Jenny sees Rupert Giles for the first time when he's surrounded by the staff of Sunnydale High on the first day of term. It's a small town and they're doing the traditional thing of fixating on the new guy, and trying to give him a good ol' fashioned Sunnydale welcome, aided and abetted by an enthusiastic Principal Flutie. It's not helped by the fact that he's all the way from England, which she'd say augments him with a kind of exoticism, but the words 'exotic' and 'Rupert Giles' don't really mesh in the same sentence, by the looks of things. He's wearing glasses and a tweed suit with honest to god patches on the elbows, like a librarian stepped out from a children's picture book. She feels sort of sympathetic to him anyway, because not long ago it was her doing the awkward new kid on the block thing, and he doesn't look like he's enjoying it one bit, all forced smiles and nervous laughter.
So she strolls up, introduces herself as Jenny Calendar and leaves it up to him which name to use. He goes for the second, big surprise, and she hides a smile at how stilted and formal her own name sounds in that British accent of his. When she tells him the subject she teaches, he looks at her as if she's just admitted to having leprosy, and the sympathy thing sort of goes out the window. They manage to make awkward conversation for a few minutes, but it's clear he knows nothing about computers and she knows nothing about filing indexes or opera, and since it's probably a bad idea to bring up the whole technopagan thing to a total stranger, especially one as straight laced as him, that's that. She walks away thinking that he's a snob with a capital S, and god only knows what he thinks of her.
Rupert Giles is kind of an enigma.
She thought he was out of his element before but now she's considering that perhaps he doesn't have an element at all. She can't figure him out, which is annoying because usually she's pretty good at gauging people. He's a snob, sure, and hopelessly old-fashioned, but he also turns out be completely clued in about the supernatural. Half his library is filled with books on demonology and ancient prophecies. There's a weapons cabinet in the book cage (how the hell did he get that one past Snyder? The new principal seems like the type to nose around) and when they banish a demon from the internet, it doesn't exactly seem like the first time he's done it. So who is he really? A mystery, and she never could resist that.
Besides, he's kind of attractive, in a stuffy British sort of way. Recently, every time she sees him he seems to have gotten a little less stuffy and a little more attractive. Perhaps it's the influence of hanging round a bunch of teenagers all the time; he's loosening up a little. Or perhaps it's just because she's getting to know him better, and there's a whole lot more to him than meets the eye after all.
He calls her Ms Calendar and she calls him Rupert on principle, not condescension exactly but a deliberate informality to show him where they stand or maybe just to see if she can get a reaction, she's not sure which. Strangely enough it doesn't seem to bother him in the slightest, and even more strangely, it bothers her that it doesn't bother him. She can't resist teasing him, pushing his buttons, endless pointless bickering on things they'll never agree on just to hear what he'll say. She can't help but flirt with him a little too, because he's apparently fearless in the face of unspeakable evil from the pits of hell, but a few not-so-innocent words or a smile in the right place can make him stammer and blush. Sometimes she wonders what he'd do if she just grabbed him and kissed him, and then she wonders why the thought would even occur to her.
She finally forces him to call her Jenny because, jeez, they've reached that point a while ago, but she's still surprised at how good it feels to hear him say it. The syllables roll pleasantly off his tongue. He wraps his voice carefully around it, as if her name is a gift, something precious to be used only sparingly. His voice stutters when he talks to her, and her heart stutters when she talks to him. Not that she'd ever show it of course, oh no. She's supposed to be the cool one, unruffled and in control, wrapping him around her little finger and making him squirm. Never mind that she feels like a giddy teenager when they're together, all coy and giggling. He likes her, and it's sort of fun to be the focus of his attention. She likes him too, despite herself.
He very nearly asks her out one day, so she gets there first, like an old married couple finishing each other's sentences. She brings up the whole 'date' thing, half to confirm what's happening and half just to see how he'll react, and the look on his face is something to behold. The date's cut short anyway (something about reanimated corpses – only in Sunnydale), but she promises him another and he smiles that nervous half-smile that makes her stomach flip, and she wonders if it's possible to base an entire relationship off just wanting to see that expression on his face again.
They don't agree on much and it occurs to her that any long term relationship with him would probably include a whole lot of bickering. It comes as a pleasant jolt of surprise when she realises that she doesn't much care. The prospect actually sounds kind of nice in a weird way; there are worse ways to spend her time than arguing with Rupert Giles and oh boy, she's really in trouble now.
She kisses him first, in the library one morning before class, because they've been on a few dates and god knows it doesn't look like he's ever going to do it, and because he looks pretty good with his sleeves rolled up, sorting through piles of books in the early morning light. So she kisses him, sort of unprepared for his response, which is to drop the books he's carrying, pull her into his arms and kiss her back so passionately that she almost forgets how to breathe.
What the hell. Breathing is overrated anyway.
Ripper.
The guy called him a name she doesn't know and it's jarring and strange to hear such solid proof of his past, of a man she didn't know existed. Then everything fell apart and there was only one person to blame, one person new in her life responsible for all this, and it was someone who was there all along, hidden. Someone who would never hurt her. How could he do this? How could he be this?
She was happy. They were happy. Before Ethan Rayne popped up like the ghost of Christmas Past, somehow bringing Ripper with him.
Ripper seems like another person, someone she doesn't know. She tries to put him in the same picture as Rupert, and it just doesn't work. Ripper. It doesn't sound right; too harsh to fit the man she thought she knew, the one who spends his time in a room full of delicate old books, treats computers like they might explode at his touch and catches spiders to put outside rather than kill them. It hurts that, just when she had him figured out, he turned out to be someone quite different.
It doesn't help that she hasn't slept properly for weeks and her first foolish instinct is to talk to Rupert about it, to seek comfort from him even though it's his damn fault. She can tell he feels awful and a part of her wants him to, because he deserves to be punished for bringing this unknown person into both their lives just when things were going so well. She's already being stupidly possessive, hating that there's some part of him which she had no idea about. And hating that it matters so much. That she nearly died or worse, and somehow this is what she's focusing on. It's all about him.
She'll forgive him eventually. She'll have to, because it's not Ripper she's hurting now, it's Rupert. Her Rupert, who cares about her, who makes up flimsy excuses to see her and looks like his heart is breaking when he meets her eyes. And because she knows deep down she has no right to be angry at him for hiding his past, because it's not as if he knows everything about her, is it?
Ripper and Janna. Don't we make a pair?
She asks him to call her darling once, just to hear it, and rolls into a fit of giggles when he obliges, the word sounding trite and alien and terribly posh in his clipped accent. He likes to hear her laugh, so he kisses her on the couch with his fingers tangled in her hair and calls her sweetheart and dearest and love, the last one making her freeze and him blush and suddenly it's not so funny anymore. The word hangs expectant for a moment in the air, until they're both saved by the pizza delivery guy knocking on the door. Only later, when she gets home and closes the door safely behind her does she say the word again out loud, weighing the taste of it on her tongue. Love.
She doesn't know if she's falling in love, because it's not something she's ever done before, not really, but the phrase feels kind of apt anyway. There is a sensation of falling, or perhaps floating, being very light and out of control and a little frightened, but in a good way.
One evening he says her name quietly, and somehow it sounds different from before, and when she looks into his eyes she realises that they're both falling into something, and if it isn't love then it looks a hell of a lot like it. Neither of them say it, even then, or later when they're wrapped around each other with the soft grey light of dawn filtering in through the window, her head against his chest listening to the steady beat of his heart. She wonders foolishly if to speak it out loud would somehow break the spell.
Right now, just to feel it is enough. And each time he murmurs her name against her skin, it sounds almost like a prayer.
Something has irrevocably broken between them.
She calls him Rupert and he calls her Ms Calendar and it's just like old times except now it feels like a slap in the face, like he's pulled the world from under her and she's falling again without him there to catch her.
She desperately wants to scream the truth at him, to pull him aside and force him to listen – that she never betrayed him, he betrayed her, it's his fault for doing this to her, for making her fall so stupidly in love with him that she couldn't see anything else. She tries to hate him for turning her into someone so pathetic and she can't even do that. So she focuses on work and her daily routine and tries not to seem too unhappy when they see each other by chance in the corridor. She tries not to think about him, or wonder if he's thinking about her.
How can I apologise for what I did, when I did nothing? Because that's the problem, isn't it? I did nothing. Just sat back and hoped it would all work out.
Falling in love wasn't part of the plan. Who was she kidding? There wasn't even a plan to begin with. She wasn't some Machiavellian spy, whatever the others might think of her. All she wanted was to get away, to escape the stranglehold of her family. After her mother died, there was no-one she was close to anyway, only her uncle, and they had never exactly seen eye to eye. And then the whole Angel thing came up, and it was a like a gift ready made, a new life on a silver platter. She could go, be free, have her own life, and still be doing her duty to them. It was an important job, no doubt about that, watching over the people's greatest secret. It had to be done. No need to feel guilty while she kept her family at arms length, safe at the other end of a sporadic correspondence. Jenny and Janna; she thought she could be both and ended up neither, a traitor to everyone.
She's played the part too well, and now this is what she is, all she is.
How can I apologise for who I am?
What strikes her is how quiet it is, with only the sound of her shoes clattering across the floor and the frantic pounding of her own heartbeat in her ears. It doesn't matter. She could scream all she wanted. There's no-one here to know. There's no-one. Just him; a monster of her own creation.
I'm going to die.
When he catches her, the breath tears from her throat in shock, but she's not surprised, not really. Because this was always going to happen, she's been living off borrowed time for so long, it's only now she realises it. How could she let herself imagine, even for a moment, that she could fix this? She failed so absolutely; in her duty to her family, the people around her, the man she loves. She screwed everything up and it's only fitting, only right, that she pays the price.
There's a kind of hysterical clarity to the moment.
The moon is so bright outside that she can see every line on Angel's face, every detail of the corridor around them and her mind is frantically memorising them as if it knows her time is running out and wants to take in as much of the world as it can. The terror seems far away now, as if it belongs to someone else. Time slows. Angel says something, but his voice seems to blur in her ears. She should be thinking something profound, but somehow the only thing that seems to matter is that she's going to die, that she'll never see Rupert tonight to make things right with him, and she realises with a sudden irrational ache that the name will die with her, because to everyone else, he's just Giles. His first name is only hers, the last piece of him she has left.
She'll take it with her. It's an oddly peaceful thought.