(notes and disclaimer with part one)

“Is there any point to all this?”

“Not really,” Buffy admitted. “But it's fun…right? Anything to stop from going insane from the sheer tedium is a good…and besides, I may have lost everything else, but I don't see why I should miss out on Christmas too.”

Rupert shifted, less than enthused about untangling the long strands of lights, and paused to watch the slender figure sitting amidst piles of ornaments and tinsel and looking like a small girl, flushed and pleased with her Christmas preparations.

“Is the tree satisfactory?” he rumbled, casting an eye over the large Douglas fir that had appeared in due course after he focused his attention on wanting it. His captors had been unusually magnanimous of late, and he suspected that the diligent attention to his resumed duties probably accounted for most of their goodwill.

Buffy grinned. “Most satisfactory,” she confirmed. “It's like the food…exactly what I-we want. You picked the tree, didn't you?”

“It is the one I visualized, although I cannot tell you where I remember it from.”

“Does that mean you're getting your memory back?”

He shook his head. “I have many 'memories' …fragments of things, knowledge, half-remembered experiences. I simply have no context for them.”

“Like what?” she asked curiously.

“A Douglas fir in a very large, draughty room on Christmas day…splendidly dressed, but with only me…and a couple of servants to appreciate it. The smell of whiskey…and burnt sage…the face of my mother…then much later, when she was…” He stopped, his eyes bleak. “Never mind. Sufficed to say I have the education and knowledge of a university professor, the weapons and fighting skills of a soldier and a sure knowledge…” His eyes were again very far away. “…A sure knowledge that I came from somewhere…somewhere that has nothing to do with any of this…”

“You miss your family?”

He looked at her with almost startled eyes. “N-no. I don't think so…at least, I miss…God I wish I knew what I miss. Perhaps I simply miss me. The man I really was…”

“Man?” Buffy asked, surprised.

He paused to consider the unexpected slip for a moment, and to let his mind again savour the memory of the woman he knew, somehow, was his mother.

“Man,” he said softly, inclining his head fractionally.

“Wow…so we're getting into Hans Christian Anderson stuff here…real Grimm's Fairy tale territory,” she observed, letting her nerves run away with her mouth.

He looked up at her and blinked, the gleam of amusement finally trying to peak out again through the misery.

“One kiss from a fair maiden?” he teased. “I might turn into a toad.”

In spite of the unexpected tension, Buffy giggled. “I like you better cuddly,” she told him, her expression softening. “We'll find out. Somehow, we'll find out who you were. Any spell can be broken. We just need to find out how…”

They spent a long time decorating and trimming their tree. When it was done Buffy inhaled with satisfaction.

“I can't believe they gave us a real tree. I love that smell.”

“If they are so moved they will give what we ask for,” he told her, pleased to see several packages appear beneath the tree.

Buffy watched the blinking lights and sighed over the red, gold and green ornaments and spirals of tinsel glittering in the soft half-light of the fireplace. It was exactly the tree she used to dream about as a little girl. Every year her family would decorate their fake spruce with the same miscellaneous box of assorted, colourful, but unremarkable decorations, and every year she would go to sleep visualizing…this.

“It's beautiful,” she whispered. “Like a real Christmas.”

More packages appeared beneath the tree, only the wrapping was strikingly different.

Rupert cast her an amused glance. “Done your Christmas shopping, I see?” he teased.

Buffy shrugged. “They're major eaves-droppers. I was just thinking…but it's okay. It was what I wanted.” She thought, but didn't add: 'for you.'

Have you given any thought to dinner?” he asked gently.

“Kinda. I was thinking about what the others are doing…what Giles might be doing.”

Rupert understood exactly how she was feeling. “Perhaps you'd feel better if we work on dinner?”

She shrugged again.

“Goose, perhaps?”

“What?” she giggled, in spite of herself.

“Christmas goose?”

“Oh. Eieww…I think.”

He shook his head. “Actually it's rather good. I suppose you want a turkey or some such?”

She frowned a little. “Well, mom always made pork roast or sometimes beef…”

“Well those are fine choices also. Shall we have chestnuts? Or eggnog? Or brandied custard to go with our pudding?”

Buffy giggled again. “You know discussing Christmas fun with someone who kind of looks more like he should be out stalking deer or hunting down wildebeests or something is just…” When he looked worried, she hastened to add more. “No, it's okay. I just meant: it's all good, Rupert. You're making it not so bad.”

He relaxed again, visibly.

She continued: “if we're going to make a fun Christmas we should have the lot…everything you want and everything I want, including the goose, with your favourite stuffing. And I want lights and decorations and Christmas cookies and…”

“Traditional Christmas pud', still in the cloth, brandied custard, egg-nog, some vintage cognac and lots of chocolate for Buffy,” he added, amusement in his voice.

Her eyes flashed and grinned broadly. “How did you know…except…Christmas pud? And what cloth?”

He shrugged. “You'll see. And I just did. You like jelly donuts too.”

Buffy's insides fluttered. That was weird.

“So do you,” she added warily. “And you like really crunchy new season's apples.”

He nodded. “Have you thought any more about this escape plan of yours?”

Her brow creased again. “A lot. But I didn't think I should talk about it too much. The walls have ears…and all that.”

“Ah. Well, perhaps we should…er…go for a walk later?”

“It's snowing…oh…yeah…I'd like that,” she switched awkwardly when the penny dropped and continued to improvise. “I've never made a snowman.”

His eyes danced with laughter. “Then perhaps you should collect a few accoutrements for your prospective creation, and we'll take our constitutional now, before the sun sets.”

Buffy wasn't sure what accoutrements were, but she found the cliché carrot and when she thought about them hard enough, some large black buttons for eyes. She remembered a scarf on the coat stand, which had been there since she'd arrived, and a little brooding over battered top hats while she was putting her own coat and boots on, saw one hanging on the stand when she went back downstairs. The one thing she was going to miss about the place was the service…

Most of their energy went into the production of the snowman, just beyond the grounds.

Buffy had no idea how much physical labour was involved in making a life sized snowman. The sun was sitting on the horizon, its red skirts a serious flutter amongst the ever-present clouds when they finished the body, including sculpted arms holding it's own belly.

Rupert showed her how to pack the snow hard to form the ball for the core of the head.

“Couldn't we just make it and then lift it on?”

He shook his tawny mane. “It's own weight would make it fall to pieces before we could lift it onto the base.”

They moulded and sculpted together for another hour, until there was very little light left.

“You could wish us up a torch,” Buffy muttered, trying to give her snow-person an expression that looked a little less Friday the Thirteenth.

“I'm afraid I'm not entirely sure about the teeth, and I don't need to wish for a flashlight,” he rumbled, amused, and turned a light, drawn from his jacket pocket, onto her work.

Buffy made a frustrated squeak of a noise. “Okay, so the teeth really aren't working,” she capitulated, staring at the manically homicidal expression on the snowy figure looking back at her, and pulled the carefully cut out and placed check-cloth smile off her snow man.

Behind her, Rupert was snapping twigs. Moments later he'd fashioned an innocuous, even quaint twig smile for the figure and Buffy had wrapped the scarf around its distinct lack of neck before handing Rupert the battered top hat. He set it at a jaunty angle, then, when they'd stepped back a little, turned his flashlight on their work again.

Buffy was glowing and red-cheeked, like a small child, strands of long blonde hair escaping from the ponytail she'd tied it back in, eyes sparkling with the success of the exercise.

“You really haven't ever done anything like this before?” he said softly.

She shook her head. “It was never that kind of a life…except maybe going to the Ice Show for my birthday…when I was young. The rest of the time my parents were both always working, or fighting…or both.”

“It's a good snowman,” he pronounced. “You see he's rather proud of himself already.”

She smiled. “And this is a good thing?”

“Indeed. The other one would have given even me nightmares,” he teased.

Buffy poked out her tongue. “I thought I was being…innovative.” She thought of something. “Do you suppose anyone will mind that I destroyed that tablecloth to make those teeth?”

He made the low chuckling noise again. “I think perhaps they're a little too busy to care whether you're vandalizing my things. You're shivering. Now might be a good time to talk about what we're going to do…before the frost comes.”

“There's going to be frost?”

“Can't you feel it in the air? The temperature is dropping fairly swiftly.”

“All I can feel is how cold my nose and my feet are…and how wet I am,” she muttered. “And you know they can probably still here us out here. Listening in from another dimension isn't exactly James Bond stuff…even I know that.”

“Even so,” he sighed. “We have to talk, and I know that when I'm out they pay less attention than when I'm inside. It is as though they're so confident of the spell that they think they can relax, because I'm going to be so busy going nowhere that I won't be doing anything else.”

“How do you know…that they pay less attention?”

“They never hear or act on wishes out here. They've never appeared out here, not even just a voice. And once I fell and twisted my leg…it took them two days to come to my aid, obviously because they'd noticed my absence from the house. Fortunately for me…and them…it was late summer at the time. They were most solicitious once I was back in the house, but it was a long two days…”

“Maybe it isn't that they pay less attention, so much as something out here makes it much harder for them to listen to us. I wish Giles was here. He's so good at these kind of things.” Her eyes slid to the snowman. “I wish he was here…”

Rupert, only a couple of feet away, moved to her side and slid an arm around her shoulders. “If we escape, I'll help you find him,” he promised.

Buffy leaned into him, resting her brow against his left breast, despite the dampness and the snow on his black greatcoat.

“We have to get out,” she said into the woollen fabric. “I have to know what happened to him…I have to tell him…”

Rupert curled his great arm more tightly around her, holding her against him as she shivered with cold.

“I know,” he said softly.