The day passed on slowly for Buffy. As usual, she didn't pay much attention in class, instead focusing on the fight she had with Angel and Spike the night prior. Buffy was used to Angel being lurky and avoidy, but Spike was something she'd never encountered before.

Back at Hemery, she liked her fair share of boys that weren't necessarily the best option for her. Kyle, who cheated on every girlfriend he had dated but was captain of the football team, which was enough for young, naive Buffy to fall head over heels for him, or Sam, who made it his life goal to bully every kid on the chess team. She inwardly shuddered as she remembered her taste in men before she'd become the Slayer. While Angel and Spike were significant improvements in looks, she couldn't say they were better.

Angel used to be soulless and evil, and Spike was still soulless and evil. And her 'relationship' with Angel was very much not. They never had dates, other than that failed attempt at grabbing coffee together or when she showed up to the Bronze after patrolling with leaves in her hair and holes in her jacket while Cordelia sat across from him at a table looking flawless. 'Dates' with Angel were more patrolling-type dates than date-type dates or nights he'd maybe make an appearance at the Bronze. Buffy understood that her being the Slayer and him being a vampire made it challenging to have any sort of relationship that included normal boyfriend-girlfriend activities… but she couldn't help but yearn for it.

She'd be lying to herself if she said she wanted a nice, ordinary, healthy, American boy with 2.5 kids and a white picket fence. That was too normal of a life for someone of her caliber. She'd thought she wanted that life a year ago, but that idea quickly vanished after she'd met Spike in her afterlife. Now she wanted two hot, murderous, dark, very not normal vampires. And it sickened her knowing that deep down, that's how she truly felt.

Buffy paid no heed to the contradiction of her thoughts nor to the fact that she was the furthest parsec from reasonable at the moment. Her body was currently fueled by coffee and two hours of sleep. She ignored Willow's constant staring as her leg jittered nervously under her desk, watching as the clock ticked closer to her escape or her Hell, depending on how her conversation with Giles would go. She felt restless, more so than usual. She desperately wanted to talk to someone who could give her answers. Giles was thrilled when she told him she'd meet with him after school for some much-needed training. He'd informed her that he'd gone shopping for more Slayer training supplies, and after the weak performance from last night when she encountered Spike, she needed it.

Buffy also made a promise to herself that she was going to tell Giles everything. She spent the entire last period rehearsing in her head the exact lines she would say to explain her situation and why she had been lying to him for months.

She thought Spike was some imaginary person in her head, and she didn't know he was real, let alone that he'd show up in Sunnydale with a bounty on her head.

That's as far as she got until her fake Giles stipulation started asking why she hadn't told him about Spike when they'd first met or after the night at the school or Halloween. There was no plausible answer. She didn't know why she'd been keeping it such a secret. Hell, even Spike, at this point, had to see that she wasn't candid about their relationship. Halloween night proved that when she had let too much information out while under the influence of Ethan Raine's spell.

She remembered the look of confusion in his piercing blue eyes after confessing that she'd felt something for him. "Whoever I was before must have felt some kind of connection with you."

Buffy cringed as the memory replayed itself in her mind. She thought after that night, Spike would interrogate her at their next meeting on what she meant; to her luck, all he did was try to kill her unsuccessfully. Throw demons and vampires her way, and she can kill them easily. Asking her to open up and confess her true feelings isn't something she was good at.

The bell rang, and Buffy stood on unsteady legs, her limbs refusing to stay still. The nervousness that she'd tried to squash deep down had suddenly sprung forth again. It was time to face Giles. Willow gave a meek smile and thumbs up from across the classroom before heading out. Shoulders slumped, she slowly trekked to the library. As usual, Giles was nose deep in a set of musty old books. He glanced up as she pushed past the library doors.

"Buffy!" He exclaimed, standing up; he motioned to the seat across from him, "Come sit; there's much we must discuss."

She sat down and crossed her leg over her knee.

"Did you hunt last night?" He asked casually, sitting back down in his chair.

"I did a couple of quick sweeps downtown," Buffy lied. And there she went again, not telling the truth. She had planned on doing a few sweeps after leaving Angel's place, but then she had run into Spike and almost became another number on his list of Slayers he'd killed. That was enough to call it a night and go to bed. God, she was starting to turn into Angel. When did she become such a hypocrite?

"Any encounters?"

Buffy knew the true meaning behind his question: had she run into the bleached menace who had been making her life a living hell?

"Nothing vampirey," she replied before quickly changing the topic. "You said you had something important to tell me?"

"Yes," Giles replied, flipping a few pages of the book already in front of him. "I've been researching Spike intensively for a while now, and, uh, the profile has been fairly unappetizing."

"Unappetizing how?" She asked, not sure if she wanted to know the answer.

"Well," Giles hesitated before finally answering, "His mayhem in the late eighteen hundreds throughout Europe, the killing of two Slayers, torturing his victims with railroad spikes, tyrannizing Asia for two decades, the list is endless. However, his profile isn't nearly as bad as–" he stopped abruptly, looking almost uncomfortable.

Buffy frowned. "As bad as who?" It was painful listening to the things Spike had done and is still doing. And she suspected that Giles was telling her the PG version, not that she minded. She didn't know if she could handle him going into detail about all of the horrific things Spike had done over the century.

"As bad as Angel," Giles finished as he took his glasses off to polish.

Buffy shifted in her seat. Giles had never told her Angel's history, and she had decided shortly after finding out that he was a vampire that she didn't want to know. Angel wasn't the same man that he had been before his soul, or so he said. While he may lie to her about numerous things, she didn't think he was untruthful about that. If he were still evil, then he'd be killing people or wouldn't be helping her defeat evil. Without him, she wouldn't have been able to defeat some of the baddies she'd come across in her time in Sunnydale.

"I also may have found the reason as to why Spike is in Sunnydale now."

"Oh," Buffy breathed, grateful for the change in conversation. Giles was just as uncomfortable as her when speaking about Angel's past, probably because he didn't trust Angel as much as Buffy did. She couldn't blame him; he was trained to think of such creatures as evil. And while she did as well, she hadn't been raised her entire life around those beliefs like him.

She hadn't given it much thought to why Spike was in Sunnydale. Angel had told her the other night that he believed Spike was in Sunnydale to heal a weakened Drusilla, but Buffy didn't know whether the information Angel told her was truthful or not. She thought it was evident that Spike was here to kill her. It was Giles and Angel who were persistent that it was otherwise.

"According to the reports from the Watcher's Council," he continued. "Drusilla has been a paramour of Spike's for a century. If a mob in Prague truly weakened Drusilla, I don't think Spike would focus all his time and energy in Sunnydale on you unless he had another reason to be here."

Crap. Angel had been telling the truth for once. It did make sense. Buffy sighed. She was glad that Spike hadn't come to Sunnydale with the sole purpose of killing her, but another sick and twisted part of her also wished that he had come here for Buffy and not because of that stupid Vamp Hoe. She looked at Giles, whose face was once again buried in the book in front of him. This was her time to tell him the truth finally. All she had to do was open her mouth and hope that the words she wanted to say would come from it instead of being a babbling mess. She didn't practice her speech all day for this very moment to chicken out. She could do this.

"Giles, I have to tell–"

"Buffy!"

Buffy looked over to see Ford walking into the library. While he was the last person she wanted to deal with right now, she couldn't help but be grateful that he had stalled her confession to Giles. Maybe she wasn't as ready as she led herself to believe in admitting the truth aloud.

"Hey," Buffy replied, unsure why he was in the library. She hadn't seen him in days because he was ill, and then he just waltzed in there like he hadn't been gone without so much as a phone call?

"I'm sorry I haven't responded to your calls; believe me, I wanted to," Ford explained. "But that flu had me sleeping all day, and I just never got to it."

"It's fine," she replied.

"Do you wanna go out tonight? We haven't seen each other since the night I staked that vampire, and I would love to catch up."

Buffy was about to respond when she heard Giles clear his throat; she looked over to his confused face until it finally hit her. She completely forgot to tell Giles that Ford knew she was the Slayer!

"Oh," Buffy rushed to explain. "Ford knows about me, and before you say anything, I didn't tell him. He just knew."

To her surprise, Giles didn't respond, but Buffy knew she would get a lecture as soon as Ford left the room.

"I sort of had an idea about tonight," Ford said; Giles and Buffy both turned back to look at him. "It's a secret. Kinda wanted to surprise you."

"I like surprises," Buffy replied, although her gut was telling her that it wasn't a surprise she'd like, and all of a sudden, the conversation she had with Angel the night before began to replay in her head.

"I understand you're upset with me, but I was only doing it to protect you. Your friend Ford isn't what he seems."

Ford smiled. "Great! Can you meet me here?"

"Sure."

"At nine?"

"At nine," she agreed.

Ford walked back towards the library doors as he said, "It's gonna be fun!" And then he was gone.

"Uh, Buffy," Giles sighed. "You are not, by any chance, betraying your secret identity just to impress, um, cute boys, are you?"

Buffy rolled her eyes. "Of course not! I told you he already knew I was the Slayer. I didn't have to tell him anything."

"Right, of course. Perhaps we should return to researching Spike and Drusilla," he suggested.

Buffy nodded her head before she realized another thing she forgot to tell Giles. "By the way, I may have forgotten to tell you another little tiny thing I saw last week. I saw Drusilla with Angel."

"With Angel?" Giles asked, taken aback.

That was when Buffy decided that now wasn't the best time to tell Giles about Spike. She had already forgotten to tell him two things that had happened and knew he was upset at her for not saying anything. It's not like she meant to keep them from him, but she had forgotten. She had so much on her mind lately that it had completely slipped. She would tell Giles everything eventually, but right now wasn't the time to do it.

After two hours of training and another hour of research, Buffy pushed the book in front of her away with disgust. The last thing she wanted was to read detailed information on how Drusilla tortured her victims with her mind tricks. It sickened Buffy and made her want to kill the bitch even more.

"Isn't Angel supposed to be a good guy?" Jenny asked. She had come in five minutes ago to assist with the research, and after being informed on everything that had been going down, she was just as utterly confused as Buffy was on Angel. Especially after hearing about him being Drusilla's sire and how Buffy saw them together the week prior.

"Supposed to be," Buffy replied and couldn't hide the slight bitterness that was in her tone.

"I think maybe we need to read up on this nice lady," Jenny said, referring to Drusilla.

"I have been, and let's just say that this lady isn't so nice," Buffy said, voice laced with sarcasm. She couldn't complain; at least she wasn't stuck reading all of Spike's evil deeds. She left that research to Giles.

"Well, some of my new volumes may be more helpful," Giles said, standing up and heading towards his office. "Uh, my research is–" He was cut off as something came crashing through the library windows.

Buffy looked over to see two vampires rushing towards her as another went straight to Giles' office. She heard Jenny draw in a startled breath. "Behind the checkout stand! Now!" Buffy yelled. Jenny didn't hesitate to hide behind the counter.

It didn't take long for Buffy to dust the two vampires, having to use a stake from her weapons kit she and Giles had used for her training to kill them. She looked over to see Giles on the floor and quickly ran to him. "Are you okay?"

"My book!" He exclaimed, trying to sit up. "She took one of my books!"

Buffy turned around to see a bleached blonde vampire leap over the railing, making her escape through the stacks. She was going to run after her when she heard Giles groan in pain. Jenny had run over to assist in helping him stand, but Buffy couldn't take her eyes off where the vampire had escaped. She looked too familiar… it couldn't be…

"He said he killed it," Buffy said, shocked. "That's the vampire Ford said he killed."