AN: Sorry it's taken so long to get this chapter out but RL has been phenomenally bad these last few weeks and I've been away for the last week and haven't had a chance to write a single thing. I go away again tomorrow but will be taking my laptop with me and will hopefully get quite a bit written (last week was work this week is holiday yay)
War: Looks and words can be deceiving. I know I've set up Xander in a certain way but remember still waters flow deep.
Cutiepie: Would you believe I never even thought about going this far into the story. I intended to end it in New York and leave the rest to your imagination's but muse just kept on yapping away in my head and I couldn't stop writing.
Just so you know a fuck-buddy is someone you have sex with on a regular basis with that being the entire extent of your relationship.
And people wondered why I never did well at school; I filled my brain with useless information
Quote 4: "How do you feel?" "Slightly ill" "That's a good sign" Lieutenant Colonel Sarah Mackenzie and Lieutenant Bud Roberts - JAG
Chapter 4
Olivia felt like an intruder. While the house itself was beautiful and well kept it felt as though it hadn't been lived in for a time. It had been occupied but not truly lived in. She could almost guess when this had stopped being a home and started being merely a house.
She had offered to get a hotel room, but Joyce would hear nothing of it. She was a stubborn woman, just like her daughter.
At the moment it was just the two of them alone in the house together, sitting silently in the kitchen sipping coffee while Buffy had gone to meet with her watcher.
It was an uncomfortable silence; neither of them knew what to say to the other. Finally after watching the Detective out of the corner of her eyes for a few minutes Joyce lowered her cup and opened her mouth to speak but found she didn't know exactly what she wanted to say.
"I" she started but dropped off again, the words lost.
"I left everything the same. I always hoped that you would come back"
"Buffy, was never an easy girl to love" Joyce tried again "Especially those last few years and after we came to Sunnydale. She was always in trouble" She trailed off and looked openly up at Olivia. "But I never stopped loving her, even when I was angry as all hell at her. I never realised exactly how hard it was until her 17th birthday, she asked about getting her license and I couldn't help but wonder"
"So what did you do for your birthday"
"I got older"
She lifted the coffee cup up to her lips and took a long sip before continuing
"When did she grow up? Did I miss it? Was there something I could have done?" Joyce closed her eyes letting the memories swim through her head, trying to pin point the exact moment she had lost her daughter.
Carefully placing her cup down in the bench in front of her Olivia sighed, when she had agreed to come to Sunnydale with Buffy she didn't think that it would be her that Buffy's friends and family would ask how to deal with the situation.
"I don't know what you want me to say Mrs. Summers. I'm mostly single, I spend more time at work than I do at home and I've never had any children. I doubt that I ever will."
Joyce opened her eyes and stared at the New Yorker. "Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why do you live like that?" Joyce was confused; from what she'd seen of Olivia Benson so far she was a very warm and loving woman. "I mean, why would you want to?"
Pushing herself upright Olivia thought for a moment, what could she tell this woman? What should she tell this woman?
"I see the worst humanity has to offer. There's not a day that goes by that I don't think of throwing it all in, but then" she paused trying to gather her thoughts "I have to wonder who else would be willing to do what I do." Her eyes met Joyce's "No one else wants to no one else can, and I wouldn't wish what I've seen on anyone"
As Joyce let Olivia's words sink in her lower lip started to quiver "She wanted to protect me" she whispered to herself more than anything "She didn't wish her life on anyone and the only way she knew how was to pull away"
"I didn't lose her"
"I tried to protect them, stop them from being there being involved but it didn't work. At first I hated it but after awhile I accepted it, even welcomed it sometimes."
Buffy took a deep breath. She hated flying it didn't feel natural.
"After Miss Calender died it hit me how easily it could have been any of them. Angel was out there, watching waiting"
Breathe in through the nose out through the mouth
"Wanting me to suffereither directly from him or through them"
"It was the day after her 17th birthday. We sat on the couch and watched old movies the entire day. I lit a candle, she didn't blow it out but let it burn down"
"They were all hurt so badly"
"She wouldn't let me move"
"Not just physically but emotionally. I couldn't do that to them again"
"She did something she hadn't done since she was a little girl"
"There was nothing I could do to make it better"
"She lay down and clung to me."
"They deserved a chance to live, they had a chance to live normal lives. Without the danger and the hurt"
"Like I was her lifeline"
"I was their ticket to death but they were my lifeline"
Giles sat quietly, waiting in the sun-drenched area of the Richard Wilkin's Memorial Park waiting for Buffy to show up. He knew that she had spent the previous night at her mother's house, in an attempt at reconciliation.
What did she have to say for herself? Would she try and give excuses? Try to lie to him or tell him what he wanted to hear?
What did he want to hear?
He was sure that she had quite the story to tell, but did he want to hear it? He was apprehensive about facing his first Slayer again, once he had gotten over the shock of first hearing that she was back and seeing her again it seemed that the mind numbing fear had decided to set in. Did he really want to know what she had been doing, what she had been thinking that morning the morning she left.
Up until then it had been unheard of for a Slayer to abandon her duty. They had turned their backs on The Council and struck out on their own before but to completely turn her back on her destiny her Calling.
He was surprised that The Powers That Be had let her live. They were not known for their benevolence.
Soft footfalls from behind did not escape his hearing, how easily something's came back; even now he recognised her footsteps. They stopped a few meters behind him he knew that she was watching him, may even be waiting for him to make the first move, but he wouldn't.
It was up to her.
The seconds ticked by as each appeared to be trying to get the other to speak first, but he was infinitely more patient the she was, always had been. Most probably always would be.
She started to walk again and in mere moments was siting on the park bench beside him. Out of the corner of his eye Giles watched as she eased herself down and winced slightly.
Still neither of them spoke.
Oakland, California
July 1998
Giles sat in yet another cheap motel, after following yet another useless lead.
He knew that he would have to stop this soon, he couldn't follow every single lead. Go to every city that had a report of a girl fighting monsters.
No one had seen her. He doubted anyone ever would. She was a highly resourceful girl who could remain in hiding indefinitely if she chose to.
While he knew and accepted this he knew that the others did not. Joyce, Willow, Xander even Oz and Cordelia to an extent all hoped that one day he would find her and bring her home.
But he knew he knew that she would be found when she wanted to be found.
"I was scared" she finally spoke "I still am"
He remained silent knowing that she needed to speak first, speak openly before she would listen to anything he had to say.
"It was a cowardly thing to do. Just leave like that, but at the time" Buffy took a deep breath and focused on the tree line that met the horizon in the distance "at the time it was what I thought needed to do had to do. I thought everyone else would be better off with me gone and the longer I stayed away the more convinced I became that it was true." For the first time she turned to look at him sunglasses firmly in place stopping him from looking her in the eyes. He found it disconcerting; her eyes had always given away what she was feeling. She must have known that, otherwise she would have taken them off by now.
Her emotions were one of her strengths.
"Have you ever wanted to do something so much. Your entire being is crying out for you to do it, to just let go and follow everything your heart is telling you" she took a deep hitching breath. He could see her hands shaking "but there's this tiny little voice in the back of your mind whispering constantly that if you do it you'll regret it."
Her left hand raised to her head and removed the sunglasses, just in time for him to see a lone tear spill over her lower lids and slip down her face.
"I finally stopped listening to the whispers and did what my heart told me to."
She turned her entire upper body to face him.
"If you tell me to I'll leave you alone, you'll never see me again." She left the rest of the question hanging in the air not wanting, perhaps not able to finish it.
"Life is a funny thing" Giles started speaking to her for the first time in 6 years "you can't predict it. You certainly can't explain it, I guess you just have to take every blow as it come and do your best" his eyes remained on the horizon - if he closed his them he was sure that he would still know what the exact outline of the trees looked liked. "I know what it's like to have loose faith in everything you ever held true. To lose faith in yourself"
"Does it ever get easier?"
"You mean life?"
"Yeah. Does it get easy"
"What do you want me to say to you"
"Lie to me"
"I won't lie to you" he wouldn't look at her, not yet he couldn't "it hurt, that you left the way you did, but I understood that you needed to be gone." He shifted his gaze slightly to the left.
Away from her.
"I guess that I also understand why you stayed away so long" he turned his entire head to the right really looking at her for the first time in over six years.
He didn't like what he saw. In a way he still thought of her as the scared 16-year-old who threw a priceless manuscript at him in a fit of fear.
It was disconcerting to see such aged wisdom in what to his memory was a young woman whose seemingly carefree innocence he had come to rely on, even if it had only been the memory of it he had relied on since she left.
"What I don't understand is why you've come back?"
She looked him directly in the eyes her gaze not wavering.
"I'm not sure why I came back either"
He really did understand.
------
"Come on Xan-man" Faith was tired of the angry moping act that the young man had been putting on since the previous morning "go see Anya, how long has it been since her last orgasm and you look like you could use a screw"
Xander's head raised slowly but avoided looking up at the brunette Slayer who was currently sitting on the round table that was the centerpiece of the Magic Box.
He didn't move to get up or say anything to Faith but just stared straight ahead at the giant Troll Hammer that was sitting there.
"Dude it's been 6 years" Faith stated "You can't be angry at her for the rest of your life" The two of them had spent many nights talking after Willow and Oz had gone to collage. That was before Anya had coma back and asked Xander to be her fuck-buddy. On one of their more raucous jaunts that involved a bottle of Jack Daniels Faith had managed to acquire she had finally gotten him to talk about why he'd lied to Buffy that night.
"He didn't deserve her, he didn't deserve the second chance they wanted to give him. I thought I was doing her a favor, by not telling, I thought I was doing the right thing. I figured after she kicked his arse she'd come back to the hospital, we'd comfort her, take her back to her Mom's. I knew she'd be hurt, that she'd need someoneneed us, but I didn't know about the fight with her Mom. I didn't know she'd been expelled and I didn't believe that the spell would work"
He took a deep hitching breath, willing with all his being that the tears wouldn't fall.
"I thought I was doing the right thing. Doing her a favor"
"I was wrong"
"I'm not" Faith almost didn't hear that raspy whisper that flowed out of Xander's mouth.
"Angry" he stood up and started pacing the room like a caged animal.
"I'm scared," he finally admitted.
Faith didn't say anything but waited for him to continue.
"What am I supposed to say to her? Hey there Buff, long time no see. Oh and sorry about lying to you and forcing you to send the man you loved to HELL" he stopped pacing and turned to look at Faith his eyes searching for answers that weren't there.
She was just about to reply when a voice from the front door interrupted.
"Well that's a start to a conversation that neither of us are really looking forward to" Buffy Summers stood there arms hanging limply by her side her face schooled, set and emotionless.