NEEDED
By Sauscony

E-mail: sauscony@forty-two.co.nz
Rating: PG
Summary: An alternate ending to Buffy vs. Dracula
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel characters are copyrighted ©20th Century Fox, Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and the WB, and are used without permission. No copyright infringment is intended.

"You gonna drink that?"

Giles looked up into a pair of watchful grey eyes in a heart shaped face, all surrounded by a soft fall silky blonde hair tied loosely with a pale blue scarf.

"Are you going to drink that?" the apparition repeated, sounding vaguely belligerent.

"B-B-Buffy," he finally managed to stammer. "What, what are you doing here?"

"You haven't answered the question," she said flatly.

Giles looked at the still untouched glass of scotch, suddenly finding it totally unappealing. "No," he admitted.

"Good."

Buffy immediately picked up the glass and deposited it on the next table, all in one smooth movement. The young couple sitting at the table in question looked up in annoyance, took one look at the determined expression on her face and went back to whispering sweet nothings at each other without commenting. Buffy ignored them completely, taking the spare chair from Giles' table and turning it around so that she could sit across it with her arms resting on the back.

He still wasn't entirely sure he wasn't dreaming. Perhaps he's swallowed one too many glasses of scotch after all and this was one big, self-deluding hallucination. Buffy was still there, watching him in silence, which was a fairly unusual occurrence and added credence to the hallucination theory.

"What are you doing here?" he managed to ask finally.

"Well, duh!" The look and the tone were totally Buffy and he conceded she really was sitting across the table from him.

"Ah, yes," he agreed weakly.

"Gee, Giles." She shook her head at him. "I go to see my Watcher - to have an important and serious discussion I might add - and all I find is the signs of a hasty departure and a note for Willow."

"I'm not your Watcher anymore," he automatically.

To his surprise, she nodded seriously. "That's what Xander reminded me on the way here. I forget sometimes."

Giles wasn't up to contemplating the ramifications of that second statement; he was still dealing with the first. "Xander's here too?"

"And Willow," Buffy agreed. "She knew where you'd gone and Xander drove us up in Mom's car."

Giles looked around the bar, half expecting an immediate invasion.

"They're parking the car," Buffy explained, answering his unasked question. "They dropped me at the door so I could look for you and went to find a park. They'll be here soon. Or maybe not," she added after a reflective moment. "I looked like they might have a long walk."

"Delayed flights," Giles said. "The numbers of passengers, visitors and cars is starting to build up."

She nodded, as if this was a normal conversation, one about vampires and demons and saving the world. Giles felt that sense of the surreal creeping back up on him.

"Why did you come?"

"Why did you leave me?"

The two questions were asked at exactly the moment, the heart of the matter finally reached.

"You first," Giles offered instinctively, and at his words, Buffy's grip on the back of the chair tightened until the wood was in danger of cracking.

"Why did you leave me?" she repeated.

He tried to sound matter-of-fact and logical, but wasn't sure if he was successful. "Buffy, you've outgrown your need for me. You have another, younger support group. Willow and Tara can do the magic, you can all do the research. I've left my books and I won't send for them until Willow has finished scanning them. You have Riley, you don't need me. It's a teacher's job to make himself redundant, and I'm so proud of you, that you've reached that point."

It was only when he was finished that he remembered, with a growing sense of deadly deja vu, that it was exactly the same technique he had used at the beginning of her Freshman year. She had run away from him then, and the consequences had been disastrous. He hardly dared to look at her, feeling he'd just messed up again. Big time, as she herself might say.

Buffy was staring at him like he'd just gone insane before her eyes. "Giles, that is a load of it," she said flatly. "And you know it."

"No..." he started to protest, but she cut across him easily.

"It is too." Her voice softened, her expression turning usually vulnerable. He realised, suddenly, that he was the only one she let her guard down with enough to let that vulnerability show.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I should have told you, not taken the coward's way out and left a note."

"But you can't leave," she insisted. There was the slightest of shakes in her voice, and he hated himself for causing it. "I can't do it without you, Giles. I've told you that before. Even when I'm being horrible, self-centred Buffy and ignoring you - and I know I did that last year - I still need to know you're there, ready to catch me when I fall, the way you always do." She looked up, her expression rueful. "I guess I need to actually tell you that, huh?"

"Buffy..." He didn't know what to say, the answer man, lost without any answers at all.

Buffy swallowed and managed a smile that almost worked, even if it contained none of her usual brightness. "Do you want to know why I went to see you this morning? I needed to talk to you. I still do. Will you listen?"

"Of course I'll listen." He knew her, knew that whatever it was she had to say, it must be important to bring her to his door, bring her all the was to Los Angeles when she found he wasn't there.

"I..." Buffy hesitated, looking anywhere but at him. "Giles, you haven't been my Watcher for a while. I still think of you as my Watcher, but you haven't been really, have you?"

"Not officially," he agreed, carefully refraining from saying any more than that.

She smiled a little, as if she understood all the things he just hasn't said. "I haven't been training ... and I haven't really need to come to you for help."

"I agree," Giles said quietly, knowing it was her absence that had driven him to be here, sitting in a bar at LAX in the first place.

"Yeah," she agreed, seeming to understand exactly what he was thinking. "And that's why you're here, right? That's the answer to my question. You left me because I was being Independent-Girl and acting like I didn't need you anymore."

"You don't," he answered, and his voice was still quiet, but hope, traitorous hope, was starting to build inside him as he waited to hear what she would say next.

"Well, duh," she said, the derision directed at herself. "Of course I do. And this whole thing with Dracula ... it made me face up to some stuff, realise some stuff." She hesitated, something in her tone making Giles watch her more closely. There was more here than just her and him and there places in each other's lives. There was something deeper and stronger, and he hadn't been there when she needed to talk about it.

Her eyes dropped, studying the stains and gouges on the wooden table. "Ever since we did that spell, the one where we called on the First Slayer, I've been ... um, going out a lot. Every night, actually."

He didn't understand. "Patrolling?"

She shook her head, her gaze still focussed on the table. "Hunting. That's, that's what Dracula called it. And he was right. He understood my power better than I do. He saw darkness in it." She finally looked up at him, her voice dropping even further. "Giles, I can't even sleep if I don't ... kill something."

He wanted to reach out across the table, take her hands in his and tell her he would make it all better. But they had seen too much, been through to much for lies, even comforting ones.

"I need to know more," Buffy continued slowly. "About where I come from, about the other Slayers. I mean, maybe, maybe if I could learn to control this thing, I could be stronger. I could be better. But..." Her expression grew vulnerable again. "Giles, I'm scared. I know it's gonna be hard. And I can't do it without you. I need your help."

He opened his mouth, ready to promise her anything, when she spoke again, and he would have given her the moon and the stars and the sun if he could.

"Giles, I want you to be my Watcher again."

He couldn't help it. This time he did reach across the table, enfolding one of her small hands in his larger ones. He looked at her, unable to speak, all his answers in his eyes.

Buffy smiled and sighed, the small exhalation of air the only sign of how hard it had been for her to make that speech. But he knew, because he knew her.

He smiled. "I guess I'd better go and explain to the airline why I won't be getting on the plane," he said in what he hoped was a light, teasing voice. "Otherwise they might decide to blowup my now-unaccompanied bag on suspicion of being a bomb. I'd hate to lose that wonderful shirt I was forced to borrow from Ethan."

She laughed, just as he intended her to, the clouds lifting from her face. And before either of them quite knew what had happened, they were enfolded in each other's arms, the hug an acknowledgement of mutual need.

"I guess he's coming home with us," a new voice said, and they turned to see Xander and Willow standing there watching, both with delighted smiles on their faces.

All Giles could do was nod.

Yes, he was going home.

He was needed there.