CRADLE

Disclaimer, etc. as on first chapter.

Rating upped to PG-13 on this chapter for some language.

A/N: This scene's been nibbling at my brain for a while and finally I managed to fit it in - Buffy and Giles finally get around to having the Talk. Yet MORE angst and lots of Buffy-bitterness. This is also somewhat my attempt to figure out why Buffy really dumped Spike in "As You Were" because, to me, it seemed to come a little out of the blue. I refuse to believe she ended it just because of some stupid demon egg scheme, or because she was using him. I figured there had to be more to it… Anyway, it probably makes no sense. Review, please.

PS: To 'jill', who wants me to write faster - trust me, I'm going at top speed here. You people are lucky; you get a chapter a day, more or less. I've had people over on the "Farscape" page waiting for a chapter since about May… And 'kmoody' - makes no difference, really… I just wanted to see if I was right. And I was… I'd guessed you were a 'her' to begin with; just thought I'd check ;)

Cradle

Chapter Seven

Buffy lost track of time, sitting on the bottom step. It felt like she'd been crying for hours, although she knew that sensibly it could only have been a few minutes. She'd also forgotten that she wasn't alone downstairs. As a result, when a very concerned Giles gently placed his hand on her shoulder, she practically jumped out of her skin. The shock was enough to stop her sobbing; she looked up at his sympathetic and worried face, first in fright, and then silently begging him not to ask what was wrong.

"Buffy… are you all right?"

Damn. Well, she had to talk to someone, and Giles was the only one around who might possibly understand. She sniffed and wiped her eyes clumsily. Had she been of sound mind, she would have complained at the rhetorical (and stupid) question with some kind of pedantic remark. However, all she could do was numbly shake her head. "Not really…" She stood up slowly. "I… I need to talk to you…"

Giles nodded and indicated for her to sit down, walking behind her as she moved into the lounge. He removed the blanket from the sofa so she could sit, then wrapped it around her shoulders. Buffy pulled it tighter around herself gratefully. Giles pulled up a footstool opposite her and positioned himself on it in what he hoped was an approachable stance, and put on his "go-ahead-I'm-listening" face, handing her a handkerchief from about his person in case she needed it.

To Buffy, this scene was familiar, except it had been Tara she'd poured her heart out to. Fighting off the wave of sadness that overtook her, she took a deep breath.

"It's all right," he said reassuringly. "Just take your time."

She nodded and attempted to think how to even start. Taking another deep breath, she began. "I have to talk to someone, Giles. And you deserve to know what happened between… me and Spike."

He settled himself more comfortably on the footstool, and prepared for a long ride. "Go ahead."

Buffy launched into a slow, deliberate, and painstakingly detailed (though not detailed enough that it made them both uncomfortable) account of everything that had happened between them, starting from the time she'd kissed him after he'd stood up to Glory. She explained about how they'd ended up falling (literally) into their 'relationship', although she was loath to call it that, and how, despite her better judgement, she'd just kept going back. She told everything as though detached from it, with an almost glazed-over look in her eyes, because it was far too harrowing to throw herself back into the situations.

Throughout, Giles made the appropriate noises to urge her to carry on, even though he didn't like what he was hearing. She needed to get this off her chest. Bottling it all up had been hard on her, and he could sense she was glad to be finally unburdening herself on someone, even though he imagined she'd rather it wasn't him.

After approximately an hour and a half, she got to the part when Riley had reappeared in Sunnydale, and stopped. The house was suddenly eerily silent after her narrative. Buffy stared off into the distance, not really seeing anything, as though she was sorting something out in her head.

Giles waited a few seconds, then decided he'd better bring her out of it. "Buffy…"

"Huh?" She brought herself back to his plane of reality.

"You were saying…"

"Yeah. Sorry…" She blinked slowly as the final piece of her mental puzzle clicked into place. "God, it all makes sense now!" Giles gave her time to make sense of whatever she'd just worked out, and when she started again, she spoke faster, and much more bitterly compared to her previously subdued storytelling. "Riley. When he came back. He was married. Married, Giles. He just dropped himself into my life and dragged me along with him on some crazy mission, and did he bother to tell me? No. I found out when Mrs. Riley Finn appeared…" The bitterness, it seemed, was harboured mainly towards Riley and not his wife, because she continued a little more softly. "Her name was Sam. I wanted to hate her, I really did… but I couldn't. She was too nice for that; she didn't deserve it."

She went on to explain, in brief, about 'the Doctor', her brief liaison with Spike, and how Riley had found them together. "I found out the hard way that Spike was doing whatever the Hell he was doing with those demon eggs. I threw a grenade into the crypt without a second thought. I blew up his home, for God's sake… After Riley and Sam had gone, I went back there to inspect the damage. There was practically nothing left. What made it even worse was the fact that he'd forgiven me for it again. I told him it was over; I laid on a guilt trip about how I was using him and it was killing me. God, the look on his face…" She trailed off; this wasn't what she was trying to say. "But… I was just thinking about it, all of it. Riley, Sam, Spike… and I realised how it all works."

Giles gave her a look that implied he wished she'd hurry up and tell him, because he didn't have a clue. She continued, attempting to put into words what she'd just a moment ago figured out. "Riley married Sam; she's the nicest girl you could ever hope to meet. She's also brave, and strong, and all the things Riley couldn't handle when he was with me. But there's the difference, see… Riley couldn't handle my strength, not just because it's greater than his, but because, unlike Sam, I let it take over my life. I'm not nice any more. Sweet, innocent, little Buffy grew up into… Bitchy the Vampire Layer…" Giles cringed, and so did Buffy. It was uncalled for and she knew it, but getting it into the open had helped. She spoke again, quieter.

"I went back to Spike that day and used him just like I always had, but what really clinched it, the one thing that made me realise I couldn't keep doing it, was that I asked him to say he loved me…" She sighed. "All that time he'd been telling me willingly and I didn't want to hear it, I couldn't hear it. Not from Spike." This was veering away from the point she was struggling to find again, so she stopped and back-tracked. "Riley and Sam seemed so happy. And despite their lives as commandoes, they seemed so normal, too. I've never, ever had normal, Giles, at least not long term. There was Angel – definitely not normal. Then Riley – normal… right up until everything with Adam and the Initiative. And then Spike… boy, was that ever not normal. It is so much to ask that I have a simple relationship once in a while? Whatever I had with Spike was complicated… and that day just made the whole thing worse." She sighed. "Giles…?"

He cleared his throat after so long not speaking. "Yes?"

"You wanted to know if I love Spike?"

He didn't like where this was leading, but said nothing about it. "I did."

She seemed about to answer, but then apparently changed her mind, deciding to lead up to it. Giles was certain she was only doing it to infuriate him. "You know… all this time – must be over a year, now – he's told me he loves me, and… nothing. Disgust at first. Panic for a while. Then… nothing. It was just a Spike thing, something I'd accepted as one of his quirks. But that night… after I asked… the way he said it, so full of hope… I felt something. Guilt, maybe, that I'd led him on again thinking he'd gotten through to me. Or thinking I loved him. Now, I know what it was… After seeing Riley and Sam, their normality and happiness, I wanted to love him, to give him that much." Her eyes began to tear up. "But I couldn't, Giles. I wanted to and I couldn't; something in me wouldn't let me. I looked at Spike and saw a future exactly the same as the present – him loving me… me, trying so hard to love him back and being completely unable to. That's when I knew I had to end it. Whatever I felt for him, I refused to keep using him."

Giles still hadn't received a particularly straight answer to his question, but having heard everything that had happened, he wasn't surprised. Buffy was only just making sense of everything, right in front of him. He let the matter drop and moved on. "So… after you ended it," he said, "is that why he left?"

"You think anything's that simple where Spike's concerned?"

"I… I suppose not. What happened?"

"Pretty soon after that was Xander and Anya's wedding. You know about what happened with that. On my side of my life, things actually started getting slightly better. Then Spike turned up, dragging along some girl he'd picked up in a pathetic attempt to make me jealous. The really annoying thing is, it worked. We talked, he left, and that was the end of it. Or so I thought…" She paused to let this sink in. Or possibly for effect, Giles wasn't sure. "After the wedding, after Anya reappeared all newly-vengeanced and royally pissed at Xander, it all started going wrong again. We found a camera in the front yard – Xander naturally assumed it was Spike's doing, so I confronted him about it. This time, it was him who'd had enough; he threw me out of his crypt. If it had ended there it would have been fine, all loose ends aside. Except it didn't end there. Turns out the Nerd Herd had cameras all over town so they could watch me… including one in the Magic Box. Willow was trying to trace the source of them and accidentally tapped into the Magic Box camera…"

Buffy stopped again as the memory came back, the image of Spike and Anya stinging almost as much now as it did at the time. Giles waited while she composed herself enough to continue. "We saw – me, Willow, Dawn and Xander – we saw Anya… we…" She couldn't say it. Giles and Anya were close; it would hurt him to know what she'd done and Buffy didn't really want to be the one to break the news. Technically, that was Anya's job, and it really wasn't even Buffy's place to inform him.

Giles was concerned again. Whatever they'd seen, Buffy was obviously upset by it, and it must have been serious. She lived on the Hellmouth and was witness to demons and God only knew what else on a daily basis. For something she'd seen to have this much of an effect on her… well, he wasn't sure he wanted to know. "What is it, Buffy?" he asked, softly. "What was it you saw?"

She sniffed and avoided his eyes. "Anya and Spike…" Silence. "They were…" Buffy shuddered. "On the table…"

Buffy looked up. Giles seemed about to explode, and was doing a very good job of containing himself because of the late (or, technically, early) hour. He managed to calm himself down. "What…?"

"She did it to get back at Xander, I guess; he did it to hurt me. I don't think either of them intended to. But to cut a long and horrible story short, that's how Xander found out about me and Spike, and that's why the air's a little chilly between us. Willow found out through Tara later. And before you ask, that isn't why Spike left, either."

"You're not telling me this gets any worse, surely?"

"Afraid so…" This was it. This was the moment she'd have to come clean to Giles about why he'd really left. She prayed he'd let her finish, and hoped he'd at least try and understand why she could forgive him. It wasn't going to be easy. Keeping her voice steady, she re-accounted it. "Spike got it into his head that we had to talk, and I suppose he was right. But by that stage, I'd had enough of his cheating, in every sense of the word, and I didn't want to know. I was in the bathroom getting ready for a bath when he showed up. He started explaining himself, saying he'd gone to the Magic Box to get a spell to use on himself because he was sick of being in love with me. I can't say I blame him. He told me that I should have just let Xander stake him. When I told him I couldn't, of course he asked me why – he knew why, the bastard, but he wanted me to say it. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to convince Spike of anything?

"I have a fairly good idea, yes…"

"Well, it's difficult. What else could I do, Giles? Lie to him again? I admitted that I had feelings for him, and that was the truth… I know that's not what you want to hear, but it's not exactly something I could control. He was adamant that I loved him… of course, I told him I didn't, that I could never trust him enough for it to be love. But when Spike gets an idea in his head, he doesn't let up… and when he wants something, he's used to getting it…"

Nausea threatened, but she fought it. It was more a result of lack of sleep and emotional stress than because of what she was describing. She didn't need to continue for Giles to immediately guess what had happened, simply by looking in her eyes. He placed both hands on her shoulders firmly and examined her face. "Good God, Buffy… I didn't think he'd be capable of…" He looked sickened. "Did he-?"

"No… no, I was fine. The bath did more damage than he did. I managed to stop him. That cracked tile in the bathroom is where he hit the wall. Must've really hurt him."

"After what he did, Buffy, I wouldn't worry about harming him."

"He fled almost right after; he stayed long enough for me to rip his heart out for about the hundredth time this year, though. I don't think I'll ever forget the look on his face when he realised what he'd nearly done; I'd swear it was remorse. Whatever the real reason is for him leaving, it was because of that. Now, he could be anywhere… he could be a little pile of dust for all I know… and I'm… I'm worried about him, Giles…"

Her Watcher's face was filled with horror by the admittance as he moved his hands to his lap and began fidgeting. "You've obviously worked through this… um… incident, but… it sounds almost as if you…"

"Forgive him." It wasn't merely a completion of his train of thought; it was a statement. Giles was, as expected, utterly horrified by this.

"How can you?!" he demanded. "What he did was despicable."

"I know-"

"What happens if he comes back, Buffy?" Giles continued, not letting her explain. "What if he decides to finish what he started?"

"He won't-"

"He's already achieved a conquest over Anya… perhaps he'll consider trying with Willow next. Or Dawn. Would you forgive him then?"

Before either of them knew what was happening, Buffy had slapped him. They both recoiled in shock, Giles moving a hand to his quickly reddening cheek, and Buffy covering her mouth. She recovered enough to admonish him for his words. "You know… you know… that if he laid a finger on Dawn I would stake him without a second thought. He would never do that. What he did to me, he did in a moment of blind hope because he thought… It doesn't matter any more. He loves Dawn like a daughter. And did you forget the chip? Even if he wanted to, he couldn't." In the back of her mind, it registered that she was actually defending him. "He'd die before harming her. As for Willow, if he did anything to her, he knows I'd kill him for that, too."

"I'm sorry… I wasn't thinking. You're right about that. But I-I still can't understand why you can forgive him so easily."

"Because so far this year I've used him, insulted him, beaten him to within an inch of his unlife, blown up his home, and set his poker winnings free." Off Giles' look, she added. "Long story; doesn't matter. What does matter is that every single time he forgave me instantly. If he can forgive me all that – things I did deliberately most of the time – then I can forgive him. Technically, he didn't do anything to me. He tried to, yes… but none of us were of sound mind, then." Her eyes pleading with him, she reached for one of his hands. "Please try and understand… It's my choice, whether it's right or not…"

Giles nodded. "I don't like it… but you're right; it is your choice."

There followed a somewhat empty pause. "Bet you're glad you left, huh?"

"Actually, no. I might have been able to prevent all of this."

"I doubt it…" She got up from the couch, wobbling slightly from having sat down so long, and handed Giles back his blanket. The sky had lightened considerably and she guessed it was around four in the morning by this point. "I'd better get some sleep. I have to be at the Double Meat in about four hours."

She was halfway to the stairs, when Giles, now sitting on the couch again, remembered something. "Um, Buffy…"

She turned. "Yeah?"

"I'm glad we had this conversation… you obviously needed it. But I still haven't established why you were crying."

He was right. Buffy thought back to a few hours previously and tried to remember. It was the flashback that had triggered it, but it wasn't the reason for her tears. Remembering, she wrapped her arms around herself and looked back at Giles, knowing he wasn't going to like it. "I miss him…" One tear rolled down her cheek. "I know it's wrong, and crazy, and all kinds of bad… but I miss Spike."

Instead of reprimanding her for it, Giles held one arm out to indicate that it was safe to approach for a hug. Buffy returned to the sofa and buried her head willingly into his shoulder. She sniffled. "I just want him back here, Giles, for Dawn if nothing else. Everything feels all wrong without him around."

"It's understandable. He has been here for a while now."

She nodded. "I just… I wish I knew where he was. He didn't even say goodbye, he simply upped and ran and it's my fault…" She was getting tired, her speech starting to slur. Giles shushed her quietly, rocking slightly, and waited for her to fall into a much needed sleep.

He'd heard a lot of information, and had a lot of things to sort out. Buffy was now the least of his problems – she seemed to have finally sorted herself out to some degree, although Spike's absence was beginning to take its toll – but he needed to find Anya and talk to her. She'd been severely neglected of late by everyone, including himself. Not only that, he had to keep a close eye on Willow, just in case she relapsed, and on Xander. Looking after her was no easy task, and any weakness in spirit would result in them both breaking.

Wondering briefly when his life had become so complicated, Giles leaned back on the sofa, being careful not to wake the sleeping Slayer currently using him as a pillow. He laid the blanket over her and closed his eyes, finally managing to get some sleep of his own…

To be continued…

Okay, this ran away with me at an alarming rate. I apologise if it's hideously out of character. I also apologise for the rambling re-account of, um, all of Season 6... Anyway, Chapter 8 will be… well, I'm not sure… but I'll try and have Spike back for Chapter 9, I promise… Keep those lovely reviews rolling!