criticism are always welcome. Thank you to everyone wh has reviewed so far. Special thanks go
out to Cyberwulf and Teri who seem to be the only two following my story right now. I'll continue
writing this story, even if it is for just you two. I don't think I could stop writing this one if I wanted to.
Chapter 4
Buffy walked through the darkened
streets of Sunnydale, her mind racing over the past several hours.
Giles was back. It was so surreal. She never
thought she'd ever see him again. He disappeared from her
life and made sure no one would ever find him again. When she first saw him, all of the pain that she'd
bottled up deep inside of her after his leaving came
flooding back. She wanted to lash out. She wanted
to attack. For a moment, she even wanted to physically
hurt him.
That was bad enough, but it felt
even worse when the anger passed. Giles was back. He didn't
have
to come back, but he did. He came back to protect
her. The idea that he would cross the Atlantic, just
to protect her made her feel wonderful. He could
have just called and warned her. Still, even though her
anger passed quickly, she somehow couldn't forgive him. She was cold towards him; indifferent. She had
to leave the house because she couldn't seem to tell
him that things would be alright, and she couldn't stand
the hurt expression on his face anymore.
Now Buffy found herself in one
of the many cemeteries of Sunnydale. She walked passed a freshly
dug
grave, deep in thought, but didn't even blink as a newborn
vampire surged out of the fresh earth and attacked
her. She casually plunged a stake through his heart
and continued on.
"I should just forgive him." She said to no one in particular. "It shouldn't be that hard. 'Giles, welcome
back. I've missed you. Hope you'll stick
around for a little while.'" Another vampire leapt out from behind
a grave stone and charged at Buffy. She rolled
her eyes in annoyance. "Do you mind?" She whined at the
vampire and staked him.
"Where was I? Oh yeah. Convincing Giles to stay." Did she want Giles to stay? Did
she really expect
him to? She spent the rest of the walk through
the graveyard trying to answer these questions, unsuccessfully.
Her thoughts were disrupted again
when she reached the edge of the grave yard, this times by her sixth
sense. She froze, tuning her senses to something
her intuition was already telling her was there.
A dark figure seemed to drop
from the sky. Buffy jumped back in surprise as the figure attacked. A fist
caught her in the face and sent her reeling. Buffy
was more prepared for the second attack, a roundhouse
kick. Buffy caught the black leather boot that
was aimed at her face and pushed back. The shadowy figure
fell into the light of a street lamp.
"Katherina, I presume." The pale, dark haired girl flashed a feral grin from the pavement. "So you know
me already. Can't say I'm all that surprised." Her voice was deceptive, her soft British accent disguising the
harshness of the speaker. She continued. "Then you'll also know why I'm here."
"Yeah, the council doesn't like
my wildly witty style of slayage in Sunnydale." Buffy's eyes opened
wide.
"Wow! How's that for alliteration?"
Katherina rolled her eyes and jumped to her feet with ease.
Buffy had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. "You're going to insist on this, aren't you?"
Katherina smiled grimly. "It's my duty." Then she attacked, this time with more passion. Buffy took the
defensive, gauging her opponent's fighting style and
learning her weaknesses. Katherina was an excellent
fighter, throwing punches and kicks with precision and
speed. She, however, had a difficult time predicting
Buffy's more spontaneous and creative moves. Within
minutes, both slayers sported a colorful assortment
of bruises and cuts. They paused in their fighting,
both breathing heavily, both ready at a moment's notice
to begin the fight again.
"You're very good." Katherina admitted during the break.
"Thanks. You too." Buffy returned.
"Well, this has been fun, and
very educational, but as you know, one should never plan on winning a war
in the first battle. I'll be seeing you." With that, she leapt up into the air. Buffy followed her, and saw
where
she must have come from in the first place. A large
tree limb was hanging right above them. Buffy prepared
to follow the other girl, but before she could, Katherina
vanished into the dark foliage.
**********
After Buffy left, Dawn took Giles
up to the spare room. She happily went to work collecting sheets
and
towels and being helpful. Giles, feeling useless,
went down to the kitchen to make some tea.
At the sound of the kettle whistling,
Dawn came downstairs. She took a mug out of the cabinet as Giles
poured some of the hot water into his own cup. "When did you start drinking tea?" Giles asked, amused at
the amount of sugar Dawn put in her cup. Dawn answered
by shrugging happily.
They moved into the living room
and settled down, Dawn on the armchair and Giles on the couch. Over
the span of three cups of tea, they chatted about the past several months. They swapped stories and reminisced
about times shared. Pretty soon though, Dawn's
eyelids grew heavy, and no matter how much caffeine she
ingested, she just couldn't stay awake.
"Dawn, maybe you should go upstairs
now." Giles said gently. She was curled into the armchair,
her eyes
barely half slits. She stirred at the sound of
his voice. "I'm listening." She mumbled. "'M not sleepy."
"Dawn, it's actually quite late. You have school tomorrow. Perhaps it's best if you..."
"No." Dawn responded, only a little more alertly. "Finish your story about the annoying lady."
"I finished that one about half an hour ago."
Dawn looked at him through bleary eyes. "Oh. Then maybe I should go to bed."
"That's a good idea." Giles
helped her to her feet and watched her go up the stairs. She staggered
a bit
from exhaustion, but managed to get all the way to the
top of the stairs without falling. Once there, she waved
goodnight to Giles and trudged down the hall to her bedroom.
Giles sighed and walked back
into the kitchen to fill his cup with something a little stronger than
tea. He
found a nearly full bottle of scotch in a cupboard. He took the bottle and the mug into the living room and
flopped back onto the couch.
He was tired, but
his mind was too busy to allow sleep. The next few minutes, he spent
in silence. He had
gotten used to the constant sounds associated with living
in any city. Despite Sunnydale's tendencies towards
apocalypse, it was a relatively quiet town. Aside
from the sound of Dawn brushing her teeth upstairs, all Giles
could hear were the crickets, and a light breeze rustling
the trees. Such calm sounds. Such peaceful, soothing...
**********
Giles was startled awake by the
sound of the front door opening. He had dozed off on the couch, he
didn't
know how long ago. The empty tea cup that was dangling
from his fingertips fell to the ground when he sat up.
He turned to see a shadow pass
and a second later, he heard water running in the kitchen. Buffy
must be home.
He took a look at the glowing display on the VCR. It read 2:45am, but it was blinking, so Giles wasn't certain that
it was accurate.
He picked his cup up off the
floor and proceeded into the kitchen. He wasn't certain this was
the right time,
but he needed a chance to talk to Buffy alone, without
the rest of the world listening in.
He walked tentatively into the
kitchen. Buffy turned at the slight noise behind her. She was
still in high gear
from the fight earlier. When she faced him, he
nearly dropped his tea cup again. He hadn't expected to see her
so badly beaten. She had a deep purple bruise on
her left cheek, a cut on her forehead, and many small scrapes
and cuts on her hands and arms.
Without thinking, he placed the
cup on the table and walked over to her, taking the damp cloth from her
hand.
He sat her down on a nearby chair and began to clean
her wounds for her. At first, she pulled away from his
touch, shooting a dangerous expression at him, but exhaustion
and a desperate need for contact weakened her.
Neither one said a word as Giles worked. When he
had finished with her forehead, she smiled a little and a soft,
bitter laugh escaped before she could stop it.
"What is it?" Giles asked. It was odd how loud the question sounded. It was barely more than
a whisper.
Buffy shrugged and looked at the floor. "It's like
you never left. It's weird."
Giles didn't know how to respond to that, so he waited patiently for her to continue.
"It's weird because you
did leave," She laughed again, and Giles winced when he saw a tear
roll out of the
corner of her eye. "and I know you're going to
leave again. I just got used to being alone. Damnit Giles,
why
did you come back now?"
Giles ran a hand through his
hair and then took his glasses off to polish them. "I don't expect
you to forgive
me. I did what I thought was best. As to
my leaving again, well, I hadn't given it much thought yet. I've
learned
to live one crisis at a time. May I ask you something?"
"What?"
"When this is all over, do you
want me to stay? Things are very different now. You may not
even want
me ar..."
"Don't." Giles stopped
speaking. "Don't ask that right now. How can you ask that?" Buffy passed a hand
over her face. Her eyes were tearing up again,
and Giles felt the same happening to him, involuntarily. "Giles,
you're right. Things are very different now." She laughed nervously. "I don't think you know how different
they are." She had still managed to keep her affair
with Spike a secret from everyone but Tara. She hoped that
she could keep it that way for a little while longer.
In the silence, Giles took the
initiative. "Buffy, I left to give you space and time to grow up,
and reach your
full potential. I think you've done that now. I know you don't need a watcher in your life any longer, and I'm
sure that things are quite different, as you said. If you don't want me...perhaps it's best if I just leave when this
whole mess is sorted out." He looked at the ground,
defeated.
"No." Her response was
abrupt. Giles' eyebrows lifted in surprise. "I think maybe
I do want you to stay.
I thought about it while I was patrolling. I'm
angry about what you did, but I still miss you. I want to hate you.
I just can't seem to...you're one of my closest friends
and I want you in my life."
Giles took a deep breath. Buffy noticed that a muscle in his jaw tightened as he nodded his head. It was a
silent affirmation to himself, and one of the most emotional
displays Giles had ever made in front of her. "Which,
uh, which brings me to my next question. What happened
on patrol?"
"Oh!" It hadn't even occurred
to Buffy that she had yet to tell him about Katherina. "Well you
know, the
usual; vampires, demons, evil slayer puppets of the council."
"Slayers? You ran into Katherina?" Giles asked in alarm.
"It was no big. We butted
heads, circled each other a couple of times, tried to pull each other's
hair out, and
then she jumped into the trees and ran away." Buffy
took the cloth from the table where Giles had left it and
began rinsing it in cold water from the sink.
"So she was just sizing you up."
"Basically, yeah."
"This could be serious Buffy. Did you manage to learn any weaknesses? Did you recognize her fighting
style? Did..."
"Giles, it's really late and
we're both going to be down here in a few hours with doughnuts and coffee. Can
we do this then?"
Giles nodded. "Are you
going to be alright?" He asked, indicating towards her wounds. They already
appeared to be healing.
Buffy smiled, genuinely this time. "I'll be fine." And with that, she walked tiredly to bed.
**********
Early the next morning, all of
the Scoobies were assembled around Buffy's dining room table. Buffy
was
pacing back and forth, her wounds from the previous battle
merely pale scars now. Giles sat bleary eyed with
a cup of strong tea in one hand and a jelly doughnut
in the other. Xander looked like he hadn't slept at all that
night. Willow and Dawn seemed like the only two
who had slept more than a few restless hours. Dawn was
running around the kitchen taking care of coffee, tea,
and other breakfast items not provided by Xander.
Willow was already on her laptop, looking for any information
that might help. Tara wasn't there. She had
early classes that she couldn't miss.
Buffy explained what had happened
the previous night. "She's strong. Stronger than Faith. She's a
technical fighter. She didn't have any weaknesses,
except that she was having a hard time anticipating my
moves."
"Well that's strange. I
would have expected the council to prepare her. They know Buffy's
fighting
style." Giles wondered.
"Yeah," answered Willow. "but they've been training her since she was a little kid to be a council
slayer.
I mean, she's only been learning about Buffy since the
council decided to...you know..."
"Good point Will. She probably
hasn't had much time to adjust." Buffy was still pacing back and
forth
through the dining room. "Okay, so she's really
well trained, but not much field experience. That's not leaving
me much of an advantage. A couple more fights and
I think she'll be able to kick my ass."
"So the question is" Xander
summed up for everyone. "what are we going to do about this slayer
and how
are we going to get it done fast?"
Everyone fell silent, all understanding
the implications of what Xander just said. What were they going to
do
about Katherina? Were they going to kill her? She wasn't like Faith. She wasn't evil as far as they knew. She
was a pawn of the council. She didn't deserve to
die.
"We should try to talk to her, I guess." Willow suggested.
"Yeah." Xander answered with too much enthusiasm. "And then we can all go out for ice cream!"
"Xander, that's not helping." Giles set his tea down and rubbed t he bridge of his nose. "Be that as it
may, he has a point."
"But..." Willow started hopefully.
"We don't want this to become
another incident like Faith, but we may not have a choice." Giles
turned to
Buffy. "If you run into her again, try to open
a dialog with her, but..."
"If push comes to shove I'll make sure I'm the one doing t he shoving." Buffy said, reassuringly.
"Good."
"So standard Slayer alert all
around." Xander quipped. "No one get in the Slayers' way, and
we're out
of doughnuts, and I'm late for work." He jumped
up as he looked in alarm at his watch and ran out the door,
leaving a very confused group of friends trying to catch
up.
"Okaaaay..." Buffy commented.
"Yes, well." Giles replaced his glasses on his face.
"Hey!" Dawn finally spoke
up. "If we can win this new slayer over to our side, then maybe you
can take a
break or retire or something." She took a seat
next to Giles.
"Dawn, we've been over this before. I can't just give up being a slayer. It's not a job. It's...it's
a...it's just
what I am."
"Fine!" Dawn yelled. She pushed away from the table and ran angrily up to her room.
"I'll talk to her!" Willow jumped up, eager to help.
When she was gone, Buffy sighed and looked at Giles. "Things haven't changed much, have they?"
"No. I don't suppose they
have."
