A knock at the door in the early afternoon was the one thing guaranteed to make them all jump, and this one was all business: short, curt, abrupt, and clearly a watcher.

"Get in the closet!" Buffy hissed to Xander, making her way over to the door. He complied immediately, burying himself in some of Faith's darkest-colored outfits and holding his breath, peeking out through the clothing to see what was going on.

Buffy opened the door, smiling brightly. "Giles! Wow, I don't think I've ever seen you on this floor. Good to see you! I've actually been wondering if we could talk about something that's been bugging me- or you're going to go right inside," she said, her voice faltering as Giles moved past her. "Uh, it's really gross in here. Girl stuff. Underwear. Bras?" But Giles plunged on peering around the room searchingly, and Xander slid even further into the back of the closet.

"No, not in there!" Buffy was saying frantically. "That's our private space! Isn't there a law against this or something?"

Then Giles was in the closet, parting the clothing to smile down at Xander. "Hello, Xander," he said calmly, holding out a hand.

Xander took it numbly. "Uh…this isn't what it looks like."

"You haven't been hiding here for the past month?" Giles asked, quirking a grin.

"How…Anya," he realized, his eyes narrowing.

Giles softened. "Anya," he agreed.

"You're back together?" Buffy said hopefully from her vantage point on Faith's bed.

"Yes." Giles pulled Xander up, looking him over with a strange satisfaction. "And Xander, allow me to be the first to apologize to you on behalf of the Council."

"What?"

"We had no idea that you had only been out to find Cordelia Chase that night," Giles continued on, ignoring their confusion. "Or that you stumbled upon the werewolf through no fault of your own. It was fortunate that Cordelia finally stepped forward and told her father the whole story, and he was so grateful that he insisted you be permitted to return to the Academy." His eyes twinkled. "Welcome back."

"What?" Xander repeated dumbly.

"Cordy told that whole story?" Buffy asked dubiously.

Giles smiled again, and this time, Xander caught a hint of slyness in it. "Well, she had to be…ah, reminded of some of it, but yes, this was her story."

"I…I'm back?"

"You're back."

He didn't know what to do with his hands. Backbackbackback, something was singing within him, and he didn't know what to do with his hands.

But Giles seemed to understand. He clapped him on the shoulder gently, smiled again- and wow, he really did do that a lot when he and Anya were happy- and reminded him, "You do have quite a bit of work to make up, though, and you'll have to stay in school this summer if you want to graduate with your class."

Xander thought he nodded. "That's…that's good."

"I thought it might be." Giles turned to go. "I'll see you in class first thing tomorrow, Xander."

"Thank you," he blurted out quickly, before Giles could leave.

Giles shook his head. "Don't thank me, Xander. Thank Cordelia. And Anya," he added, and closed the door behind him.

There was a squeal from Faith's bed, and he was suddenly holding an armful of beaming Buffy. "You did it!" she crowed. "You're back!"

"I didn't do anything," he protested. "Anya-"

"Anya loves you," Buffy assured him. "You did that. And look, Giles and Anya are back together, too!"

There was the slightest hint of movement from the silent, sullen girl curled up in the corner of her bed, pretending to be asleep, and Xander set Buffy down and moved over to Faith. "Hi," he said quietly.

She made a great show of waking up, stretching and yawning and blinking up at him sleepily. "What?"

"I'm back in school," he told her, grinning. "Thanks for…" He gestured to their room, making sure that he caught Buffy's eye so that she knew she was included in his appreciation. "Thanks for everything."

"Yeah, whatever," she muttered, and Xander could see that she was shivering. He pulled the blanket a little higher over her, but she batted his hands away.

"Listen, Faith…uh…since we're not going to be staying in the same room anymore, and now that I can go out in public…do you want to hang out sometime?" He chewed nervously on the inside of his cheek, awaiting her response.

There was only a groan. "Go to hell, Harris."

And then, because he wasn't quite sure that he was ever going to get through to her, he nodded reluctantly. "I get it, Faith. I do." And he did, and he might just be done now. There was only so much time that he could spend chasing someone who hated the very idea of his presence, after all, and it looked like Faith wasn't going to cave.

So he bent down once more, pressed soft lips against her own, and whispered against them, "Goodbye."

She didn't push him away, and when he finally stood again, her expression was wide and forlorn, vulnerable and fearful and sorrowing all at once. He brushed wisps of hair from her face and gave her a sad smile before he left the room.

Buffy followed him worriedly. "You're not really giving up on her, are you?"

He was silent. "I don't know," he confessed finally. "She doesn't want-"

"She does!" Buffy bit her lip. "She just…She's in pieces. She comes to class barely once a week and when she does, she's falling behind to the bottom third, Gunn's made her go to the doctor six times already, but they haven't found anything, and she barely even talks to me. Right now, she doesn't know what she wants. But I do."

"Do you?"

"Of course. I'm her best friend," Buffy said confidently. "And she wants you."

He flashed her a grin. "Who wouldn't?" Suddenly serious, he admitted, "You really…you got me through this. Thank you."

"What are friends for?" She threw her arms around him again and gave him a kiss on the cheek, ignoring the sudden murmurs of surprise from around them as slayers emerged from their rooms for their afternoon training and caught sight of him. "I'll see you later."

"Hey, I've still got the rest of the day off and I don't think I'm ready to explain to Willow that I've been here all along," Xander pointed out. "Why don't I go watch yours and Spike's fight today?"

Buffy flushed. "Um. That. I don't know if it's…" She paused. "I need to shower first, anyway," she said quickly. "If Spike smells that I've been this close to another guy, he'll go crazy."

"Sounds like a healthy relationship you've got," Xander noted, raising an eyebrow. He held up a hand. "Please, shower. Don't make the evil bloodsucker crazy."


Of course, the evil bloodsucker smelled him anyway, Xander concluded, staring down at the game floor in fascination. Buffy and Spike were moving in perfect tandem, kicking and twisting and snarking away, but Spike was in full vamp face- which Xander had never seen before while observing Buffy's fights- and growling furiously at Buffy.

Finally, Buffy seemed to lose patience with him and darted forward, backing him against the wall and whispering something into his ear, a hand moving forward to stroke the ridges of his face. Almost immediately, the vampire calmed, the ridges fading away and a slow smile spreading across his face. And then he turned to stare at Xander- ohgodthat'sterrifying- and gave him a quick, approving nod.

Buffy grinned and tackled Spike again, and now they were fighting again in that dizzyingly synced motion that hurt Xander's head to track, moving rapidly against each other with fists and fangs and stakes all at once, gasping and panting and-

Wait. He leaned closer, frowning. Somehow, the scramble to stake or bite wasn't as businesslike as he remembered from previous fights. Buffy and Spike are just playing with each other, he reminded himself. But this wasn't the kind of playing he'd have expected, Spike flat against the barrier, his hand snaking up to cup Buffy's ass, her own hands tracing the contours of his chest… Vampire and slayer, locked in mortal combat, were doing a pretty good impression of teenagers in the back of the library instead.

They'd been careful about it, Xander noted. The position they were in had them close enough to Gunn's assistant-Sam?- that she didn't feel obligated to circle the barrier, but at the same time, the angle was set just so, so that Sam couldn't tell that more than a battle for a stake was going on. Buffy was throwing back her head as Spike's hands slipped under her top, and Xander couldn't bring himself to look away, the other students in the audience mostly oblivious but a few squirming nervously, everyone caught up in the moment-

-And then Spike was suddenly on the floor, Buffy on top of him and a stake at his chest. "I win!" she crowed. Spike murmured something Xander couldn't catch, and jerked upwards for a second, Buffy reddening. She poked at him good-naturedly. "Shut up, Spike."

He blew her a kiss, and Xander watched with sudden concern as Buffy's eyes lidded and glazed over, lost in a memory that Spike followed her into seconds later, too. She bent downward…

And Sam had the barrier down and was approaching before they went any further. "Good job, Buffy," she said, but even she looked disturbed by the scene, and Xander hurried down the bleachers until he was standing with a reluctantly rising Buffy.

"That's not how I remember vamp fights," he murmured in Buffy's ear, watching the blond vampire cautiously as he backed away from them, heading for the back exit with a watcher.

Spike let out a low, territorial growl, and Xander took a step away from Buffy. Buffy rolled her eyes. "Stop being an idiot, Spike," she ordered him, moving closer to Xander. But her eyes were sending the vampire reassurance, and he calmed immediately, flashing her a smirk and heading off.

"It's not- We're not-" She sighed. "Let's not talk about this, okay?"

He wasn't ready to comply, but then Willow came tearing into the room to enfold him in a hug and tearfully welcome him back, and after that Jesse was organizing a welcome home party; and by the time he remembered his earlier worries about Buffy and Spike, it was already time to go to sleep- and thankfully, in his own bed, for the first time in what seemed like forever.


After the jam-packed action that had begun the calendar year, the next few months passed surprisingly peacefully. Xander spent most of his time falling further and further behind in classes, but Willow had taken to tutoring him nightly and while he was still behind, he found that he was understanding the older material better than usual. Nothing like some time away to make even school seem fun, he mused.

He rarely saw Faith in class at first, but after the slayers went on Spring Break in Hell with the next year of watchers, Faith was around more, coming to class and slouching in her chair, uninterested in what was going on around her and doodling hard, angry lines into her notebook. A few times, he'd brushed past her and peeked at it, curious, and saw that she'd been drawing the same thing, over and over again. A dark-haired vampire- stick figures, of course, since Faith was no artist- with his fangs in a girl's throat. The same vampire with his hand up the girl's…place. The vampire driving her into the ground while the girl flailed. He'd shuddered and tried to make conversation with her, but she'd brushed him off and vanished into her room to hide, yet again.

He'd finally decided to move on and get over his fixation on Faith, so he'd asked Tara out and was humbled when she'd politely turned him down. Faith had watched him silently for days after that, and he was tempted to keep asking girls out, just because it seemed to be the only way to get Faith's attention. But he didn't, especially not after Buffy heard about Tara and gave him hurt, angry looks for nearly a week until she was satisfied that he wasn't over Faith.

He was beginning to suspect that he'd never be over Faith.

On some afternoons, as summer drew closer, Anya would venture from the safety of Giles's apartment and come spend time with him and Buffy, and those were the best days of all, peaceful and lazy and simple. An idea was beginning to take seed in his mind, and Buffy and Anya were some of the best coconspirators when it came to this. He thought he'd finally found a solution, but it was going to take time and help from his loyal friends.

Finally, the year was almost over and they were heading to one of the big training rooms as Giles went through the results of a test they'd taken a few weeks before to ascertain where in the watchers' vast system they might be best equipped to work after graduation. Beginning next year, they were going to be trained specifically for certain roles, and some were starting even earlier.

Like Willow, who was excited to tell them about a summer internship with Mr. Rayne she'd been offered. "He only picks one student a year, and he picked me!"

"And this is surprising why?" Buffy asked, quirking an eyebrow. Somehow, the large group that they'd once been, back in the height of the slayer-watcher battles, had shrunk more and more after Oz had left. Jesse and Cordelia had moved off into their own little world, Willow and Tara had grown apart for reasons Willow hadn't shared, and Faith was still in her tortured solitude, so now it was just the three of them walking together to the training rooms.

Willow waved a hand dismissively. "Well, there's always Amy, right? I didn't knowfor sure."

"Does this mean you're staying for the summer?" Xander wanted to know.

Willow nodded, grinning. "It's going to be all three of us here this year." She frowned. "But Xander, you really need to concentrate on your schoolwork."

"And Buffy needs to concentrate a little less on her fighting," Xander said slyly, watching as Buffy reddened. Gunn had gotten a bit stricter about Buffy's fights with Spike after they'd antagonized him one too many times, and now she was only allowed to fight him once a week. Xander was secretly relieved. No relationship with a vampire could ever end well, not even if the vampire's morals were a little less shaky than was standard.

"Not to obviously change the topic or anything; but Willow, what about Tara?" Buffy asked, playfully narrowing her eyes at Xander.

Willow shrugged, her enthusiasm deflating. "I guess she's going home."

"But don't you two work as a team?"

"This might be easier." Willow bit her lip. "Tara tends to…she puts up barriers where there don't need to be any, and the magic is weaker then. Working without her will be better for my magic."

"Uh huh." Buffy exchanged a glace with Xander, and they both shrugged. "Really not my forte, but I'll take your word for it."

They walked into the training room, looking for their folders on the table set up at the entrance. Xander snagged his and flipped through it, raising his eyebrows in surprise. "Hey, it recommends me as a special ops watcher or combat specialist! Cool!"

"I'm a witch," Willow observed dryly. "What a fantastic surprise."

"And I'm a combat specialist, too," Buffy said quietly.

"Yeah." Xander grinned. "We could be out on the field together, right? Watcher, witch, and slayer."

"That would be nice," Buffy said, suddenly distant.

Willow frowned at her. "What's up?"

Buffy shrugged. "It's just…I don't know, this is the first time that I've ever been told that I'll be something other than slayer. It's kind of…" She stopped, giving them an apologetic look. "Forget it. It's a potential thing. It's stupid."

"It doesn't sound stupid," Willow said softly. "You've been preparing for this your whole life."

"Yeah." Buffy sighed. "I guess…if I do turn twenty without being called, I'd try to get a job as one of Gunn's assistants, like Sam did last year. I'd rather still be working, training slayers instead of just giving up on that part of my life."

And you'd still be around a certain vampire all the time, Xander thought, although he didn't dare say anything out loud. But he was certain that that, more than anything else, was the deciding factor when Buffy thought about her future.

How very troubling.