Title: Gift of a Future
Author: Gileswench

(notes & disclaimer with part one)

Anya glared at the crowd of refugees from the future milling about the shop. She leaned over to Xander and whispered conspiritorially.

"Look at them. It's disgusting."

"Okay, I'll bite," Xander said in confusion. "What's so disgusting?"

Anya gestured at the visitors.

"Them. They're unAmerican."

"I see your lips moving, but the bad dubbing from the Japanese must be confusing me."

"I've realized something recently, Xander. I'm not just human; I'm an American."

"Yeah, I guess. This is where you became mortal."

"So I've been reading a lot about the good ol' us of A; embracing the extraordinarily precious ideology that's helped to shape and define it."

"Democracy?"

"Capitalism. The free market depends on the profitable exchange of goods for currency. It's a system of symbiotic beauty apparently lost on these people. They don't even have money when they come from."

"And this is bad how?"

Anya shot her boyfriend a dark look.

"That sounds like Communism."

"No! It's just...I dunno...no money means no poor people. Beverly was telling me about it last night. In their time, everybody's taken care of. Nobody dies because they can't afford a doctor, anyone who wants and is smart enough can go to college. Pardon me for failing to see a downside."

"Well, it's unAmerican," Anya sniffed. "Oh, and you know what else is unAmerican? French people."

"I'll give you that one, An. French people are not American even when they sound English."

"Like that Captain Picard."

"Yeah. Like him."

Xander searched his mind desperately for another topic of conversation.

"So...what do you think is keeping Giles?"

Glory lay back in her bathtub, a thick blanket of bubbles caressing her. She sighed contentedly.

"We got this part right, that's for sure. Lot of sucky things in this dimension -- bubble baths? Not one of 'em." She blew a handful of bubbles into the air. "Know what I mean?"

"I am in thunderous agreement, oh glittering, glistening Glorificus," Jinx agreed, praying that her words had been meant for him. It was difficult to tell with the blindfold he wore. The other two minions in the room, Murk and Slook, were similarly visually impaired. While it meant that none of them would be blinded by the magnificence that was Glory in her naked glory, it did make grovelling adequately a challenge.

"I wasn't talking to you."

Jinx cringed and held Glory's chocolates closer to himself. Perhaps if there was a chance of damaging them, she wouldn't damage him.

"Uh, begging your pardon, and begging in general, but...were you talking to me?" Murk ventured.

"Eww. Yeah, right. Like any of you have ever bathed, anyway."

"Oh, but we do, your scrumptiousness," Murk contradicted. "We bathe in your splendiforous radiance, your aromatic..."

"How about you shut up and listen to me, you disgusting little fools?" Glory barked. The three minions at her side bowed their heads in obiescence. "Okay. Now, I asked for the Key, and you brought me a vampire. A pulseless, impure, follicly-fried vampire. Loofah!"

Murk produced a large loofah and gave it to her. She began scrubbing her leg vigorously.

"So, what I think we have here is a failure for you to do your frickin' jobs, pardon my French."

She shoved the loofah back into Murk's hand.

"Mimosa."

Slook offered the tray in the general direction of the splashes. Glory took the glass delicately..

"Mmm...vitamins." She sighed as she sipped. Her tone changed immediately, though, to that of the determined Hellbitch her minions knew and toadied to. "So I think you better rack your little minion brains, and tell me everything that you saw when you were spying on Buffy and her wacky pals. Everything. Then I'll figure out who the Key is."

As soon as Tara headed out the door for her shower, Willow hurried to the closet and opened it.

"Hey, are you okay in there?"

"I am fine, Willow," the bot replied. "Do you want me to come out of the closet yet?"

"No, no, not just yet. You need to stay in here for a while."

"Will Spike find me?"

"Yes," Willow assured her, "he'll find you. But not until we're good and ready for him to, okay?"

The bot pouted in confusion.

"I'm ready for Spike to find me now."

"But I'm not, and neither is anybody else."

"But I'm feeling all tense," Buffybot complained as she rotated her shoulders. "Spike knows how to make it go away."

"Tense...?"

"Because I was in battle. After, I get tense and Spike makes it all better."

"Do I want to know how?"

"We have sex," the robot replied eagerly. "That makes the tension go away."

Willow shuddered.

"I didn't want to know that. Sheesh, have you thought of taking subtlety lessons from Anya?"

"No. Do you think I should?"

Before Willow could reply, the door opened and Tara returned.

"Honey, have you seen my...wh - what's that doing here?"

She stared at the robot in confusion.

"I can explain," Willow began.

"We are playing hide and seek," the Buffybot cheerfully supplied. "Spike will find me soon."

Troi put a hand to her forehead and rubbed it delicately. She felt Riker approach her and place a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"You know, you could step outside for a minute. I don't think anyone would mind."

She covered his hand with hers.

"I'm all right, Will."

"Don't, Deanna."

"Don't what?"

He turned her to face him.

"You don't have to be half Betazed to pick up on all the repressed emotion around here. They're all ready to pop. Take a break before you do."

Troi smiled wryly.

"I thought I was the Counselor."

"Who was it who said that doctors make the worst patients? I'm serious, Imzadi."

Deanna shook her head stubbornly.

"I think Buffy needs to talk to someone. Her emotions are intense, Will, but she doesn't seem to know what to do with them. If she doesn't get help soon, she's either going to explode or shut down entirely and I don't know which would be worse."

"Is she ready to talk? She doesn't seem the trusting type."

"But she is, underneath it all. I get the sense that she would be a happier person if she could just tell somebody what's going on in her heart. Repression is more a habit for her than her nature."

"And how are you going to get past all that habit?"

"The same way I do with any patient. Slowly, and possibly painfully. Trust me, Will, Buffy and I will both feel much better once we've talked."

"I can't believe how much better I feel," Giles wondered aloud for the twentieth time. "By rights I ought to be wishing someone would just come along and decapitate me, but I feel fine. Better than fine. What was in that stuff?"

"It's a secret recipe," Picard said with a wry smile.

"Is there no chance that you'd be willing to share it?"

"Sorry. I swore on the graves of my ancestors."

"Ah. Well, I suppose one can't really break that sort of oath, can one?"

"Is that how it is for you?" Picard asked. "Being a Watcher? You can't break your oath to this Council you spoke of?"

Giles smiled, a brief flash of amusement crossing his face. It was gone as quickly as it had arrived.

"Not precisely. Once, I suppose, but not anymore. They send me a salary, but I stopped doing this for them a very long time ago. Ah! Here's the place."

He turned his steps in the doorway of the donut shop. Picard followed curiously. He'd played games in Holodeck recreations of twentieth century California, but the reality was very different, indeed. Of course, the fact that most of the simulations he'd been in were set in the 1940's in San Francisco accounted for some of the changes, but this was not what he'd expected at all. From Giles' sporty red convertable to the strange piercings and tattoos on the sullen youth behind the counter, everything seemed both sleeker and more savage than the detective scenarios Picard was familiar with.

Not for the first time, Picard found himself wishing he'd had more time to prepare for this expedition of Q's. He hated being without a plan, a set of facts he could calculate to come up with the necessary answer. Now he found himself with no plan, few facts, and not a clue as to how long he had to come up with an answer. And Giles, while a pleasant companion, was fairly reticent with details unless Buffy ordered him to share them. Ask him a question about archeological findings in Pompeii and he was likely to talk your ear off, so long as he could convince himself his listener was the least bit interested. Ask him what the Key was and why Glory wanted it, and he deferred to Buffy's discretion.

This was not the usual way of things. The chain of command determined that the warrior followed orders issued by the general. Giles was clearly the general. He was older, more knowledgable, more experienced, and fated to train and guide Buffy.

And yet it seemed he followed her at least as much as she followed him. Probably more so.

As Picard mused on the strange ways of this era and this place, Giles ordered an assortment of donuts. Extra jellies. That way he and Buffy wouldn't squabble over them.

"Oops!"

Anya shot a disgusted glare at Wesley as an object tumbled from his hands to the floor with a discreet shattering sound.

"Can't I hurt him? Just maybe break his hands?" she asked Xander. "Then he won't be able to pick things up and he won't drop them anymore."

"An, these people are our guests. Y'know, people we don't hurt no matter how much we may want to. Just another wacky human custom."

"I'm tired of human customs. They make no sense and they stop me doing what I want to."

"Yeah. Being human is a bitch like that, isn't it?"

Xander flinched when Wesley bumped into another shelf. He breathed again when nothing fell this time.

"Maybe I'll get him out of here. For his own protection."