Winner at the No Rest for the Wicked Awards (2016) in the following category: Showtime (Best Original Plot/AU).
Author's notes: This is cannon compliant all the way through the season 8 comics – possibly even further (haven't finished season 9 yet). If you haven't read the comics, all you need to know is that after his death at the hands of a possessed Angel (Twilight, yo!), Giles is resurrected as a 12-year-old boy but with all his memories intact. Since both Giles and Buffy seem to suffer from an inability to stay dead, I thought this would be a fun concept to play with. Thank you to DragonyPhoenix who was lovely enough to beta this piece for me and make Giles sound much more Giles-y.
Disclaimer: Not mine. They belong to the almighty Joss. I'm just playing in his sandpit. Sad, sad times.
Prologue
Once upon a time, so very long ago, the world held no shadows. A riot of colour and life, it spun gently on its axis in a galaxy of stars. And upon this world the sun never set and the night never came. There was no evil, no demons waiting in the dark. Instead there was only sunshine and light and love. Here the good were good, stalwart and true, safe in their happily ever afters. There was no fear, no pain.
In this world, no one ever died.
Life was a fairytale, more myth than anything, and it began like this:
Once upon a time, there was a man who lived again. And again. And again.
His name was Rupert and he was lonely.
26(2)
He couldn't quite remember when he'd figured it out, only that he had. And it wasn't good.
"I think we have a problem," he says, his eyes glued to the parchment in his hand. It is old and torn, impossibly delicate between his fingertips.
"I would have thought that obvious, what with me being here and all. Don't know about you, Giles, but I just love spending a small fortune flying half way around the world so I can have tea and scones with a man who's made it quite clear he doesn't want to see me because he's too busy reliving his youth. Tell me, are you actually planning to finish this time around or is this all just foreplay for irresponsible demon summoning 2.0?"
"There's no need to take that attitude, Buffy. I never said I didn't want to see you. Quite the opposite, in fact. I've just been, well, busy. PhD's aren't exactly a walk in the park." He sighs heavily, rubbing a hand across his jaw. "Sit, please. I can't think with you pacing about."
Buffy sits on his hastily made bed, fingers tracing the patterns on his duvet, her familiar face a picture of discontent. Too familiar. She didn't look a day over twenty-one, which at thirty-eight was somewhat disconcerting.
"So, academic man, problem?"
"A big problem." He removes his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose to ease the headache already beginning to make its presence known. "Tell me again exactly what happened."
"Nothing happened. Had a perfectly normal day. Met nothing on patrol, which, okay, is a little unusual, but not, you know, the bad kind of unusual. Went to bed, felt fine, and when I woke up it was gone." She points at her face. "Scars just don't disappear, Giles."
She was right. They didn't.
The scar had been a recent addition, the product of a particularly vicious Fyarl demon and a miss-timed duck. And whilst it had healed quickly and cleanly, it had left a deep, red gash across her cheek. A flaw that had marred her once perfect features with the violence of her calling.
Only now it was gone, as if it had never been at all.
"Not annoyed any witches recently? Or warlocks?" He leans back, sipping at his now tepid tea before continuing. "Or, come to that, anyone?"
"Not a soul. Or even an un-souled. I've been positively peachy."
"Anything else missing?"
She shakes her head gently as she rises from his bed, her bare feet padding softly against the worn carpet as she walks towards him. His room smells of stale beer and bleach, the remnants of students past and present, and she wrinkles her nose in disgust.
"Nope. All other Buffy bits present and correct."
"Bloody hell," he breathes, a frown creasing his youthful face. He's lost within himself, his slender fingertips tapping out an unconscious rhythm on the armrest of the cheap university-issue chair on which he sits.
"Giles, what aren't you telling me?"
"You're not going to like it."
She perches on the desk in front of him, stilling his hand with her own, her eyes boring into his. The scent of her perfume, sickly sweet and full of nostalgia, assaults him as she leans in close. It's almost suffocating, filling his head with memories of his previous life back in Sunnydale, back when he'd been older if not wiser.
"I never do. Tell me."
He sighs heavily as he sets the parchment down beside her. She glances at it fleetingly before holding his gaze again. Green and blue. Old and new.
A Brief Discourse on the Nature of Infinity
"In bringing you back, Willow was possibly more reckless than I first imagined. By all accounts, resurrection is a, ah, delicate sort of business. According to an alchemical treatise attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, whom one must remember is not an actual historical figure …"
"Giles," Buffy interrupts him with a snap of her delicate fingers, "today, please."
"According to this," he says, gesturing towards the parchment, "it can have, well… unintended consequences."
"Unintended consequences?"
"I do believe that is the most likely explanation for what you're experiencing, yes," he states as he removes his glasses, calmly polishing the lenses in his familiar, comforting way. "It would explain why your scar has disappeared. Presumably along with anything else you've picked up in the time between now and when you were first brought back. It also explains your apparent lack of ageing quite nicely, now that I think about it."
"But I thought that the youth thing was a Slayer bonus? You'd said that my lack of aging was a side-effect of my Slayer power."
"And so I'd thought. You are the longest-lived Slayer we, the Council that is, are aware of. When you didn't appear to age, well, I came up with a theory."
"You mean you guessed." She crosses her arms, her lips curving into a small, self-satisfied smirk as she sees him bristle with indignation.
"Guessing implies a lack of scientific discipline that … Oh, never mind. As far as I can tell, the effects of time, along with any physical changes you've experienced since you were first revived, are being negated by Willow's resurrection spell. Doubtless we haven't clocked it before because there's never been any physical evidence for us to, er, clock, what with your Slayer healing." A thoughtful expression graces his features. "In fact, it's almost as if a reset button has been pressed, restoring you to your post-resurrection state."
"Wait. Back up. Reset? As in, game over, insert new coin?"
"Think of it this way, Buffy. All lives are linear. One start, one end. When you died, that was the end of your line. Do you understand?"
"I follow."
"When Willow brought you back, the line had already ended. It couldn't end again, and so it folded back on itself, reconnecting in a loop, for lack of a better term, that you cycle through again and again."
"Like groundhog day?"
"In a manner of speaking." His eyes narrow at her expression of disbelief. "What? I like Bill Murray. He's amusing. Anyway, that's hardly the point."
"Yeah and what is the point?"
"The point is that your pop culture reference is a little inaccurate when it comes to describing our problem. Unlike the film, the days don't repeat, you do. Taking your rather youthful appearance into account, I suspect that after a certain amount of time, you reset and 'poof!' twenty-one again, freshly resurrected and ready to go."
"Poof?"
"Semantics." He waves a hand dismissively. "The point still stands."
"Stupid point."
"Nevertheless."
She sits in silence for a moment and he swears he can hear the ticking of her thoughts behind her face, all clockwork and faded recollections. Emotions, heavy and unguarded, flicker over her features, reminding him of the girl she once was. The one he knew like the back of his once middle-aged hand. Before Angel and Glory and Spike. Before Faith and Twilight and all the tiny betrayals in between. Innocent. Beautiful.
Loved.
"What about you?"
The moment shatters as she breaks the silence, the pieces falling around them with the sweet tinkling of glass.
"Sorry?"
"Angel brought you back. This is your second stab at being, uh, twenty something. Same deal, different method. You think you're looping too?"
"Possibly. If I am, my loop is much longer than yours. Forty-odd years, if I'm any judge," he says, running a hand through his hair. "You died at twenty-one and returned the same age. I suspect the loop runs from the time of your death to the time of your resurrection, a matter of some four or five months. For you, the change would be barely noticeable. I'm not so lucky."
"Hundred forty-seven days yesterday."
He barely catches her whispered words. "Pardon?"
"Nothing," she says, a far away look in her eyes. "Do you think it will stop?
"There's only one way to find out, really." He shrugs his shoulders, his eyes downcast. "We wait."
12(3)
The first time hurts more than he thought it would.
It tears at him, the pain, ripping his skin and shattering his bones as his body changes. With every beat of his heart, he feels the years peeling away. Faster and faster, he's falling though the vortex, time whistling past his ears in a storm of magic and destiny. It's exhilarating and frightening all at once, making him cry out for a mother long dead and buried.
Then it stops. The wind dies and the room becomes still once more, the only sound the frantic beating of his heart, younger, stronger, as it batters against his chest. He lifts his hands, small and fragile, to his eyes and suddenly the world seems a lot bigger.
He sits in the shadows, the covers drawn up high against his chest. A child scared of the monster under the bed. Only, perhaps the monster lives on top now, staring back at him from the cracked mirror that hangs on his door. He cries out into the darkness, angry and alone, his eyes black with rage and tears.
It was never supposed to be like this.
38(3)
They all die in the end.
Xander, Dawn, Faith, Andrew, Robin and the others. All wither and all die. It is the sweet inevitability of time, or nature, whichever comes first. With life comes death, hand in hand, marching to the sound of divine heartbeats.
As all live, all die in the end. To do otherwise is to defy the natural order of things.
Giles cries with each burial. For every friend, every relative, he sheds his heavy tears.
"I'm so sorry, Willow," he whispers, her frail hand limp in his as she slips away.
They all die in the end. All save him and a woman he hasn't seen in years.
Instead he lives and he is lonely.
39(3)
Giles knows about pain. It is an intimate acquaintance. A lover of sorts, cruel and cold. It has been with him from the beginning. The true beginning. He was born of his mother's pain and reborn of his own.
He knows pain, black and red by turns. It is the tip of the spear that plunges into the still beating heart of the deer, the edge of the blade swung by a self-confessed hero, the teeth gleaming within the maw of the wolf. It is the word of a monster, ripped from a split tongue, seeking only one thing.
Consummation.
Such a meeting of pain and flesh sends a cry of agony through the darkened night. Giles doesn't turn. He knows it's too late for her, his colleague now nothing more than a statistic in the Council's mortality records. Instead he fixes his blue eyes firmly upon the pavement ahead. His feet follow a path full of cracks, pounding along damp tarmac as though to the beat of a drum, the tap of his shoes striking a surface of oil-born rainbows. Tears mingle with rain upon his face, the wind whipping them cold as he runs. His breath blooms from his lips like smoke from the belly of a dragon, leaving a trail of life for the footsteps echoing behind; closer now, clawed feet pounding heavily against concrete, relentless in their chase. Pushing himself harder, faster, he darts down an alley into total darkness.
A growl, deep and unmistakably demonic, comes too close comfort as he runs further into the beating heart of the city. Behind him he hears the beginnings of a snarled spell and he feels the tingle of magic flow through the air. Light, pale at first, but growing stronger with every passing step, flickers upon the close walls of the alleyway as the Demon begins to cast. A hundred or so yards and it would no longer flicker; it would spark with a curse violent enough to rip him from his bleeding feet.
Dead end.
His legs stop dead beneath him, his fingers grasping at the crumbling brickwork, desperate to find a handhold. The footsteps behind, two sets now, are so close he can barely breathe. Deep down he knows it's too late, that death has come for him once more. The thought is oddly calming.
Bright blue light explodes behind him. It ricochets off the walls, scattering brick dust as easily as if it were soft, loose sand, heading closer with a crackling whisper. Giles' eyes close as he braces himself for impact.
The blue bolt slams into his back, bursting into a million tiny sparks of hot, sharp pain. He feels the crack of a rib as it gives in his chest. Hears the snap of bones and ligaments as his hand slams into the wall of the alley, crushed against it by his own weight. His heart stops and the world goes dark, an eerie stillness smothering his mind like a shroud. A final breath whistles from between his bloody lips and with it dies Rupert Giles, alone on the floor of an alley just outside Manchester Piccadilly Station.
Only he doesn't.
The air around him begins to crackle with power. A cold wind drags him back from the silence of death into the cacophony of life, his mind awakening once more to the sound of a shout that rings through the alley.
"No!"
It cuts through the roar of the magic like a blade, sharp and merciless. He feels the crunch of bone and the pound of blood as his body knits itself back together. Life bursts from every cell, spilling out from his pores in shafts of bright, golden light. His skin itches with it as it reforms, wrapping itself around his smaller, younger frame.
A shriek, sharp and inhuman in its execution, fills the night air as his surroundings return once more to darkness. The acrid tang of hot metal and vinegar fills his lungs, a tight band of pain encircling his chest as he coughs and splutters, his body shying away from the remnants of the dispersed magic any way it can.
The tarmac is cold against his face, its cracks and ridges scraping cruelly against the delicate flesh of his cheek. Gingerly, he opens his eyes, pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. They're too large now and the wrong prescription, his eyesight partially restored by the change. Through the cracks that spread like tiny cobwebs over the much-abused lenses, he can just make out a figure sauntering towards him in the darkness. Short. Feminine.
Familiar.
"Buffy? What? W-why?" he stammers, clutching the waistband of his too-large jeans as he stands on his short, shaky legs.
"Can't leave you alone for a minute, can I?" A smirk curls at the edges of her lips as she prods his chest with the tip of her stake. "You, Rupert Giles, are a trouble magnet."
"What are you doing here? I thought you were in Cuba."
"I thought you were dead."
"Clearly not."
She crosses her arms, staring at him curiously and says, "Well, I suppose that answers that question."
He doesn't reply. Instead he simply gazes back at her through too-big lenses, trying to quell the rising panic.
22(4)
It's been ten years since he's seen her last. Ten years, four days, six hours and twenty-two minutes. Not that he is counting.
"Buffy," he says as he leans against the doorframe, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. "What are you doing here?"
"Hey," she says shyly, not quite able to meet his gaze. "Does a Slayer need a reason to come visit her Watcher?"
"I'm not your Watcher anymore, Buffy. I haven't been for a long time."
And its true, he hasn't. Not since Sunnydale, where that door had slammed so purposefully shut. The last Watcher blinded in a fit of rage. Broken. Obsolete.
"What if I want you to be?" she says quietly.
"And do you?"
She doesn't speak. Instead she nods, the movement so small it is almost imperceptible, but it's enough. His heart soars in his chest and he steps back against the door, beckoning her inside.
"I'll put the kettle on, then."
30(4)
Buffy and Giles sit on his ratty old sofa, battered and bruised and watching telly. It's a Wednesday and it's raining, the pitter-patter of the raindrops against the skylight drowned out by sounds of the action on screen.
"You know," she says, picking lint from her dark blue cardigan, "I've been thinking."
"Don't hurt yourself."
"Funny guy." She flicks a piece of popcorn at him, hitting him square in the forehead. "As I said, I've been thinking. About this whole immortality thing."
"And?"
She snaps her fingers twice; the chips beneath the tips of her index and thumb spark into life, pausing the film. Smile on her lips, she turns to face him, her hand resting gently on his. An unexpected heat coils low in his belly at the touch and he tenses, suddenly uneasy.
"We can't die, right?"
"It would appear not."
"Well, I don't know about you, but I'm getting rather sick of the Council and their stupid rules. They almost got us killed tonight. Well, would have if they could. Too many hoops for too little in the way of remuneration." She holds up a finger, halting his exclamation of surprise before it had even really begun. "Yes, I know. Big word. You must be rubbing off on me, Dr. Smartass. Anyway, the point is, why are we still working for them? I mean, you and me, we got the whole Slayer-Watcher combo thing going on. Your brains, my kick-ass beauty. The world's our oyster, Giles, so why aren't we seizing it?"
His gaze bores into hers, all heat and tension and curiosity. "What are you saying, Buffy?"
"That we ditch the Council. Go solo. You and me, freelance demon hunting. Mystical problem solving. The works."
His eyes drop to her hand, watching as her fingertips trace lazy patterns across his forearm. Her touch burns with a bewildering heat, searing his skin, his want growing in electric fractals across her canvas of flesh and bone. He shivers at the newness of the emotion. Unexpected and only somewhat unwelcome.
"Sounds dangerous."
"How so? I mean it's not like we can die. You've already proven that. So, apart from acquiring some nasty ouchies, we really have nothing to risk."
"Ouchies?"
"Shut up. You know what I mean."
And he does. They've been together for so long now he feels as though she is almost a part of him. His better half, making the easy decisions for him, and this one is the easiest of them all.
"What do you think?"
The barest hint of a smile curves his lips.
"I'm thinking profit."
Intermission
Osiris Ltd.
Occult Investigations and Demon Solutions
Reasonable Rates
37(4)
With the first of their substantial profits he buys a library. It had taken over four hundred demons, seventy-two criminal investigations, thirty-four missing children (two unsolved), eleven séances and one rather memorable bank heist to buy it. Giles considers it money well spent.
It's small, cosy, nestled between the park and the swimming baths at the edge of the village they call home. A relic of an older time, where books were printed on paper and libraries meant more than a digital back catalogue. In the library, he stores his journals. The memories of a life too long lived. Of mentor and student. Of Watcher and Slayer. Of man and woman.
Slowly he fills the shelves, the tales of their exploits committed to paper in cursive with a pen older than the building itself.
The human mind, he tells her, is not equipped to handle more than a lifetime of memories. It is only through meticulous record keeping that they retain knowledge. That they learn the lessons their past selves fought so hard to teach.
"On these pages," he says, "are all the things we've forgotten. All the things we once were."
Buffy sighs and hands him a cup of tea, the tips of her fingers brushing against his own.
"What we become is more important."
48(4)
The first time he brings himself to climax at the thought of her all he feels is guilt. She's his Slayer and he her Watcher. It's wrong and he knows it. He feels it with every fibre of his being. Yet, when he closes his eyes, when he dreams, all he sees is her.
The second time, the guilt lessens, as it does on the third and the fourth and the fifth. By the tenth he stops counting, feeling only the stroke of his palm against his fevered flesh and the need for her.
She's become his obsession. The dirty little secret he thinks about after dark.
When he lies in bed, hand between his legs, he can almost believe that he doesn't need more. In his mind, he has her every way he can think of, moaning her name over and over again like it's the only word he knows. Every time a different position: behind, above, against the wall, the floor, his desk. His hands pinned. Hers.
And at night he is content, for in his dreams, she belongs to him just as he belongs to her.
38(5)
"So?" He says, beaming. "What do you think?"
He stands in front of a small ship, barely bigger than one of the old shipping containers she remembers from her childhood, back when freighting by sea was the main method of intercontinental delivery. XK5, shuttle class, with peeling paint and a missing tail light.
"I think it's a dump. Reminds me of your old car, actually. What is it with you and rusty transport?"
His face falls and he crosses his arms petulantly, his lips pursed. She stifles a giggle at the sight of her Watcher, now edging into his late thirties, in such a childish pose. A smirk tugs at her lips as she wonders if he's going to stomp his feet, complete the absurd picture.
"It's perfectly serviceable. I mean, fine, it's not the most aesthetically pleasing, and it could do with a bit of love and attention, but everything works. Old yet reliable."
Her smirk widens into a grin and she just can't help herself. "Sorry, were you describing yourself or the ship? So hard to tell."
"Oi!" He gives her a small shove, his face taut with mock indignation. "I've just solved our problems. We can take off-world cases now. It'll be a nice little earner once she's all spruced up and, er, sky worthy. Besides, is that any way to talk to your Captain?"
"Captain, now is it?" She quirks an eyebrow. "Watcher not enough anymore?"
"I do believe that is the traditional form of address for the owner of a space ship."
"I'm not calling you Captain. If I call you anything, I'll call you Giles and you'll like it."
"My ship, my rules."
"Technically it's our ship. Our money, our business, our ship." She punctuates her words with little jabs of her index finger at his chest. "Emphasis on the 'our'."
He grabs her hand, pulling her closer as he twines his fingers through hers. "Well, technically, though, it is my name on the deed of sale. I suppose I could be persuaded to drop the formalities just this once."
"Oh really?" She pushes him away with a laugh. "Can I drive?"
"Not on your life."
"Spoilsport. Well, I get to name it, then."
Slowly they make their way over to the XK5, the desert dust kicked up by their footsteps swirling between their still joined hands.
"Oh?"
"Yep. All ships need a name, and since you've decided on being Captain, I get to be the naming committee." She runs a hand across the rusting metal of the ship, blue paint chips flaking from the hull at her touch. "You know, I'm thinking Ouroboros."
"Ouroboros?"
A knowing smile curls at the corners of her lips.
"Yeah."
44(7)
There is a beautiful of sort inevitability to it, he supposes. It's what men and women do, given enough time and biology. So very human, even if that isn't really what they are anymore.
Human.
He rolls the word around his mind and wonders when they had become something so alien. Outside time if not space, forever running from a destiny they couldn't escape.
His fingers twist into her hair, pulling her head back, exposing the soft, pale expanse of her throat. She bucks a little beneath him, her hips rolling against his hardness as he runs his tongue along her carotid. He can feel the flutter of her pulse beating a tattoo beneath the velvet skin.
"We shouldn't, Buffy," he murmurs, his lips hot against the skin of her neck.
"Probably not," she says, grinding herself against him. "But don't tell me you haven't thought about it."
"Every night."
"Pervert."
He smiles as he slides a finger into her. Then two. She's hot and slick and so very willing, his name escaping her lips in a hiss as he curls his fingers deep inside. It sends a thrill through him, desire coiling tight in his stomach, making him nauseous and lightheaded. He twists his fingers and she cries out once more, his name now more of a gasp than a word.
She's mesmerising like this, writhing beneath him, hissing expletives and encouragement in a now dead language. His ageless goddess, sweat beading on her golden skin, demanding attention from his mouth, his hands, his cock. It makes him want to crawl beneath her skin, into her mind, feel her from the inside out. His beautiful little anachronism, forever twenty-one and ever so pretty with it.
"Fuck!"
"If you like," he says with a smirk, slowly withdrawing his fingers. Her blue eyes widen as she watches him bring his hand to his mouth. She tastes of sweetness and strength and something so indescribably her. It almost makes him come there and then, like the teenager he isn't yet and hasn't been for years.
He wonders why she waited. He's over forty now, for the seventh time in his life; his hair is greying at the temples, his face mapped with fine lines of laughter and sadness. She could have had him at twenty, hell even thirty, when he was young and lean and handsome. Yet she waited.
"Why now?" He can't help it. The words tumble out before he can stop himself, hanging heavy in the air between them.
Her gaze meets his, her eyes filled with lust and sorrow.
"Because I can pretend you're you."
"I'm always me," he says, puzzled.
She looks away, her next word so soft he can barely hear it over the pounding of his heart.
"Maybe."
He slams into her, a groan escaping his lips as he buries himself deep into her wet cunt. She's so very tight around him, so tight it's almost his undoing. He takes a deep breath, shuddering with pleasure as the air fills his lungs.
"Do you kiss me?"
The question cuts through the buzz of lust that rings in his ears. Her lips are so close to his they almost touch. He can feel her breath against his skin, the hot little plumes making him so hard it hurts.
"Kiss?"
"In your dreams. Your fantasies. Do you kiss me?"
"Never."
And he doesn't. Then or now. Instead he grabs her wrists, pinning her arms above her head as he fucks her. Kissing is for lovers and they're not. They're something else. Something deeper. Older.
Something dangerous.
28(9)
"I'm not entirely sure this is particularly ethical." He peers at her over the top of his spectacles, arms crossed, lips pursed. "In fact, I'm almost certain it's not."
"How's that saying go? Can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs."
"Your cooking begs to differ…"
"Hey!" She punches him in the shoulder. "I've taken cookery classes. I have a certificate and everything. Buffy Summers, chef extraordinaire, I'll have you know."
He quirks an eyebrow in response, his expression disbelieving. "Either way, I'm not sure this is a good idea."
"Relax. We're not breaking any laws."
"If that's the best justification you can come up with, then I fear my original point still stands."
"Look," she says pointedly, "We need the cash. Credits. Whatever. And unless you'd like to intimately acquaint yourself with the finer details of 24th century dumpster living, we can't afford to be picky."
He sighs loudly, leaning back against the van, hands jammed deep into his pockets.
"It'll be easy. All we have to do is deliver the box. In, out…"
"Shake it all about?"
She grins, her pearly-whites flashing in the light of the moons.
"That's the spirit! And once we've been paid, we can get off this stupid dust-bowl of a planet and back to something more civilised. I mean, they don't even have coffee here. And the clothing? So bad western movie. I swear, if I have to lace myself back into this one more time, I'll scream." She gestures pointedly at the rather grubby corset she wears. "And heavy skirts, not exactly practical on the demon stake-o-rama front. God, why couldn't we have got stranded somewhere they've heard of synthetic fabric? Would a nice pair of PVC trousers really be too much to ask? Or maybe some lycra?"
"I must admit, the idea is appealing."
Her eyebrows shoot up towards her hairline, a small smile playing about her lips. "Kinky."
"C-civilisation, not the PVC," he clarifies, a blush suffusing his cheeks.
"Oh, obviously." She nods, her face schooled into an expression of mock seriousness. "I mean, who doesn't get a little horny at the thought of complex social hierarchy?"
The blush deepens. "Buffy…"
Laughter bubbles forth from her lips like water from a spring, her hips swaying gently as she walks into the darkness of the night.
32(12)
He is the end of many things and the beginning of none. The shadow cast by her light, bringing death and destruction in her wake. Sun and moon. Yin and Yang. Two halves of a whole, complete but fragmented in all the little ways that really matter.
They're gods in their own small way, reality rushing past them like a great river, life captured in the eddies at the edges.
His hand slides across the soft cotton of his sheets and he wonders when he'd stopped feeling quite so alone. He shivers as the tips of his fingers brush against her thigh, her soft skin hot to the touch. She shifts beneath the sheets, rolling towards him, the heavy scent of her sex filling the air as she begins to moan his name.
They're burning here, together and separate, their tattered souls crawling with flames as black as the space between the stars. Alive with chance and circumstance and love.
'Is it really living if there is no death?' he thinks as he takes her hard and fast, pinned beneath him like a beautiful butterfly. The pride of his collection.
There is no answer to his unspoken question. Only the surety that they live because they are and die in smaller ways because they can. Immortality is like that.
Complicated.
12(13)
"God fucking damn it, Buffy!"
He stands on shaky legs, the aftershocks of the change making him tremble. Pushing his now over-long sleeves up his arms, he gently rubs his chest, easing the ache where the knife had plunged in not ten minutes earlier.
"Language, Mister."
"I'm not twelve!" She quirks an eyebrow at him. "Shut up!"
"What? I had to. We're trapped and I can't fit through the duct. But you can. Well, you can now." She sighs heavily, sheathing the knife in the holder at the top of her right thigh. "Besides, I didn't fancy waiting here watching you suffer for another few days before it happened by itself."
She was right, as always. They'd been here for two days and already he'd had enough of the hunger, the dehydration. And he was the only one who could fit through the duct.
"Fine!" he huffs. "But you owe me a bottle of scotch."
"When we get out of here, I promise I will buy you the biggest bottle of the most expensive scotch I can find."
"I will hold you to that."
"Noted. Now get out there and unlock the door. I need to pee."
He sighs heavily, casting his eyes up towards his escape route.
"Fine. Give me a boost up."
13(15)
One night, back home, the world shifts and changes. The air is filled with the sound of war as the bombs begin to drop, destroying all in a cacophony of pain and fury. Buildings are razed and children perish, past and future gone in the blink of a world-weary eye.
He doesn't speak. Instead, he watches, his tiny hand curled in hers, as his library burns. A million memories curling skywards with the smoke. Lost forever.
"What we become is more important," she says firmly, her voice unwavering.
A hot tear winds its way down his cheek and he feels like he's been here before.
Or somewhere similar.
46(15)
The end starts with an Angel. Or perhaps the Angel. Just like it always did, one way or another.
He'd thought he'd be dead, like Spike, nothing but dust both years and light years away. And yet, here he was. Angel. Here on his ship, in his bed, touching her.
The thought makes him sick deep in his heart.
Angel.
The end of so many things. The end of Jenny. Of himself. Of death. The end of a love he'd dared not voice.
Giles rubs his hands over the ghosts of scars long gone, the phantoms of their first encounter that ache when the winds change, and wonders if it will be this that finally kills him. The latest betrayal. One of many, yet the hardest of all.
He can't bear to look at her when she comes down to say good morning. Instead he merely polishes his lenses. It's inane, he knows, but it doesn't matter. He hears the falter in her steps, the hitch in her breath as she takes in the scene before her.
"Giles?"
"I want you to leave now, Buffy."
"Giles, I…"
"And I want you to take him with you."
"Giles, this isn't what it looks like."
"I know what it is and I want you to go."
"Giles, please, you're not listening. He's already gone. We didn't-"
"Get out."
His words cut into her soul like ice. He sees them shred it into tiny pieces that blow away with the wind, leaving her hollow. Empty.
"We're supposed to be forever, you and I," she whispers, her voice thick with tears. "I love you."
He shakes his head as his eyes meet hers. They are cold.
"Life isn't a fairy tale, Buffy. There are no happy endings. You should know that better than anyone."
39(17)
All the places he's been, the planets he's walked across, the people he's met, it surprises him that he still remembers. After all this time, he can still remember the scent of the rain on the grass. The sound of it hitting the windowpane on a lazy Sunday. He remembers the peace that came with the rain, the feeling as it washed away the dust and the dirt and the sin.
He remembers other things too. Small things. Inconsequential. The name of the diner in the centre of Sunnydale, how many sugars Xander liked in his tea, the colour of the cushion he'd hidden behind every Saturday of his childhood.
A huff of laughter passes his lips, cutting through the silence.
When he really thinks about it, he feels a little like a cheap knock off. Always regenerating, if always the same face. He even has a ship of his own, all metal and shiny, though his travels in three dimensions only and is bigger on the outside.
All he's missing is a companion. The completion of the caricature with someone young and beautiful. Perky. Someone who hangs off his every word as he shows her the wonders of the universe. Perhaps she'd even be blonde.
His traitorous eyes glance over the empty cockpit and his face falls as he remembers. The console beeps in protest as he jabs at the buttons a little too sharply. He'd never really liked that programme anyway.
Too many monsters.
17(21)
He bumps into her on Persephone out in the White Star System. Quite literally bumps, sending the papers she carries in her hand flying. They flutter to the ground around her like giant butterflies with black and white wings.
"Hey!"
"Terribly sorry."
She grabs the sleeve of his jacket, halting the swift exit before it had even begun. She's stronger than he remembered. Or maybe he's weaker; his body's barely seventeen, all knees and elbows and hormones.
"Oh," she says softly as she scans his face. Her eyes grow hard. Flinty. "You."
"Me."
It's been so long, he can't even really remember why they're fighting. Two hundred years? Three hundred? Too many.
"I believe I owe you a drink," he says carefully.
"You owe me more than a drink. Dinner at least, after what you did."
"What I did?"
"Do you mean you don't remember?"
"Do you?"
Her gaze drops to her feet and she blushes. "That's not the point."
He takes her hand, his thumb caressing the back of hers, the smallest of smiles curling his lips. She's warm to his touch and his heart leaps in his chest.
"Dinner would be lovely, Buffy."
Epilogue
Once upon a time, two gods stood hand in hand, watching the sun explode. And their story went like this:
A long time ago, in a galaxy a little too close for comfort, Fate had two children.
One girl.
One boy.
And together they were whole.