Story Title: Tonight and the Rest of My Life
Author: La Vie Boheme96
Chapter Title: "Building a Mystery"
Author's Note: This is a story I posted a long long time ago on this site, and then took down because I never had any time to update it. I'm starting to find the time to work on it again, and so now it's resurfaced! I've tweaked it here and there since its debut. I hope those of you who've seen it before still find some sort of pleasure in reading it, and that those of you who are brand-new like what you see! Thanks so much, and I'll be back real soon with more.
"Tonight And The Rest Of My Life"
"Good evening, James!"
James Bond flashed his employer's secretary the most disarming, most dashing of smiles. "Good evening, Moneypenny," he replied.
Moneypenny's primary focus was on her computer screen. She typed and spoke to James simultaneously. "M is waiting for you in her office," she said.
"I see. Tell me . . . why are *you* never waiting for me?"
Moneypenny's hands stopped flying across her keyboard. She peered at James over the rims of her glasses, which were perched quite low on her straight, narrow nose. The suave secret agent looked back at her innocently.
"Because I know better than that," she told him.
"I'm hurt," James smiled.
With that, the corners of the secretary's mouth turned up ever so slightly. The man's charm was nothing less than sorcery, and tonight Moneypenny found it impossible to resist. Normally she was able to match wits with him without caving, but that night he looked so ridiculously handsome and sophisticated that even she had to admit defeat.
"Everyone is always waiting for James Bond," she sighed. "How does work ever get done?"
"I won't keep you from yours," he said. The grin did not disappear. "Thank you, Moneypenny."
She watched him walk down the corridor to M's office until the wall prevented her from doing so.
Like anyone else who knew him well, Moneypenny believed it no waste of precious time to wait for James. His missions were often dangerous and deadly beyond comprehension, and he had toyed with death more times than anyone could keep track of, but he always came away victorious. More importantly, he always came back, and completely intact. Any wounds he sustained were always negligible, no matter how many explosions and bullets he'd been forced to escape. To regard him as a mortal man was an oft- lethal mistake.
James opened the oak wood double doors at the end of the corridor to find M sitting behind her desk, shifting through a thin stack of papers. She looked up as he took a seat in one of the two chairs that were situated on the other side of the desk.
"Good evening, James," she said.
"M," he said, with a nod of his head. M's voice was not as grave as in incidents past, *and* she had not addressed him by his numeric identification, so he assumed that the director of the British Secret Intelligence Service was not holding papers that detailed an enormous threat to national security. In fact, she looked almost baffled, an unusual occurrence.
"It's rather distressing, James," she said, eyeing the papers and rubbing her chin.
"Surely you don't think I'll be distressed by anything you tell me."
The exasperated sigh to which James had become so accustomed surfaced rather early, indicating that M was in absolutely no mood for his cavalier attitude. The inevitable stern rebuttal quickly followed: "I know that your emotions have been deadened by women and martinis, 007, but do make sure it doesn't get in the way of your doing your job."
Although M's remark was particularly caustic, even her for, in response James wore the smile of a little boy enormously proud of the elaborate piece of artwork he had scrawled on the dining room wall in crayon. He certainly did not apologize. Instead he humoured M by regarding his impending case more seriously. He straightened in his chair and cleared his throat.
"You were saying?" he offered.
"Thank you," M said, not waiting for that apology she knew would never come. "It appears that an English plane carrying a priceless jewel has vanished over southern California. And by vanished I don't mean it crashed, or it was shot down . . . it simply disappeared without a trace. It's gone."
M paused for a reaction, and James looked puzzled.
"Is that all?" he ventured.
"As of late this morning--Pacific Time in the United States--two pilots and the Karlotte family diamond are missing. The plane was not over water when it dropped off radar, and the Americans who are looking into the case have found no wreckage in the areas their computers have hinted at. That's all the information we have that will help at this point."
James was radically perplexed, and he said to M as more of a fact than a question, "You're not putting *me* on the case."
"Two of your countrymen are missing, James, and there is no evidence that they are dead. I am asking--"
"I'm a secret agent, M, not a private investigator!" James snapped. "Q is not providing me with million-dollar cars equipped with rocket launchers and navigation systems so I can find a couple of petty thieves who pulled a get-rich-quick by stealing the Karlotte diamond--!"
"007, if you do not keep that miserable ego of yours under control, you may not be around *long* enough to destroy another of Q's BMWs!" M hissed, leaning across the table toward the forever-arrogant agent. James stared back at her as if challenging her.
"You wouldn't fire me," he said in a low voice.
"Wouldn't I? I've never been one to back down on a promise…or a threat. I'd do it just to see the look on your face." She paused again, perhaps for dramatic effect. "Are you quite finished now?"
James sank back in his chair, looking infinitely indignant.
"Don't talk to me like I'm a child, M," he muttered.
"Well, don't act like one. After the Trevelyan and Carver cases, you should be relieved that I'm handing you such a simple assignment. I thought you might consider it a break."
"It's just humiliating that you would misuse me this way."
M almost smiled. Almost.
She plucked a sheet of paper up off her desk, let her piercing eyes skim over it, and said, "Hmm. You may get to see some action after all, 007. It would appear that the Karlotte diamond is believed to have some sort of mysterious power. Mystical or practical, I haven't a clue, but perhaps something similar to the Goldeneye. If someone did indeed steal it, he or she or they may be using it for some harmful purpose."
James sighed to express his skepticism.
In all truth, M was amused by the reaction her words were eliciting, careful not to allow her icy demeanor to betray her pleasure. She had once told James to his face that she did not like him, but it simply was not true, for it was well known that they respected each other to a great degree. Sometimes it was hard to show it because they frequently made one another so angry that they could not express themselves the way they meant to. When M had accepted this job she had expected absolute obedience from the rest of her staff, but she quickly realized that there was no ordering around the smug, rebellious Commander James Bond. He always got the job done--there was no question about that--but as soon as he got his assignment he obeyed no one's rules but his own. That was fine with M, as long as his missions were successful. And they always were.
"Queen and country, James?"
He looked at her languidly.
"Of course."
"Then I'm sending you to Los Angeles, and from there you will be directed to a small town called"--she consulted her papers--"Sunnydale, where the plane appears to have gone down. You'll be ever so happy to know that Q should indeed have a car waiting; do check in with him before you leave. Moneypenny will make all the necessary travel arrangements. I want you to recover the missing pilots and the plane, if you can, and also the Karlotte diamond. Find out who took it, if anyone, and why, and what they were planning to do with it."
James rolled his eyes.
"'What they were planning to do with it'?" he repeated. "Mystical powers…it's a jewel heist, plain and simple." Intensely disappointed, he added, "Nobody has any standards anymore."
"All the same, 007."
"What could anyone possibly want with it? It's just--"
!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!
"--simply amazing," fretted Rupert Giles, staring with an expression of alarm at the computer monitor in front of him. "The most bizarre and frightening threat to Sunnydale I fear we've ever faced."
The Slayer, the Chosen One, former valley girl Buffy Summers, rolled her soulful blue eyes.
"You don't say," she remarked. Unshaken, she went back to examining the contents of her bulging bag of weapons.
"Really, Giles? You mean it this time?" added Alexander LaVelle Harris. "I hope you're not scared, Willow, because this could be the big one!"
"Nope," said Willow Rosenberg. She dipped into the box of doughnuts that Xander had so dutifully purchased before arriving at Giles' Sunnydale home late that afternoon. "No blood curdling here."
Giles looked over his shoulder at the three young people sitting around the coffee table in his living room.
"Would you rather," he said grimly, "I be more original and say we could all be dead in the blink of an eye if we let our guard down for even a moment?"
Willow, Xander, and Buffy stopped what they were doing and looked up. The first said, "Okay, blood slightly curdled."
"What's going on?" Buffy wanted to know.
"I think you should all take a look at this." Giles waved the three over to the computer. When they were comfortable in chairs, the newly reinstated Watcher continued.
"Have any of you ever heard of the Karlotte diamond?" he asked, using the mouse to point to the picture of it on the monitor.
Buffy and her friends replied in the negative.
"It belongs to a very wealthy, very prominent family in England," Giles went on to explain. "It's been touring the world as part of an exhibition of rare jewels. A British plane was flying it from a museum in Sydney to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., when it disappeared . . . directly over Sunnydale."
Xander raised his eyebrows, unsure of what to think.
"Demons taking a new approach to home decorating?" he offered.
"If only it were that simple," muttered Giles. "The Karlotte diamond has long been thought to have other-worldly powers."
"Evil powers?" Buffy assumed.
"If it falls into the wrong hands, yes. In capable hands it can be used to control peoples' thoughts and make them see things that aren't really there."
"R-Really?" stammered Willow, looking even paler than usual.
"I'm afraid so. Once one has the diamond, a complicated ritual is performed and one can enter the intellect of any person and tamper with their mind's eye so that they are faced with some sort of illusion they think is real."
"And I'll bet a bright, shiny penny it's not skies of blue and leaves of green," said Xander.
"Is this really a gigantic threat?" Willow asked. "I mean . . . it's not an end of the world thing, is it?"
"To be honest, there's always a possibility. Such a power can be used for any number of purposes; if put to clever use it could cause massive amounts of damage."
"Do you think Glory's behind it?" asked Buffy.
"Unlikely. Glory is only interested in the Key. I doubt that she would waste her time on such frivolity."
"I'd like to reach that plateau where I too can consider potential Armageddon frivolous," Willow mused.
"Oh, my God," breathed Buffy. "Giles, this is huge . . . why didn't you tell me sooner?"
"I only found out an hour ago."
"So why didn't you tell me an hour ago?"
"I didn't want to fri-- . . ."
Giles looked back at Buffy. He was about to say, "frighten you," but as the words were leaving his lips he realized how marvelously foolish they were.
"There's simply no excuse," he finished.
"How long ago did the plane go down?" Buffy demanded. She got up out of her chair, snatched her bag of weapons, and placed it down on the table on the other side of the living room. She was starting to take charge. Xander and Willow faithfully followed in case they were needed.
"I think there's a newspaper on the table there," Giles said, pointing.
Willow helpfully consulted ~The Sunnydale Times~.
"It says the plane fell off radar . . . 'very early this morning at about two or three'-"
"Very early this morning?" Buffy exclaimed. "Two or three?" Then she swore. "That was over twelve hours ago! The diamond could be anywhere by now!" She angrily zipped up her bag of weapons and hoisted it onto her shoulder.
"Where are you going?" said Xander.
"I'm gonna find that Karlotte thing before someone else does."
"Now?" moaned Willow. "But I'm supposed to be your study buddy tonight!"
Buffy halted and half-smiled. It was sometimes hard to believe that the two of them were already in college.
"Will," she said, "saving the world stands a few steps above my GPA in The Grand Scheme Of Things. If you remember, we had a very long, very heated discussion about this."
To Giles, she courageously said, "I'll get the diamond. Even if I have to give some nasty lectures on stealing."
"All right, then. I'll be at the magic shop later tonight if you should need me. I don't doubt that you'll be careful," Giles said, "but don't trust anyone; the Karlotte diamond is extremely dangerous. If used against you it will be impossible for you to tell what's real and what isn't."
"Diamond or not, that's something I ask myself every day," Buffy said. After a little pause, she added,"Thanks, Giles." With that, she sailed out the door and onto the streets.
"Well, FINE then!" Willow called after her. A moment passed; she sighed, and said, "I wish *I* could do that. I wish *I* could just walk out on my study buddy and be all like, 'Grr, I have a mission, and nobody can stop me, psych test be damned'!"
"I don't think they're called study buddies anymore," said Xander. "In college I think they're referred to as listen-to-me-vent-my-frustrations- then-watch-some-weepy-chick-flick-with-me-and-give-me-an-excuse-to-do- anything-BUT-study buddies."
Willow shrugged her shoulders.
"What are buddies for?" she said.
"Hanging out here with ol' Xander and doing research?" he said hopefully.
"Sorry," Willow pouted. "I *really* need to do well on this test. Are you staying?" she added, draping her messenger bag on her left shoulder.
"Er . . . nah, I think I'm gonna get out of here," said Xander. "Wait for me outside; I'll be there in a minute."
"Okay, sure. Bye, Giles! Thank you."
"Good night, Willow," Giles said as she left. He sounded pensive and just a tad absent-minded.
Xander picked up the half-empty box of doughnuts, the only prop that had accompanied him to Giles' house.
"Well, G-Man, I'd better motor," he said. "I'm gonna go see Anya and fill her in on the Karlotte situation . . . maybe I'll be doing a little buddy- studying of my own."
Xander realized what he'd said and immediately stopped speaking; sometimes, and mostly in the presence of the very British, middle-aged ex-librarian, he went a little too far and dispeled too much information regarding his relationship with his girlfriend Anya.
When the young man almost ashamedly turned to go, Giles said, "How do you do it?"
Xander stopped and turned around.
"Do what?" he inquired.
Giles removed his glasses, as if that would somehow make things clearer. "How do you stay so calm? How do you so willingly concentrate on other aspects of your lives when certain doom lurks on the horizon?"
Silence filled the room. It briefly seemed like Xander would not be able to answer the question, but then he said something so profound that it warmed the hearts of both men and blanketed them with a comforting feeling of infinite security.
"Because with Buffy out there, doom is never certain."
!~!~!--...to be continued...--!~!~!
Author: La Vie Boheme96
Chapter Title: "Building a Mystery"
Author's Note: This is a story I posted a long long time ago on this site, and then took down because I never had any time to update it. I'm starting to find the time to work on it again, and so now it's resurfaced! I've tweaked it here and there since its debut. I hope those of you who've seen it before still find some sort of pleasure in reading it, and that those of you who are brand-new like what you see! Thanks so much, and I'll be back real soon with more.
"Tonight And The Rest Of My Life"
"Good evening, James!"
James Bond flashed his employer's secretary the most disarming, most dashing of smiles. "Good evening, Moneypenny," he replied.
Moneypenny's primary focus was on her computer screen. She typed and spoke to James simultaneously. "M is waiting for you in her office," she said.
"I see. Tell me . . . why are *you* never waiting for me?"
Moneypenny's hands stopped flying across her keyboard. She peered at James over the rims of her glasses, which were perched quite low on her straight, narrow nose. The suave secret agent looked back at her innocently.
"Because I know better than that," she told him.
"I'm hurt," James smiled.
With that, the corners of the secretary's mouth turned up ever so slightly. The man's charm was nothing less than sorcery, and tonight Moneypenny found it impossible to resist. Normally she was able to match wits with him without caving, but that night he looked so ridiculously handsome and sophisticated that even she had to admit defeat.
"Everyone is always waiting for James Bond," she sighed. "How does work ever get done?"
"I won't keep you from yours," he said. The grin did not disappear. "Thank you, Moneypenny."
She watched him walk down the corridor to M's office until the wall prevented her from doing so.
Like anyone else who knew him well, Moneypenny believed it no waste of precious time to wait for James. His missions were often dangerous and deadly beyond comprehension, and he had toyed with death more times than anyone could keep track of, but he always came away victorious. More importantly, he always came back, and completely intact. Any wounds he sustained were always negligible, no matter how many explosions and bullets he'd been forced to escape. To regard him as a mortal man was an oft- lethal mistake.
James opened the oak wood double doors at the end of the corridor to find M sitting behind her desk, shifting through a thin stack of papers. She looked up as he took a seat in one of the two chairs that were situated on the other side of the desk.
"Good evening, James," she said.
"M," he said, with a nod of his head. M's voice was not as grave as in incidents past, *and* she had not addressed him by his numeric identification, so he assumed that the director of the British Secret Intelligence Service was not holding papers that detailed an enormous threat to national security. In fact, she looked almost baffled, an unusual occurrence.
"It's rather distressing, James," she said, eyeing the papers and rubbing her chin.
"Surely you don't think I'll be distressed by anything you tell me."
The exasperated sigh to which James had become so accustomed surfaced rather early, indicating that M was in absolutely no mood for his cavalier attitude. The inevitable stern rebuttal quickly followed: "I know that your emotions have been deadened by women and martinis, 007, but do make sure it doesn't get in the way of your doing your job."
Although M's remark was particularly caustic, even her for, in response James wore the smile of a little boy enormously proud of the elaborate piece of artwork he had scrawled on the dining room wall in crayon. He certainly did not apologize. Instead he humoured M by regarding his impending case more seriously. He straightened in his chair and cleared his throat.
"You were saying?" he offered.
"Thank you," M said, not waiting for that apology she knew would never come. "It appears that an English plane carrying a priceless jewel has vanished over southern California. And by vanished I don't mean it crashed, or it was shot down . . . it simply disappeared without a trace. It's gone."
M paused for a reaction, and James looked puzzled.
"Is that all?" he ventured.
"As of late this morning--Pacific Time in the United States--two pilots and the Karlotte family diamond are missing. The plane was not over water when it dropped off radar, and the Americans who are looking into the case have found no wreckage in the areas their computers have hinted at. That's all the information we have that will help at this point."
James was radically perplexed, and he said to M as more of a fact than a question, "You're not putting *me* on the case."
"Two of your countrymen are missing, James, and there is no evidence that they are dead. I am asking--"
"I'm a secret agent, M, not a private investigator!" James snapped. "Q is not providing me with million-dollar cars equipped with rocket launchers and navigation systems so I can find a couple of petty thieves who pulled a get-rich-quick by stealing the Karlotte diamond--!"
"007, if you do not keep that miserable ego of yours under control, you may not be around *long* enough to destroy another of Q's BMWs!" M hissed, leaning across the table toward the forever-arrogant agent. James stared back at her as if challenging her.
"You wouldn't fire me," he said in a low voice.
"Wouldn't I? I've never been one to back down on a promise…or a threat. I'd do it just to see the look on your face." She paused again, perhaps for dramatic effect. "Are you quite finished now?"
James sank back in his chair, looking infinitely indignant.
"Don't talk to me like I'm a child, M," he muttered.
"Well, don't act like one. After the Trevelyan and Carver cases, you should be relieved that I'm handing you such a simple assignment. I thought you might consider it a break."
"It's just humiliating that you would misuse me this way."
M almost smiled. Almost.
She plucked a sheet of paper up off her desk, let her piercing eyes skim over it, and said, "Hmm. You may get to see some action after all, 007. It would appear that the Karlotte diamond is believed to have some sort of mysterious power. Mystical or practical, I haven't a clue, but perhaps something similar to the Goldeneye. If someone did indeed steal it, he or she or they may be using it for some harmful purpose."
James sighed to express his skepticism.
In all truth, M was amused by the reaction her words were eliciting, careful not to allow her icy demeanor to betray her pleasure. She had once told James to his face that she did not like him, but it simply was not true, for it was well known that they respected each other to a great degree. Sometimes it was hard to show it because they frequently made one another so angry that they could not express themselves the way they meant to. When M had accepted this job she had expected absolute obedience from the rest of her staff, but she quickly realized that there was no ordering around the smug, rebellious Commander James Bond. He always got the job done--there was no question about that--but as soon as he got his assignment he obeyed no one's rules but his own. That was fine with M, as long as his missions were successful. And they always were.
"Queen and country, James?"
He looked at her languidly.
"Of course."
"Then I'm sending you to Los Angeles, and from there you will be directed to a small town called"--she consulted her papers--"Sunnydale, where the plane appears to have gone down. You'll be ever so happy to know that Q should indeed have a car waiting; do check in with him before you leave. Moneypenny will make all the necessary travel arrangements. I want you to recover the missing pilots and the plane, if you can, and also the Karlotte diamond. Find out who took it, if anyone, and why, and what they were planning to do with it."
James rolled his eyes.
"'What they were planning to do with it'?" he repeated. "Mystical powers…it's a jewel heist, plain and simple." Intensely disappointed, he added, "Nobody has any standards anymore."
"All the same, 007."
"What could anyone possibly want with it? It's just--"
!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!
"--simply amazing," fretted Rupert Giles, staring with an expression of alarm at the computer monitor in front of him. "The most bizarre and frightening threat to Sunnydale I fear we've ever faced."
The Slayer, the Chosen One, former valley girl Buffy Summers, rolled her soulful blue eyes.
"You don't say," she remarked. Unshaken, she went back to examining the contents of her bulging bag of weapons.
"Really, Giles? You mean it this time?" added Alexander LaVelle Harris. "I hope you're not scared, Willow, because this could be the big one!"
"Nope," said Willow Rosenberg. She dipped into the box of doughnuts that Xander had so dutifully purchased before arriving at Giles' Sunnydale home late that afternoon. "No blood curdling here."
Giles looked over his shoulder at the three young people sitting around the coffee table in his living room.
"Would you rather," he said grimly, "I be more original and say we could all be dead in the blink of an eye if we let our guard down for even a moment?"
Willow, Xander, and Buffy stopped what they were doing and looked up. The first said, "Okay, blood slightly curdled."
"What's going on?" Buffy wanted to know.
"I think you should all take a look at this." Giles waved the three over to the computer. When they were comfortable in chairs, the newly reinstated Watcher continued.
"Have any of you ever heard of the Karlotte diamond?" he asked, using the mouse to point to the picture of it on the monitor.
Buffy and her friends replied in the negative.
"It belongs to a very wealthy, very prominent family in England," Giles went on to explain. "It's been touring the world as part of an exhibition of rare jewels. A British plane was flying it from a museum in Sydney to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., when it disappeared . . . directly over Sunnydale."
Xander raised his eyebrows, unsure of what to think.
"Demons taking a new approach to home decorating?" he offered.
"If only it were that simple," muttered Giles. "The Karlotte diamond has long been thought to have other-worldly powers."
"Evil powers?" Buffy assumed.
"If it falls into the wrong hands, yes. In capable hands it can be used to control peoples' thoughts and make them see things that aren't really there."
"R-Really?" stammered Willow, looking even paler than usual.
"I'm afraid so. Once one has the diamond, a complicated ritual is performed and one can enter the intellect of any person and tamper with their mind's eye so that they are faced with some sort of illusion they think is real."
"And I'll bet a bright, shiny penny it's not skies of blue and leaves of green," said Xander.
"Is this really a gigantic threat?" Willow asked. "I mean . . . it's not an end of the world thing, is it?"
"To be honest, there's always a possibility. Such a power can be used for any number of purposes; if put to clever use it could cause massive amounts of damage."
"Do you think Glory's behind it?" asked Buffy.
"Unlikely. Glory is only interested in the Key. I doubt that she would waste her time on such frivolity."
"I'd like to reach that plateau where I too can consider potential Armageddon frivolous," Willow mused.
"Oh, my God," breathed Buffy. "Giles, this is huge . . . why didn't you tell me sooner?"
"I only found out an hour ago."
"So why didn't you tell me an hour ago?"
"I didn't want to fri-- . . ."
Giles looked back at Buffy. He was about to say, "frighten you," but as the words were leaving his lips he realized how marvelously foolish they were.
"There's simply no excuse," he finished.
"How long ago did the plane go down?" Buffy demanded. She got up out of her chair, snatched her bag of weapons, and placed it down on the table on the other side of the living room. She was starting to take charge. Xander and Willow faithfully followed in case they were needed.
"I think there's a newspaper on the table there," Giles said, pointing.
Willow helpfully consulted ~The Sunnydale Times~.
"It says the plane fell off radar . . . 'very early this morning at about two or three'-"
"Very early this morning?" Buffy exclaimed. "Two or three?" Then she swore. "That was over twelve hours ago! The diamond could be anywhere by now!" She angrily zipped up her bag of weapons and hoisted it onto her shoulder.
"Where are you going?" said Xander.
"I'm gonna find that Karlotte thing before someone else does."
"Now?" moaned Willow. "But I'm supposed to be your study buddy tonight!"
Buffy halted and half-smiled. It was sometimes hard to believe that the two of them were already in college.
"Will," she said, "saving the world stands a few steps above my GPA in The Grand Scheme Of Things. If you remember, we had a very long, very heated discussion about this."
To Giles, she courageously said, "I'll get the diamond. Even if I have to give some nasty lectures on stealing."
"All right, then. I'll be at the magic shop later tonight if you should need me. I don't doubt that you'll be careful," Giles said, "but don't trust anyone; the Karlotte diamond is extremely dangerous. If used against you it will be impossible for you to tell what's real and what isn't."
"Diamond or not, that's something I ask myself every day," Buffy said. After a little pause, she added,"Thanks, Giles." With that, she sailed out the door and onto the streets.
"Well, FINE then!" Willow called after her. A moment passed; she sighed, and said, "I wish *I* could do that. I wish *I* could just walk out on my study buddy and be all like, 'Grr, I have a mission, and nobody can stop me, psych test be damned'!"
"I don't think they're called study buddies anymore," said Xander. "In college I think they're referred to as listen-to-me-vent-my-frustrations- then-watch-some-weepy-chick-flick-with-me-and-give-me-an-excuse-to-do- anything-BUT-study buddies."
Willow shrugged her shoulders.
"What are buddies for?" she said.
"Hanging out here with ol' Xander and doing research?" he said hopefully.
"Sorry," Willow pouted. "I *really* need to do well on this test. Are you staying?" she added, draping her messenger bag on her left shoulder.
"Er . . . nah, I think I'm gonna get out of here," said Xander. "Wait for me outside; I'll be there in a minute."
"Okay, sure. Bye, Giles! Thank you."
"Good night, Willow," Giles said as she left. He sounded pensive and just a tad absent-minded.
Xander picked up the half-empty box of doughnuts, the only prop that had accompanied him to Giles' house.
"Well, G-Man, I'd better motor," he said. "I'm gonna go see Anya and fill her in on the Karlotte situation . . . maybe I'll be doing a little buddy- studying of my own."
Xander realized what he'd said and immediately stopped speaking; sometimes, and mostly in the presence of the very British, middle-aged ex-librarian, he went a little too far and dispeled too much information regarding his relationship with his girlfriend Anya.
When the young man almost ashamedly turned to go, Giles said, "How do you do it?"
Xander stopped and turned around.
"Do what?" he inquired.
Giles removed his glasses, as if that would somehow make things clearer. "How do you stay so calm? How do you so willingly concentrate on other aspects of your lives when certain doom lurks on the horizon?"
Silence filled the room. It briefly seemed like Xander would not be able to answer the question, but then he said something so profound that it warmed the hearts of both men and blanketed them with a comforting feeling of infinite security.
"Because with Buffy out there, doom is never certain."
!~!~!--...to be continued...--!~!~!