Title: 'Ritual'
Description: Giles visits Jenny's grave on the anniversary of her death.
Rating: K
Author's notes: I loved Jenny Calendar and her death haunted me long after the characters had moved on. I wanted to write something that showed she was still remembered, even if we didn't see it.
It's become a yearly ritual, without him quite realising.
Giles wakes early in the morning. It's always a restless sort of day, this one, and he feels unusually cooped up inside. The house seems smaller than usual, and too full of the past, so he leaves to spend the day around town. This year, unusually for Sunnydale, it's raining heavily, so he sits in a café for most of the day reading and watching the world go by. He knows there's little point trying to get any work done, not today. He can't settle to anything.
As the evening draws on, he heads to the cemetery, stopping at the florists on his way. Treads the familiar paths through the monuments and trees. The tangled grass is still damp after the rain, but the skies have cleared and the setting sun casts long oblong shadows from the rows of headstones.
He walks slowly between them until he reaches the familiar spot. He lays his bouquet on the grass and sits down carefully beside it. The bronze plaque glows in the dying sunlight.
Jennifer Calendar
He stays there for hours as the sun slips below the horizon and the sounds of the outside world fade away. Sometimes he talks quietly, telling her about everything and anything. Recent news, the latest world threatening crisis, the mundane details of his day. Sometimes he sits in silence, just remembering. All his tears for her have been long spent. When night has fallen completely, and the first stars are starting to prick the sky, he stands up to leave and touches the cold white marble of the headstone one last time.
"Goodbye Jenny. I miss you. I love you. Always."
As he makes his way back through the dark rows of headstones, the moon drifts out from behind a cloud, giving just enough light to see by. He approaches the cemetery gate and looks automatically to his left into the shadows under a group of trees. Sure enough, a dark figure is leaning against the wall. Angel, holding his own bouquet. This year it's white roses and delicate, pale blue irises.
They never speak. They never have to. The vampire just stands there, patient and watchful, until Giles reaches him.
The two stand together for a moment in silence. The wind picks up, sending a drift of leaves scattering across the grass. There's a second of hesitation before Giles inclines his head in a curt nod of approval. Permission given. Angel disappears swiftly in the direction of her grave. Giles watches him go until he's swallowed up by the darkness, and then continues slowly out of the cemetery.
He's never asked what brings Angel back here, year after year. Perhaps he sees it as some duty to perform. Perhaps he does the same with every person he's killed, those he can still remember or find. Perhaps it's the only way he can thank the woman who saved him – who made it possible to return his soul and lock away the monster he had become.
But deep down Giles knows why he doesn't ask. He doesn't have to. They come for the same reason.
Absolution.
They come to seek forgiveness from the uncaring dead.