Yep, I was right. It took about a week. Sorry, guys. I really was gone all weekend with no computer, and the beginning of the school week has been busy, but I got this out as soon as I could. It's a little long too, for you guys, in words anyway. I hope you'll enjoy reading it, and let me know what you think so I know ya'll are still here and not too annoyed after a week, lol. Only seven more weeks of school! For me, anyway, being a senior. Then more time. Or maybe the same amount of time, if I get a job. Hoping. Sigh. Then yay, college here I come. I wish I knew where I was going. I really hate federal hoops.

Anyway, enough rambling from me. Enjoy! Can't wait to hear from ya'll! Thanks so much for everything ya'll!

Chapter 10

He hadn't meant to cry. He really hadn't. He'd done it once since waking, just after realizing what had happened to him, and as far as he was concerned that was more than enough. But Buffy didn't seem to mind. She held onto him until his sobs faded again and he pulled back, embarrassed. He knew his face was normal again now, but...it did help to know that she wouldn't have cared if it wasn't.

"I'm sorry," he muttered, taking an awkward step or two back.

Buffy just looked at him for a moment. "Are you okay?"

"I don't know," he admitted quietly. He'd drawn his arms in involuntarily, hugging them to himself uncertainly.

"You want me to get out of your hair for now? You were pretty insistent on the me leaving a few minutes ago."

His thoughts were still jumbled, but one jumped to the forefront. Rupert didn't know what the future held now, but he knew he'd been ignoring the fact that it was going to be different now.

"Well, I...don't suppose I have any reason insist anymore."

Buffy smiled gently. "But you'd rather be alone for now, right?" He didn't know how to answer that, and after a moment she came to a decision of her own. "How about I just come back in the morning?"

It took a moment, but Giles nodded. "That would be fine; the others, too, if they'll still come."

"I'm sure they will," she assured him kindly, and then turned for the door. He called to her before she could open it.

"Buffy?" She turned wordlessly. "Thank you," he told her. "For what you've tried to do since—I know you've only wanted to be helpful. Thank you for that. It really does mean quite a lot, from all of you."

He thought she swallowed, but he wasn't sure. "What else would we do?" she shrugged. "Anyway...try to get some sleep tonight, okay?"

Giles only gave her a small smile in answer, because he didn't want to lie.

Buffy wasn't sure whether she felt better or worse about Giles as she left, but she didn't have much time to think about it. The others were waiting down by the street next to the vehicles, in clear defiance of her instruction that they go ahead and leave.

Then again, being the Slayer didn't necessarily make her their boss. Not outside of battle.

"What are you guys still doing here?" she questioned, hands on hips.

"Is he okay? What happened?" Willow asked.

"Yeah, you were up there long enough," Cordelia added.

Buffy let out a breath and leaned against the side of Oz's van, unsure of how much she should say. "He's okay," she told them slowly. "He's still kind of...having issues with the blood thing, but he'll be okay."

Xander frowned curiously. "Issues? Define issues."

She looked at them for a moment. She didn't want to say anymore, but she realized it wouldn't do to leave them thinking that Giles asking them to leave had anything to do with them themselves. "He wasn't drinking anything. He didn't want to."

"Didn't want to intellectually, anyway," Oz said, to clear things up.

"Yeah. He still had what you brought him Tuesday, Xander."

"Had as in he doesn't anymore?"

"Right." She crossed her arms now. "I felt a little like a mom with a kid who wouldn't eat his green vegetables, but it's gone now. I think he's gonna be okay."

Xander winced a little. "Well that explains the little scene in there, anyway."

Willow swallowed. "God...no wonder he didn't want us all there at once. He...he must have been miserable. As much as I hate to think about why..."

"I know, Will. But we're going to get through this together, remember?" She pushed off from the van and straightened. "He said we could come back in the morning, and I think that's a good idea. He'll be feeling better, and there's probably some talking we should all do."

"Despite being a guy, I'm gonna second that," Xander agreed.

"Yeah. There's still a lot to figure out, I guess," Willow said.

They parted with an agreement to meet there in the morning, and Buffy trekked back to the main part of town to pick up that laundry detergent before she headed home.

She tossed and turned all night. She didn't know how much sleep she actually got before she climbed out of bed and dressed, sure she wasn't going to be getting any more. She left a note to tell her mother she'd headed out to meet her friends, and went. She knew she was early, seeing as it was barely dawn, but figured Giles probably hadn't taken her advice anyway. Even if he had, she had a feeling he'd be up by now.

The feeling quickly soured to something else—a decidedly bad feeling that solidified itself even before she got there.

Buffy froze, staring at the envelope with her name on it that was taped to the detailed wood door. Her chest clenched and her breath caught, and her stomach rolled over, all at once. No...

Then she realized she hadn't seen Giles's car out where it should have been. Even if he—he would have found cover by morning, right? He wouldn't...

After only a moment more of hesitation, she snatched the envelope down. Before she opened it, she tried the door, but of course it was locked. She swallowed and stepped back to tear open the envelope. Two handwritten pages fell into her hands, covered on both sides in Giles's familiar penmanship. She thought something else slipped out as well, and she heard a distant pinging as it hit the ground, telling her it was real, but she hardly glanced at the small metal key on the concrete before she focused on the papers in her hands.

Buffy began to read, and what she read curbed the panic, but it made her feel no better in the long run. As she read she backed up slowly, into the cold wall by the door, and had to stay there for a while to keep from losing her footing.

She sobbed once, then again, but that was all. She felt the tears on her cheeks and she wiped them away. She stood there for another moment, staring blindly at the pages in her hands, until finally she bent to find the key that had fallen from the envelope. Buffy picked it up, unlocked the apartment door and went inside to wait for the others. There was no need to call them; they were coming anyway.

Giles had spent most of the rest of the previous day sitting at his desk, staring at the blank paper in front of him. When he wasn't there he was up, making tea or straightening the flat or packing a few things—just a few. He still didn't know how long he would be gone, but he hadn't felt any desire to bring much. He had to get used to the fact that his life was different now anyway, didn't he?

When he finally put pen to paper, it all came out at once, in a strange rush of feelings that he knew he never would have been able to express in person. Not long after, the sun was down, and he'd stepped outside his apartment for the first time since he'd woken there as he was now.

It hadn't been so evident inside, but he'd noticed then that he could hear more in the night than he'd ever imagined was there, and he could see just fine despite the dark. It unnerved him all over again, and before he was certain he'd made the right choice Rupert had thrown what little he'd packed into the back seat of his car and left after folding the letter in an envelope and taping it to the door.

He hoped Buffy and Willow and Xander and the others wouldn't hate him, but then how could they not when he hated himself? He knew if he stayed that things would likely just drag on much as they'd been the past week, and that that wouldn't help any of them, but he couldn't fight the feeling of failure.

Giles had driven almost without knowing where he was or where he was going, and gone on for hours until Sunnydale was long behind him.

Then he turned around.

He didn't know why he'd done it. By just before morning he'd made it back as far as the outskirts of L.A. and it took him that long to figure out that he couldn't go any farther because he couldn't bear the thought of being too far from the children, even if he couldn't be with them now.

He almost didn't remember that he had to be inside by morning, and had no time to find anywhere better to stop than the first motel he sighted. The room he was given was on the second level, and he stood out on the balcony as long as he could while the sky lightened from black to gray. L.A. was on the horizon, and he knew Sunnydale was a couple of hours of road beyond it. Giles knew, too, that he wouldn't go back any farther than the city—not until he could consider himself much more emotionally stable than he was at the moment.

Not until he had some idea of where his life was headed now.

The sun was just below the horizon, and Rupert stayed where he was until the intensity of the indirect light from the pending sunrise began to sting. It was new sensation, not quite pain, and he didn't surrender immediately. The the sun began to come, and the line of light swept slowly across the parking lot.

He had to admit to himself that he thought, briefly, about not moving.

But he remembered his Slayer and her friends—his friends—and he stepped back out of the way. Before the light reached his door Giles took one last look toward the city, toward Sunnydale, and wondered if Buffy and the others knew he was thinking of them.

I'm sorry. I wish...

The sunlight hissed at his fingers where they held the door open, and Rupert yelped and quickly shoved it closed. He stared at it for a long moment, and then twisted slowly to sink back against it, holding his sharply stinging right hand to his chest. It was definitely pain this time.

Giles's throat felt suddenly tight, and he let his led knock back into the door.

Xander had asked Cordelia if she wanted to come this morning, but she opted out and asked him to fill her in later. "I'm thinking this a you-guys thing," she'd said. So he got a ride from Oz and Willow, thought the werewolf guitar player didn't stay, either. He seemed to have the same feeling Cordy had.

"Give me a call when need a ride home," he told them. Then he kissed Willow's forehead, and she smiled thankfully at him and climbed out after Xander. The two of them walked up to the apartment building as he drove off.

It didn't surprise him that Buffy was the one to open the door for them when they knocked, seeing as it would have been slightly dangerous for Giles and he'd figured she would get here first anyway. What surprised Xander was the fact that it was immediately obvious something was wrong.

"Where are Oz and Cordelia?" she asked.

"Cordy decided to sit this one out," he answered.

"Oz too," Willow said.

Buffy ushered them inside and closed the door, and as Xander looked around he realized her Watcher was nowhere to be seen.

"Where's Giles?" Willow asked immediately, worriedly.

"What's going on?" Xander echoed.

"He's fine," Buffy said quietly. She motioned to the couch. "You guys should sit down."

They obeyed, though only because the look on their friend's face suggested she might not be able to handle dissent right now.

Buffy sat in the chair opposite them, on it's edge to be closer, and held out the two written sheets of paper he now saw that she'd had in her hands the whole time. "He's not here," she sighed.

"What??" Willow questioned. She took the sheets and began to scan them immediately, and Xander had to lean in over her shoulder for a moment before she remembered to slide them toward him enough that they could more easily share.

I'm sorry. I don't expect any of you to be able to understand, and that's all right, but I hope you'll try...the letter began.

But Buffy, apparently, didn't plan to make them sit there and read it all if they didn't want to. Xander wasn't sure if that made it easier or harder.

"He uh...he apologizes pretty much at least once every paragraph. He says that he's grateful for everything we did to try to help, and that it did help some, but...that this is just something he has to handle on his own for now. Or that's basically what he's saying, anyway." Her voice was flat, toneless. He didn't know if whatever this was had finally pushed her over the edge, or if she was doing that on purpose to keep from cracking. Either way, he was worried about her already.

"He says he'll be back—he just doesn't know when. So he left a key, so we can get to the books and weapons in here if we need them. I guess that means he's going to keep paying rent on the place, from wherever he went..."

Xander didn't understand. They were supposed to be able to help. They were supposed to be there for Giles. He was supposed to get to okay, eventually, and he was supposed to do it here where they could be around to support him.

What the hell was this?

He'd looked up at Buffy, but now he focused on the pages again.

I thought I was dealing with this, but I was only avoiding the truth. In attempting to act as if nothing had gone wrong, I only made things worse for myself—and for all of you. I wasn't facing the problem at all.

Giles went on from there to say that as thankful as he was to have all of them—people who cared about him—he wasn't certain he could adjust if he stayed in Sunnydale. He felt that if he didn't get out, at least for a little while, he wouldn't want to make the changes that were necessary now. It would all go to hell and blow up in their faces. Well okay, he didn't say that, but it was the general idea there. There was more, but Xander didn't really absorb all of it.

He was still trying to process the fact that Giles wasn't here, and they didn't know when he would be again.

Willow was sputtering. "But—but he can't just—"

"Guys, I don't think we can blame him a whole lot for this," Buffy interrupted.

"Why the hell not?" Xander questioned. "He's your Watcher, Buffy. He has a job here."

"He died, Xander. Are we forgetting that here? Those kinds of things usually end there. Not that I don't still think of him as my Watcher, because I do, but you know what I mean. And back to the died part...it's just that I don't think we can know how that might have affected him. He's always been great at the being-British thing, and I guess I kind of always loved him for it even though we all pick on him sometimes, but my point here is that maybe he's still a lot more shaken up about this than he's been letting on."

"What are you saying?" Willow asked.

She took a breath. "I'm saying that...I don't know what I'm saying. I don't know. Maybe I'm saying that if this had happened to me, I might have run, too. I probably would have run. I don't think I would have even stuck around as long as Giles did."

They just stared at her.

"I wouldn't have wanted to face any of you," she filled in quietly. "He's a vampire now, guys. That's...it's crazy. He has to get used to not being able to go out during the day, and used to drinking blood, and maybe he didn't want to have to do that, or didn't think he could do that with us around all the time asking if he was okay and just getting in the way while we were trying to help.

"I mean...I don't guess that necessarily means we would have gotten in the way. Maybe we would have done it right, and he would have been better off letting us help him through this, but I guess he didn't feel that way. He knows we'll always be willing to do whatever we can for him, and as long as he knows that, then..."

"Then we should be okay with the fact that he ran off?" Xander scoffed. He didn't want to be mad at Giles. He really didn't. But he just didn't understand this. Sure, there was probably some truth in what Buffy was saying, but he didn't get it. He didn't understand why Giles would have felt like he had to deal with this on his own, after everything they'd tried to do to help.

Willow had been quiet, but now she spoke again. "Maybe he panicked; and...everyone's allowed to do that every now and then."

Buffy nodded slowly. "I was kind of thinking that. What happened yesterday was pretty intense. He'd hadn't touched the blood at all, and I think drinking it for the first time freaked him out pretty badly. I talked to him some, and I thought I got my point across. I thought it was enough. I knew he was still a little shaken, but I thought he'd be okay, and I knew we were coming back his morning..." She looked away. "I guess I was wrong. I'm sorry, you guys."

"It's not your fault, Buffy," Willow said quietly. "I...Maybe I should have insisted we do a whole lot more thinking before we did the spell, or something. We weren't prepared for this at all."

"We panicked," Buffy filled in.

"It's no more your fault than anyone else's, Willow," Xander sighed. He stood up, leaving the papers in her lap, and scrubbed a hand through his hair once or twice. "We have to find him."

"We could look, but I don't think we'd find him unless he wanted to be found."

"Well what else are we supposed to do, Buffy!"

She looked up at him steadily, and it was obvious that she'd had time to think about this before they got here. "I am going to keep Sunnydale safe, just like I always do. You and Willow and Oz and Cordelia are going to finish the school year, and then you're going to have a good summer."

"But how are we supposed to do that?" Willow protested. "And what about you? You still have to get back in school."

"Giles says somewhere in there that he's planning to call the Council again and make sure they're working on it. I think he mentioned maybe calling Snyder, too. I don't know. He says he'll make sure I'm back in school when it starts in the fall, at least, anyway. I trust him."

"You didn't answer the other question."

Buffy looked at them, and for the first time since they'd gotten here there was pain evident in her eyes. "We just have to do it, Will. We're on our own for now. Giles will come back when he's ready."

Xander wanted to punch something. He wanted to find Giles and yell at him. He wanted to do a lot of things, but he forced himself to stand where he was until he calmed down and slowly realized that maybe Buffy was right. Just because Rupert Giles was an adult didn't mean he was perfect. As big as this was, maybe a complete panic wasn't so out there—and the delay on it did kind of seem to fit the man they all knew. Maybe it shouldn't have surprised him as much as it did.

Maybe he was only angry because he wanted Giles here. Now. Xander didn't want anything to change, but now that he thought about it, that was the entire problem, wasn't it? Everything was going to change. Things were already changing.

Maybe Giles had a point. They'd all wanted to help him be 'okay' again, but when they said that, what they really meant was that they wanted things to go as far back to normal as possible. That was what they really wanted, wasn't it? Well...of course it was. Maybe Giles couldn't adjust to everything when he was here, knowing that was what they wanted.

Because he had to know. He was smart like that. He would have known. He would have sensed it. It had been pretty obvious he wanted it too, in fact. He didn't want to have to stay inside during the day, and he didn't want to drink blood no matter where or what it came from, and he didn't want a different face that made him look like a monster.

Maybe none of them cared about that stuff, and they still loved him, but he was going to have to get used to it all; maybe, though Xander really loathed to admit it, it made some kind of sense that Giles would need to do that away from them.

That didn't mean he liked it.

Xander sighed, and he sat down again.

"We're not on our own," he said finally. "We've got each other."

Somehow he knew Giles had thought of that, too. No matter how out-of-sorts he was, Xander didn't believe Giles would have left if he didn't think they would be okay without him for a while.

And they would be. Okay, that was. Now that he thought about it, no matter the beginning or the middle or the end or the disagreements in between, the last couple of weeks had drawn them all closer than they'd ever been.

Willow wrapped an arm around his and hugged him that way from her perch beside him, and Buffy seemed to agree, too, as she reached out to squeeze his hand before she shifted over to the couch to hug Willow.

No matter how hard Buffy tried, she couldn't be angry. Whatever had been in the flash she'd felt the last time she'd seen Giles, when she'd been angry that he hadn't been taking care of himself...all of it was gone. She could worry, and she could miss him, and she could hope that he figured everything out and came home, but she couldn't be angry.

It was probably because of the fact that everything she'd told her friends was true, and there was more to it than that. It was probably because she could understand some of how Giles must have been feeling when he made his decision—understood some of how he must feel now.

It was probably because she'd wanted to run, too.

When the portal closed and Angel was gone and she realized she'd killed the man she loved, Buffy had wanted nothing more than to run away. She hadn't wanted to face her friends, or her mother, or Giles, or anyone. She's wanted to run far, far away from the pain and never come back.

But then Xander had called her name and she'd turned to see him standing by that curtain, and everything had gone to hell and back and back again from there. Now she couldn't leave even if she'd still wanted to. She'd fixed things with her mother to some degree, which she didn't want to jeopardize, and she couldn't leave the others when Giles wasn't here either. The urge hadn't faded completely—in fact, at first everything that had been happening with Giles had only made it worse—but she knew now that she wouldn't do it.

The point was that she very well might have if Xander hadn't still been there when she looked up—if Drusilla hadn't killed her Watcher. So how could she blame him for needing to get away when she would have done it herself?

She and Xander and Willow didn't stay at Giles's place much longer. They would always have each other, but now what they need was time to think. It was even more to take in, after everything that had happened already. It was hard.

Willow and Xander called Oz and Cordelia, respectively, for rides, but Buffy declined any offer, and wandered into town. She spent most of the day there, between the park and the Expresso Pump. She didn't want to go home just yet. She didn't want her mother to look at her and know something was wrong and ask her what it was. She didn't want to come up with some story yet. She knew she valued the new understanding she had with her mother too much to stay out all night, but she wanted to put it all off as long as she could.

She did a sweep through the cemetaries after dark, but in the end she found herself at the mansion whether she'd wanted to go there or not. She hadn't been anywhere near the place since the night Giles died and Angel was lost to her forever.

Buffy went in the same way she and Xander had the night of the battle. Nothing had changed. Acathla still sat, dormant, and she wondered if there was something someone should have done with him—smashing him, or moving him, or...but she didn't know what any of that would do, or if doing anything would risk waking him, or anything. Giles hadn't said anything, so she was relatively sure they were safe, but still...she didn't want to risk it.

She realized her arms were clenched around herself tightly, and she had to admit that this place creeped her out now. More than that, it hurt—just to be here.

As much as it hurt, she didn't know why she pushed the black curtain aside and stared into the alcove where Giles had been tortured and killed and turned—where Drusilla had taken the life that Willow had managed to give back to him...

Though now Buffy began to let herself wonder, just for a moment, if they'd done the right thing. She wondered if she—no, she knew she'd been selfish. She wondered if Giles would ever forgive her for that. He'd said he wasn't angry, and she believed him, but that didn't mean he'd forgiven her.

The chair was still there.

It was right in the middle of the floor, where Angelus must have put it, before he—

Buffy swallowed hard against the lump in her throat and took a step toward it. Then she stopped. Then, after a moment, she stalked straight to it, and picked it up, and flung it across the room.

The chair shattered against the wall, but it wasn't enough. She went to where the mangled pieces lay on the ground, and she pulled at them and stomped them and pounded them and screamed until the chair was nothing but splinters in the carpet. By the time she finished she was sobbing.

Failure. She'd failed. It all came back to that, no matter what the others said. She couldn't save Angel, and she couldn't save Miss Calendar, and she hadn't been able to save Giles the way he really would have wanted. She couldn't keep him alive. She'd let him die, and now he was gone. He said he would be back, but could he really promise that?

She believed in him, and no matter what happened she still would never be angry with him—nothing that had happened was his fault—but what had coming back as a vampire really done to him? What if he couldn't handle it in the end? What if he never came back?

The others hadn't voiced any of those fears, and she wouldn't either.

Buffy stood over the crushed wood, shoulders hunched, and let the tears fall one more time. As her sobs quieted, she knew wouldn't cry again, about any of this. Giles wasn't here now, and her friends would need to look to her for strength. She supposed they had in the past, but she'd always had Giles to help with that. Now she wouldn't, and she would have to be strong for them.

She was the Slayer. It was her job.

She dried her face and started to leave, but her eyes fell on a endtable by one of the armchairs by the entrance to the alcove. Giles's glasses and the handkerchief he used just for cleaning them both sat there, the arms of the glasses folded and set neatly stop the crumpled cloth. Buffy didn't want to think about why they were there, but instinctively she took them, though she wasn't sure why.

She what she'd found close, and made it out to the door before she lost the urge to go any farther. What was the point? It wasn't very late; she didn't want to go home yet. She sank to her knees just inside and let herself rest against the doorway. With that curtain pushed out of the way too, when she'd come in, Buffy could see the moon through the thin mist of clouds in the sky.

She wasn't one to pray, but she hoped Giles found whatever he was looking for or figured out whatever he needed to know.

She hoped he knew they wanted him home.