Author: Athenae
Spoilers: Everything up to "Revelations"
Summary: Missing scene from that episode. What did Buffy leave behind her when she left the library that day?
Disclaimer: They aren't mine, though if they only were ...
Archive: Just let me know where you put it
Revelation, n. [From LL. revelatio (onis), from Latin revelatus, plural of
revelare, to draw away] 1. Revealing or disclosing 2. Something disclosed; disclosure; especially a striking disclosure, as of something not previously known or realized.
Disloyal girl.
The sound of Buffy's footsteps faded across the library and the familiar creak and swish of the door cut Giles' strings. He slumped into his chair and tossed his glasses onto his desk. His face hot with anger.
Selfish girl.
If she'd stayed one more instant she'd have noticed how hard his hands were shaking.
Faithless girl.
That he's being childish, that he's a grown man and she a child of eighteen, that Angel has a claim on her that he never will, that both of them were blameless in this, mattered not a whit at the moment, thank you.
Damn her. Damn her for hour after hour of white-hot pain, the sound of Angelus' taunting voice barely audible over the roaring panic in his ears. Damn her for the taste of his own blood in his mouth. Damn her for never visiting him in the hospital. Damn her for three months of silence. Damn her for the fresh pink skin that knitted his hands together, that striped across his back. Damn her for the nightmares she never had to hear. Damn her for the long dark between sunset and dawn when all he did was stare at his crucifix, and pray to a god in whom he'd never believed that she was still alive.
"You have no respect for me, or the job I perform."
Could he have sounded a bit more like a stuffed Burberry shirt there, perhaps? Just a bit? Could he have said something a little more bloodless?
Unfortunate metaphor, that.
He is eloquent in five languages. Damn her for rendering him mute in them all.
There had been recriminations when she returned, from the others of course. Willow had been angry enough on his behalf for three Watchers, and Xander … betrayed on so many levels the boy hardly knew at which to take the most offense. They tore her to pieces, they could, they were her equals.
He has never been her equal.
Buffy was so fragile when she came back. And he was so pathetically grateful simply to hear her voice in his rooms again, he never thought to tell her he still woke up smelling the cold stone of Angel's mansion. She's suffered enough, he thought then, and she knows. She knows the cost of what she did.
And then she walked into the library, and the ease with which she smiled at him sucked the air from his lungs.
Heartless girl.
"Damn it to hell!"
His arm swept across his desk, sending everything on it crashing to the floor. His glass pencil case shattered, shards of diamonds scattering all around him. The spine of his diary split, and pages fluttered at his feet. He kicked at them, feeling ridiculous, and angrier for it.
"Giles?"
"What, for the love of God?" he snapped, spinning around, only to see Willow's bottomless eyes.
"I'm sorry, Willow, I—" He gestured helplessly at the mess.
She gave him a glance, dropped her backpack and began gathering up papers.
Strange tender-hearted Willow, who had nursed him back to health all those endless summer days, her own injuries forgotten. He slept in his office and she pretended not to hear him when the dreams came, and she paid his electric bill when he forgot and brought him his dry cleaning.
Her motherly ministrations, and Xander's mother's leftovers, had kept him alive those long weeks. He'd never really thanked her.
He knelt to help her and they worked in silence for a little while. Then she rocked back on her heels and looked at him.
"Nobody did the 'I statements'" she said softly, and his throat tightened.
"I know." He sucked at a cut from a small shard of glass, grateful for the little sting, the taste of copper so terribly familiar.
She went to fetch a broom from the closet, and stopped, her back to him.
"I think what scares me most," she said, very small and quiet, "is how alone she must feel, to keep that from us. How she must think there's no way we could understand, no way we could forgive. It's so scary, thinking that I'm so far away from her, she couldn't share the joy she got out of being with Angel again with me."
She crossed the room and leaned the broom against the doorframe, not looking at him yet, looking at the glass dust glittering on the library linoleum.
"That's what I don't know if I can forgive," she said. "Not that she went back to him.
"That she was happy, and I didn't know why."
It was a long time before he was able to look up, and when he did, Willow was gone.
Clever girl.
He swept the last of the shards of glass out from under his desk, taped the flyaway pages of his diaries back in place, and closed the door on the whole mess.
He sat down at the library table, and opened his books. Surely somewhere, in there, would be a solution. Worlds away, taken back centuries by the markings on the pages, he jumped when Buffy cleared her throat behind him.
"I'm sorry," she said.
He turned to face her, but she was looking at his closed office door. The late afternoon sun gilded her hair and shone a halo round her smooth shoulders. And he saw, suddenly, her, as an old woman, skin wrinkled, muscles wasted away, as beautiful a wreck and ruin as ever was found on Mount Olympus.
His anger was like the weights that dragged down the edges of a fishing net, and he wanted to cut them free and float, almost weightless, to the top of the waves and let her pull him out of the water, to safety.
"It was … hard," she said, looking now at his gnarled hand. "You can't forget about it, ever."
"Yes," he whispered. "And no."
Buffy began to pace, her absurdly high heels tapping out a rhythm of despair on the linoleum. "How did this happen?" she asked. "How did we get so far apart? How did we get to this … place, where …"
"Where you can say you're sorry until you're blue in the face, and it won't matter?" he snapped, feeling the rage drag him beneath the surface again. "Where sorry doesn't matter at all?
"Words used to be everything to me." He ran his hands through his hair, getting distracted. "Words were the way I understood the world, the way I could exist in it and play a part."
He was talking to himself now, not to her. "But you talk to me, and it just … glances off. It isn't even about sorry. Do you think I need sorry, after everything we've been through? It's not about sorry.
"I miss you," he said. "I miss thinking I know you, better than anyone."
She bowed her head, and he watched a point at the top of her spine, the marble-white skin at the nape of her neck. She'd lived in the sun her whole life, but she was so pale.
"Don't wig out," she finally said, without turning around. "I'm going to hug you."
She put her arms around his shoulders and put her strength into the embrace, and he didn't dare speak. And when she let him go, it was with a whisper that told him they'd solved nothing, that the weight of the net was heavier than ever, that they were both close to drowning in its tangles.
"I miss you, too," she said, and turned again, and walked out. Again.
Consistent girl.