. Just…please don't leave me again,” she whispered back and buried her face in his shirt.