"Buffy? Buffy, wake up!"

The screams became whimpers and the thrashing little more than shudders but it was still several more moments, and a number of gentle shakes of the arm before the Slayer opened her eyes.

"Giles...how?"

"You were dreaming again," he said softly.

Her brow furrowed and she blinked moisture from her eyes. "That whole immolation thing just gets prettier and prettier every time," she muttered sarcastically.

"Pardon?"

She looked up and into the concerned green gaze. This was the third night in the last week and she'd lost count of how many during the two and a half weeks they'd been in England, that she'd woken to the feel of his large hand holding hers and the soft, deliberately soothing tones of his voice.

"I guess it's about time I told you, huh?"

His face gentled, his eyes growing warm. "Only if you want to."

She looked away. "I-that stuff, about Spike... You and Robin, you were wrong...but so was I. I could have gotten us all killed. As it turns out, I was also right, but that doesn't mean I should have taken so many chances. It's just...well, you didn't need to kill him. Between that big brain of yours, and Robin's, you two should have been able to come up with a better plan than that, even if I was being stupid about it."

"Yes, well, it all sounds fine in theory," he said evenly. "But at the time neither Spike, nor you I might add, were giving anyone very much choice in the matter. There were a lot of lives involved, and even more at stake."

The blue eyes flashed up to his, irritated in spite of herself. "And you always have to do the right thing, don't you?" she demanded.

It was his turn to frown. "I don't quite...?"

"Not just the Spike thing. You were going to fight the Master for me. You were going to get yourself killed by Eyghon...mostly for Jenny...and maybe me a little bit. You were willing to die to try and save Willow from herself...and you almost died trying to save the world from Angelus and Acathla..." she added in a whisper.

His expression was a mixture of touched, puzzled, and the smallest hint of amusement. "It wasn't all nobility and self-sacrifice, you know," he teased. "I seem to recall rather selfishly throwing myself at Angelus with nothing more than a baseball bat at one point," he reminded her, then seemed to change tack again, his voice soft. "There are times when we all have to do things for the right reasons that feel terribly, terribly wrong." His voice inexplicably grew hoarse long before the end of the sentence. "You did the right thing, Buffy."

She clenched trembling fists. "I left him there to die. The nightmares...I know they're real. I never saw any of it...but almost every night I see him burn...all the way down to dust. Sometimes just before his face burns off, it's Angel. Somehow...it becomes Angel. I should have been the one...I should have died in that hole. Giles, I'm...I was the Slayer...with a soul, but more than human...maybe not better, but definitely more."

"You loved him?"

She shrugged impatiently then dashed moisture from her face and eyes. "No...yes. I...I cared for him. I'm not smart enough to define what I had with Spike. He said I didn't love him, but he was wrong. I just didn't love him the way he wanted me to." She stopped then sighed. "Maybe that makes him right, anyway. I just know that he's gone and I'm still here...and...and I miss him. And I miss the others, and Dawn. And for some reason I miss mom. I dream about her too."

His fingers tightened around hers. "Not nightmares, I hope?"

Buffy shook her head. "Nice, mostly, but there's always badness at the end. She always has to go, or gets taken away from me."

Giles sighed again. She'd lost even more weight and hadn't settled at all since she'd returned with him to England. For all that she'd been looking forward to a life...a real life beyond Slaying, the adjustment was proving as difficult as fighting any apocalyptic evil.

"It's going to take a while for you to adjust to no longer being...to not having the world constantly upon your shoulders, as it were."

She half-smiled. "I'm getting used to that part pretty fast. I just...I never wanted to be the Slayer, or to have to take charge...to do any of that crap that drove everyone crazy... but now..." She shrugged. "Is it completely stupid to feel...bad...just because I'm not, you know...?"

"Special?" he provided.

"...Any more," she finished, nodding.

"It's perfectly normal, as is feeling regret about Spike and still missing your mother."

Buffy yawned, her too-thin face stretched by it, before she closed her eyes again above now flushed cheeks. A moment later she was surprised to feel the soft brush of the backs of his fingers pushing strands of hair off her face, before cupping her cheek, fingers sliding into her hair, thumb brushing her temple. The last thing she remembered was the stroking of the thumb, and letting the weight of her cheek rest against the strong palm...

*******

"There's another letter from Dawn...well, a postcard anyway," Giles called as Buffy put slices of bread in his toaster.

"Cool. You know, it was really sweet of you to do what you did. It's not going to hurt your, um, finances too much, is it? I mean, you already helped me that time, then there were all those plane tickets and...well...and yes, I know, I should have thought of this stuff a long time ago."

He chuckled. "No...no...my bank balance is perfectly fine, thank you. In fact, Anya is the true benefactor in this instance."

Buffy tilted her head, sadness in her eyes. "Neat trick, considering."

His mouth pulled into a half smile, but found itself unable to maintain it. He hadn't realized just how much affection he felt for the socially inept ex-demon, who'd grown so human she'd become the first ever to resign from her previously beloved calling.

"Well, no. She's still very much...gone. It's simply that, after her estrangement from Xander, the only person she nominated in her will as both executor and beneficiary of the majority of her estate..."

"...Was her business partner," Buffy guessed.

He nodded uncomfortably.

"Trust Anya to have a will. I've already been dead more than once and I still didn't get around to making one."

"Well you should," he said in a voice that betrayed how much he still hated being reminded about her mortality.

"So, what have they been up to?" Buffy changed the subject, trying to lighten things up again.

He turned the post card over to find Donald and Mickey waving at them. "They're in Florida," he confirmed, browsing the small, enthused note. "Dawn is rather impressed with the whole Disney thing."

"Well that's halfway, anyway." Buffy ran a hand through her hair and held the back of her head for a moment. "It is going to help, isn't it?"

"You saw their faces," he said quietly. "They...all of them...deserve to be children for a while...to do childish things...to worry about nothing more pressing than whether to have hamburgers or pizza. They need this."

Buffy's eyes grew distant. "Xander always wanted to see America by road. Dawn always wanted to...well, she wanted to be treated like an adult, but have fun like a kid. I think Xander's perfect for the job."

"And Willow and Kennedy will make certain both of them survive to tell us all about it."

"You think it might help get that stick out of Kennedy's butt?"

He chuckled. "I hardly think it's going to stay there very long if Xander has anything to do with it. He'll have her quoting Superman comics, drinking slushees and playing Dungeons and Dragons before they're done."

Buffy stared at his bent head as he started to butter the popped toast.

After a beat he seemed to sense the eyes boring into his scalp and looked up. "What?"

"You. You really care for him, don't you?"

"Of course I do," he said, surprised.

"Of course you do," Buffy agreed affectionately, "but not so anyone could ever really see...up til now."

He slid the toast onto a clean plate and got cups for their tea. "Are you feeling any better this morning?"

"Slick switcheroo there, Watcher-mine. I'm okay. Not 'Julie Andrews racing to the top of the hill' fine, but I'm dealing." Her gaze lingered on his face. "There's something about this place..." She stopped, seemingly self-conscious all of a sudden. "I wonder what all the residents of Sunnydale will do... Do you think they'll get insurance?"

"Some of them...few, if any, I suppose. This isn't something you'd find written into an insurance policy. The words 'Act Of God' will be bandied about a great deal, I suspect."

"Act of God? I suppose the First kind of qualifies...as one of the 'small 'g'' kind of wannabes, maybe...but Spike? Not sure I'd want to be the one trying to hang this one on the big 'G' though." She giggled suddenly then her eyes grew very moist.

"Buffy?" he asked, alarmed.

"It's okay. I was just...Xander used to call you that, when..."

"When things were...when we all were..." He stopped, equally struck by the moment.

She nodded, the glitter shattering so that the moisture flicked out of her lashes as she closed her eyes. "When we were still kids, and there was fun...and he had two good eyes to see how much calling you that annoyed the crap out of you."

After an amused beat, Giles' expression grew sombre, his eyes almost as pained as hers. "Things change, Buffy. None of us can stay children forever-"

"But were we ever really kids...? I mean: Will and Xand gave up nearly as much as Slaying took away from me. Seven years, Giles. Seven years we've been dealing with life and death and life...dead bodies and dead friends, apocalypses...both the evil kind and the personal kind...and we're still only twenty-two." She scowled. "It's a whole kind of evil in itself...like my taste in men."

"Tragic," he agreed, smiling when it took a beat for her to realize he was taking the piss.

"Asshole," she retorted good-naturedly. "You can enjoy it now, but you didn't have much of a sense of humour about any of them at the time."

He snorted. "And why the hell should I have? Do I need to remind you of the sordid details...?"

The smile vanished. It took but a few seconds for every moment and every consequence of her relationship with Angel to flash before her eyes as though it had just happened. "No, you don't," she said quietly, forcing herself to consider the others. "You really didn't like Riley much, either, did you?"

Giles snorted again, most expressively. "Captain Cardboard?"

Buffy looked away, blinking too-bright eyes. For a second Giles thought it was about Riley, then he remembered where that nickname had come from. He cleared his throat.

"No, I didn't like him much. You deserved better, but you had to learn that for yourself."

"At least he loved me..." she offered half-heartedly.

Giles tilted his head, his eyes narrowed. "A lot of people loved you, Buffy, but you didn't go around jumping into bed with any of them every five minutes...well, not with the majority of them anyway," he amended at her look. "On the contrary, the more some of us wanted to be there for you, to help, to care, the more you pushed us out of your life...all the while entertaining such sterling characters as that Abrahms idiot, and Capt...er...Riley Finn...and finally the piece de resistance: Spike. None of us ever understood what he could give you that we couldn't, apart from the painfully obvious. As you've discovered several times now without learning anything from it, sex can be very cold comfort when there's nothing to go with it."

Buffy scowled. "Don't lecture me, Giles. Don't you think I paid for all that stupidity? Angelus? Riley and his vamp hos, not to mention the little wife..." When he would have asked the question, she held up a hand. "Later. Then there was Parker. Well, he goes without saying. I know Willow ratted me out details-wise on that one, so I'll just skip right past those and move right along." She made a glum face. "...To Spike."

"Yes: Spike," he said through his teeth, surprising her, and yet not.

"I don't think I really owe you an explanation for that part of my life," she said reproachfully, and unexpectedly. "You were there and things were safe and I had something to count on...and then just when it finally starts to look like I might have the space to deal with that...that...what did you say the Council called it? The 'Post-traumatic stress syndrome' thingy? Just when I need you the most, you announce you're leaving me...for *my* own good, no less."

"Buffy..."

"Don't worry. I know I still don't owe you an explanation, but I want to get this out while I think I still can. Then maybe the nightmares will stop...maybe." She folded her hands together, tightly, breakfast long forgotten. "After...after you left, it was like...it was kind of like those commercials the SPCA does...you know where the car stops and they push the dog out, slam the door and speed off. The mutt just stands there, wondering what the hell it did to deserve this. And then it gets so lost...and then it gets angry...it might even try to bite the people trying to help it..." She shook her head, dismissing the failed analogy. "I couldn't talk to the others. They couldn't talk to me. I didn't have anyone, and in case you hadn't noticed, I'm not that smart. Working it out on my own wasn't working too well. Dawn was way too young to deal with my issues, even if I could have told her, and you were way too gone. Spike was just...right there. I never understood how he could be evil, with all that killing and torture and liking it so much, and then such a creep, with his sex-bots and Buffy-shrines and stalking and stuff, and still touch something in me, but he could and he did. I can at least admit that now...I owed him that much."

Giles made a disparaging sound. "And the little matter of that documented murder, torture, rape and pillage across Europe, Asia and then the Americas, the killing of at least two slayers and the long held ambition to add you to that list...not to mention attempts to kill more than one of us on any number of occasions...? Of no consequence in your little romance?"

She shrugged. "He changed. Even without the soul. There was something weird about him, even as a vampire. I mean, he was evil. Vampires are evil...goes without saying, but there was this little piece of him that wasn't...evil...y'know?"

Giles paused for a moment. "Yes, I know," he finally agreed, remembering how much promise he'd seen in the wanker while he was under his roof and how his extended hand had been thrown back in his face, as he should have known it would be. "But that little piece wasn't enough to stop him from being dangerous, from doing...things. Had any human...had the Parker boy, for example, done all the things Spike did to you, you'd have wanted him arrested, or worse. You accepted all that, and yet look at the way you responded when I made the understandable mistake of trying to protect you... everyone," he amended swiftly. "You can hate me so easily, and yet despite his endless resume of...of...you give yourself to that...that..."

"Amazing what a little depression can make you do," she deadpanned, surprised by the spleen in his tone and the serious emotions that were making him stammer and leaking out of his British reserve like water out of a sieve. "What did you care, anyway? You were gone. I wasn't your problem...it wasn't your problem any more...it wasn't anyone's problem...not mom's, not Xander or Willow's, not Dawn's and certainly not my father's. It was just a little party between me, my terrific job and the stack of unpaid bills to go with my fun calling, Willow's addiction, Dawn's delinquency...not to mention the ever helpful geek trio trying to make my life complete..."

He put his head back, stared uncomfortably at the ceiling. "When I was there you weren't willing to make any decisions, take responsibility for anything you could fob off onto me. It was not my job to raise your sister, nor to make all your decisions for you. If it was, you do realize Spike would not have been there to wear the medallion ...and I..." He stopped, the atmosphere charged. When he spoke again it was in a voice that betrayed the effort to keep his tone even. "I would be mourning you again, if by some miracle the rest of us had even managed to survive."

"I missed you so much," she whispered, her expression acknowledging his point. "And I hated you so much for going...but not as much as I hated myself for driving you away. Evil vampire sex and pummel-age followed accordingly. He was good though. He actually had me believing that I came back wrong...that I belonged with him in the dark, because if any of you knew, you'd hate me...I mean really hate me. It didn't help, either, that he could hit me."

"Um...pummel-age?" Giles asked, barely containing his dread of what the reply would be. "A-and why would you let him hit you?"

"I pounded on him because I was angry. He pounded on me because it was fun and a big turn on. Mutual bruise-making. And I went through a lot of...ah, clothes, yeah...a lot of clothes during that period." It was clear from Giles' expression that she hadn't got away with that one, but she pressed on. "It wasn't pretty, but it wasn't all bad, either. He did care, in his own twisted way."

"But...the chip?"

"Um...there's something you should know..."

Giles' eyes widened as it sank in. "He could hit you...with the chip still working?"

Buffy nodded. "Now do you understand why depressed, needy, loser-Buffy was... well: 'depressed, needy loser-Buffy'? I was convinced I came back wrong...bad. I hated being here and I hated me more than any of you could and Spike was very helpful in letting me express my pain," she said sarcastically.

"I thought you said you cared for him," Giles said gruffly, trying to hide both his shock and his annoyance at not being informed of something so important...yet again.