Giles awoke some time later, but the waves from the pool were just beginning to dissipate. He watched the slow-motion ripples in fascination for a few moments before he realized that he was actually in a great deal of pain. "My head again," he groaned to himself in disgust. "What adventure could ever be complete without the requisite concussion?"

"Glad to see that you're awake," came a voice shrouded in darkness. "Time to come with us." Giles whipped his head back and forth, ignoring the stabs of agony that his quick movements were causing, and searching for the source of that mysterious voice. His efforts to pierce the shadows were fruitless, but became unnecessary when a group of five stepped forward.

Giles studied the band warily, wondering whether they were his hosts or his captors. They were not a particularly attractive bunch. The man who had spoken, the apparent leader, had scraggy, tousled hair down to his shoulders and looked to be in his mid-thirties. With him were three other men, ranging in ages from late-twenties to early-fifties, and a woman of indeterminate age. All of them were dirty and unkempt. Giles had no desire to spend any amount of time in their company. "I'm, ah, afraid that it won't be possible for me to, um, accompany you right now. I'm, uh, looking for someone."

"Doesn't matter," responded the man curtly. "You don't get a choice here. If you came from above, then Buffy will want to see you."

"Bu-, Did you say Buffy," Giles gasped. "She's the person for whom I'm searching!" Giles knew he was grinning like a fool now, but he didn't care. "Yes, please, take me to Buffy."

The man grunted in response and nodded to the rest of his group. The three men set out down a dark passageway, and the leader silently gestured to Giles, indicating that he should proceed after them. He and the woman followed the Watcher, carefully obscuring their passage behind them.

The group moved silently and carefully for an hour or so, and Giles got the uncomfortable impression that they were moving through hostile territory. His nerves were on edge, and he felt like he had to fight down the urge to scream. Still, he had no fear of treachery. They were taking him to Buffy; he could feel it. He had always felt a thrum through his nervous system whenever his Slayer was near, and that beat was increasing by the moment. He had first felt this tingling a year and a half ago when Buffy had walked through the double doors of his library, and had despaired of ever feeling it again.

Whatever unseen threat had set the party so on edge never manifested itself. Although he saw no markers to indicate any real difference in terrain, his companions suddenly relaxed their guard and began talking amongst themselves quietly. The leader continued to regard Giles with suspicion, however. Obviously trying for nonchalance, and failing abysmally, he asked, "So, you know Buffy?"

"Um, yes, actually. I'm her, ah–" Giles hesitated, not sure how he should quantify himself. The idea of "Watcher" was too difficult to explain, the word "mentor" sounded cold and impersonal, and "high school librarian" sounded insane. Still, the hostile gaze he was receiving between his shoulder blades told him that he had better come up with something. "She's ah–um, we're friends." Giles smiled ruefully to himself. "Of a kind."

The man grunted skeptically. "That's some friendship, if you'd come to hell just to find her." Giles shrugged non-comittally, and the man scowled at him. "It's been a while since the slavers put on human faces and tried to sneak into our camp. I think they're still pissing themselves over what Buffy did to em last time." Giles looked curiously at his companion, wondering whether there was a threat hidden in that statement. "Course that's nothing compared to what we would do to any slaver that tried to take her out." Ah, so it was a threat, and an open one at that. Giles was alone, in a dark and hostile place, and he supposed that he should be afraid, but all he could feel at that moment was overwhelming gladness that Buffy had surrounded herself with people who were so loyal towards her.

Before Giles could think of a response, they passed through a curtained doorway to the sound of an achingly familiar voice. "–not my first choice either, but we don't have a lot of options here." She was turned away from him, but Giles was just as glad. It gave him an opportunity to pull himself together before she saw him. "We are going to be out of fresh water in a few weeks if we don't take back those tunnels. Jared, you take your unit and--"

Giles zoned out the rest of Buffy's speech so that he could study her. Buffy's hair was darker than he had ever seen it, and longer. Even though it wasn't much cleaner than that of his new companions, he still liked it very much. More than her hair, there was something different about his Slayer that intrigued Giles. Something about the way she held herself, and the easy air of command in her voice, spoke of a confidence and ease with herself that she had never really possessed before. Of course, she had had years to grow into herself...

And that was when it struck him. When Giles laid out the spell, he had calculated that Buffy had spent ten to fifteen years down here just from the time that Lily had called him ... but he hadn't stopped to determine what that meant to Buffy. It was a puzzle that he needed to figure out in order to ensure the efficaciousness of his spell; it wasn't real. His Slayer hadn't *really* spent the last of her childhood in hell, she hadn't *actually* lost all the years of her young adulthood to a demon dimension. But she had, and this woman calmly planning out an attack was proof.

"God, Buffy, I'm so sorry..." Giles whispered his apology like a prayer. His voice was so soft that it barely reached his own ears, but Buffy heard it. In the few months since he last saw her Giles had forgotten about her enhanced Slayer hearing, so he was surprised when she swung around. He felt like a bug beneath a microscope, trapped by her penetrating gaze.

"Giles? Are you– can it-- God, Giles!" Suddenly, Buffy was holding him, crushing him to her chest and squeezing all the air out of him. It felt wonderful, the oxygen deprivation complimenting his joy and relief rather nicely. "I can't believe you're here! I never thought that I would see you again." She released him enough to get a good look at his face, though she kept hold of his arms in a painful grasp. An expression of sad wonder crept across her face. "You look just the way I remember you..."

You look just the way I remember you. That phrase brought home to Giles just what his delays had cost Buffy. How many years had she been down here? She looked like she was around thirty, give or take a year or three. "I should have come sooner." Giles blinked, surprised at how rough his voice sounded. He was even more surprised when he realized that there were tears on his face. This wasn't like him; he didn't normally express his emotions so openly. Of course, he didn't ruin his Slayer's life on a daily basis either. Despite his efforts to regain control of his voice, he stuttered out, "I'm, I'm, I'm just so sorry, Buffy."

Buffy had tears on her face as well, but she smiled through them. "You're here to save the day; what do you have to be sorry about, Giles?"

"I should have gotten here sooner, or been more proficient with my magic so that I could have done the spell faster," or stopped you from running away in the first place, or prevented myself from being kidnapped, "or, or something." Giles closed his eyes in pain, and attempted to reign in his swirling emotions. "Buffy, I–"

"Wow, you really are just the same," Buffy said wetly. "Still taking the blame for things you can't control. I got me down here, and I chose to stay when Lily left." She gave him a rueful smile that churned his insides. "Of course, if you're offering to take me home now, I wouldn't say no."

Somehow Giles fought back his tears and smiled back at her. "Anytime you like, Buffy."

Buffy nodded at him, and then turned back to the people she had been addressing earlier. Everything about her changed, and Giles wondered whether the carefree girl he had once known still existed outside his memories. "Change in plans, people. There will be no more raids or attempts to recapture lost territory. I want to concentrate all of our forces on our home base and the area where Giles came through." Buffy turned towards Giles' anonymous companion, who was looking at him with not much less suspicion than he had been earlier. "Whereabouts did you find him, Tim?"

"The tunnels southeast of the refinery, about two hundred paces or so," came the quick response.

Buffy turned back to him with a slight hint of fear in her eyes. "You were lucky Tim found you, Giles." She shot a hard look at the hapless Tim. "We normally don't venture that far out, at least not that close to the enemy's territory." Turning back to her lieutenants, Buffy said, "Jared, pull back every deep patrol and put a hold on all offensives. After you've done that, send as many people as we can spare out to those tunnels. They aren't going to be easy to hold, but we're going to have to until we're ready to move. Every man, woman, or child who isn't protecting home base or holding those tunnels needs to be gathering things together. I don't want to stay down here one day longer than we need to. How long will the gate stay open, Giles?"

"Uh, it's hard to say. Lily will close it in five of her minutes. If I had to guess, I would say that is somewhere between three and five months down here..."

"That should be just about the time Aasha's baby is born," Buffy mused to herself. Her eyes suddenly flashed upon Jared, and her tone became much more decisive. "But I don't want to wait that long. I want to be gone before the northern spring dries up, which is going to be a lot sooner than that. I'm glad to know that we have some extra time if we need it, but I want to be able to move as quickly as possible!" Buffy lost her focused look and produced a soft smile. It made her look much closer to the seventeen-year-old girl that Giles remembered. "We're going home, guys. We're really going home..."

The crowd of people surrounding Buffy all looked stunned or overjoyed, or a heady combination of the two. All except for Giles' captor, Tim. He gave Giles a hard stare and then addressed his leader. "Buffy? Do you really think it's a good idea to abandon our other projects just on this guy's say-so? How do you know you can trust him?"

Buffy laughed, a carefree and joyous sound that brought a smile to the face of everyone in the room, including Tim. "Trust Giles? I would trust him with my life, without any hesitation. More importantly, I would trust him with any of your lives as well. If Giles says we're going home, then that's what we're going to do. Provided you get moving, people..."

Within moments, the room had cleared. Giles was stunned by the way these people all looked towards his Slayer and obeyed her without question. This strong competent woman had no need for a Watcher, and he wondered how he might possibly fit into her life now. Clashing with his uncertainty was the unidentifiable emotion that had leapt into being during Buffy's last speech. Her unquestioning trust in him had touched him on more levels than he could count. Adding in his joy and relief in finding her, Giles realized that he had never been quite so off-balance in his entire life. He anxiously turned to her and whispered, "Buffy?" He was asking her something, but he couldn't have identified that something for the life of him. All he knew was that he was desperate for her to give it to him, whatever it was.

Buffy gave him a brilliant smile, the one she had often used before her seventeenth birthday, and Giles felt overwhelmed with his gratitude. Maybe that old hundred-watt smile was all that he had really needed from her. "C'mon Giles. Let's find you a place to stay until we're ready to go. Besides, we've got some catching up to do!"

~*~*~

They walked down a corridor dimly lit by candles in an uncomfortable silence. Every few feet there were holes in the wall, each covered with ragged blankets. Buffy kept darting furtive looks in his direction and then turning away in embarrassment. Her uneasiness with him magnified Giles' apprehension tenfold.

The fourth time Buffy snuck a glance at him, he managed to catch her eyes with his own. She swallowed nervously and said, "So..."

"So..." he repeated back. He was desperate for her to talk to him, so he latched on to the first topic that came to mind. "How's Angel?"

"Angel?" Buffy furrowed her brow in confusion. "What about Angel?"

"Um, I assumed, I mean, I thought that you were with Angel." It was his turn to be confused now. "Didn't you come down here looking for Angel?"

"No. Why would you think that?"

Why had he thought that? Giles struggled to recreate his thought process. "The mystical energies around the Hellmouth were unusually high the day that you rescued me." And he wouldn't think about what she had rescued him from, damnit. He wouldn't. "I was certain that this was caused by an open portal to a hell dimension. I assumed that it was Angelus who opened the portal..."

"He did," Buffy whispered softly. "And then he turned back into Angel. It didn't matter, though. I still had to send him through in order to close the portal."

Although he didn't have it in him to feel sorry for Angel, Giles' heart was aching for Buffy. "That, that was my assumption. When Lily told me that you were in hell, I couldn't think of any reason for that to be true unless you had come searching for Angel."

"No, I didn't come for Angel. I haven't thought about him for years, in fact. I was trying to save Lily and we both got trapped here."

Giles didn't have anything to say to that, so he contented himself with a simple, "Oh." Inside, however, he was rejoicing. She hadn't abandoned her friends, family, and responsibilities in favor of a demon, souled or otherwise. She hadn't chosen Angel over everyone else in her life. Over him... This last reflection brought a bashful grin to his face, and she smiled back at him. For the first time since that horrible night, he felt ... whole.

Buffy stopped in front of a door that looked like all the others, and lifted a tattered blanket to reveal a cheerless room. "This is our only empty room right now, but you are welcome to it." The smile on her face unexpectedly turned fragile and insincere.

"Buffy," Giles asked in concern, "are you alright?"

"Yeah," she breathed. "I'm fine. Just thinking about the couple that used to live here. They were good people..."

Giles would have liked to ask about those "good people," to wonder why they didn't need this room any longer, but something told him that Buffy wouldn't appreciate those questions right now. Whatever had happened to those "good people" had cut her deeply. Instead, he smiled gratefully and nodded. "It's lovely; thank-you. Um, can I help your people in any way?"

"As a matter of fact, you can. Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow? But Buffy–"

"But nothing, Giles," Buffy said firmly. "Look at yourself. You're asleep on your feet." Giles was surprised by that assessment; he didn't feel tired. Of course, he had been near collapse when Lily called, but the adrenaline that had rushed through him when he heard of Buffy's location hadn't run through his system yet. And from what Buffy said earlier, it sounded like there were a large number of tasks to perform before they could leave. He couldn't just stay here and sleep knowing that there was work to be done. He started to tell her that, but Buffy shook her head in rueful amusement. "Look, I'm going to need you to go out and patrol, but you've GOT to be fully rested to do that. You'll get people killed otherwise, and I don't want to lose anybody else now that we're almost home. You sleep as long as you can, and then come talk to me in the morning."

"But how did you–"

"Sleep," Buffy demanded imperiously.

Buffy's eyes were twinkling, but something in them told him that she was entirely serious about sending him to bed like a small child. "How will I find you," he asked testily, refusing to be gracious.

"Just walk down that corridor. You'll run into somebody sooner or later, and then that person can take you to me." Giles nodded, and she smiled at him again. "Listen, Giles, I've got to go. I'm going to be really busy the next few days, but I promise to make time to talk to you soon." Giles smiled back at her, and then Buffy surprised him. She gave him another hug, this time accompanied by a brief, chaste kiss on his cheek. "I'm so happy to see you again, Giles. You have no idea." And with that, she was gone.

After Buffy left, Giles collapsed onto the bed to think about the events of the past half-hour. As soon as he was off his feet, however, the exhaustion that Buffy had seen crashed down upon him. Moments later, he was unconscious.