Giles didn't know how long he'd been staring at the steady drip, drip, drip of sand falling over the edge of a small outcrop of rock near him. Each grain going over pulled the one behind it on an unseen string. If one went, they all went. It was the sound of Buffy moving that jostled him from his trance. He stretched, easing cramped muscles and resisted the urge to rub his eyes as he looked at her. She was staring at the wall.

A thin silvery light shimmered in a small crevice in the rock face. She'd been watching it quietly for a time then stood and moved close to investigate. He couldn't see anything. Concerned, he moved near to her, where she was studying what turned out to be life and death in action. She stepped back and watched the drama play itself out, a spider stalking a fly ensnared in the threads of a web. The fly fought the deceptively delicate strands, strong as the thickest rope, sticky with the treacle that enticed the insect to it, until finally the two natural enemies faced off.

Without taking her eyes from the confrontation she asked, "Which one am I, Giles, the spider or the fly?"

It was a rhetorical question, he knew, but it didn't keep him from reaching his hand to her shoulder. She dodged his touch and lifted her boot at the same time, stomping down on the spider web ending the battle.

"I win," she said with resignation in her voice.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Sitting and tapping. Possibly an entire new hobby, she thought. She was tapping her fingernail against a small rock, gently as if it was fragile and might fracture like a tiny bird's eggshell.

She stopped tapping and moved into the warm sun raining down from the skylight above. Giles stood near her but outside the circle of light, allowing her to bask in it alone. The hardness seemed to fall away as she looked at the patch of blue so far above them.

Her voice was soft and far away. "What time do you think it is?"

It took barely a second for him to reply. "5:41."

She looked at him, puzzled at his confident and precise answer that had pulled her from her reverie. "How can you be that exact?"

Giles raised his arm turning his wrist to her. "I have my watch."

"Oh." The voice quieted again. He saw the tinge of disappointment cross her face as she spoke. "I guess we aren't that far from civilization after all. I should have figured you'd have your watch."

He moved into the light and searched the sky for the sun. "It's been a while, but I once was fairly accurate at determining the time from the sun's position." He smiled down at her still furrowed brow. "Boy Scouts."

"They have Boy Scouts in England?"

"The Boy Scouts originated in England."

"Hmm, didn't know that." Her voice was unexpectedly light for a moment, in a way he'd not heard since Joyce's death. "I was in the Girl Scouts back in L.A. Mom was the…" She stopped abruptly. A sudden cry of a flock of crows called out and she looked up just as their collective shadow engulfed her in gray. Giles watched the gloom descend across her face and the pensive look return. She stepped back away from him and into the dimness of the cave.

"Death is my gift."

"What?" He asked, certain he'd misheard.

Her voice shifted to the dull, detached tone she'd been using so frequently. "Death is my gift. I'm full of love. Love is pain." As she recited the litany from memory her eyes traced the path the sun took from the skylight to the ground, then to Giles.

"Is that what she told you, the spirit guide?"

"Death is my gift. Nifty, huh? Just what I always wanted."

"Buffy, what…"

"I asked her if it was a gift that I give or one I was going to be given. She didn't answer. Either way, it's my gift."

"Buffy, that's…" He hesitated, caught in the significance of the words. "Those are powerful words. We need to determine…"

She interrupted him. "Before you get too excited about the meaning behind the meaning stuff I think it's pretty obvious what she meant. After all, it's sort of in the job title. Slayer. She who slays. Kills things dead. Death."

"On the surface maybe, but there's…"

She interrupted him again. "Giles, I've perpetually got something in my crosshairs or I'm in someone else's. Say it with me…death."

He wouldn't allow himself to be dissuaded by her single-mindedness. "There's certain to be more meaning. Once I research…" He took in her pointed look of resignation. "What about the other statements, we need to think of this as a whole."

"You mean the 'I'm full of love…Love is pain' stuff? Pretty clear-cut to me. I'm full of love. Love is pain. Ergo, I'm full of pain. And to top it off, death is my gift. It all fits into in a nice neat fluffy-Buffy package. This is my life." She turned her back to him as she claimed it as her destiny. Death.

She felt Giles reach toward her, attempting one of those comforting gestures she could no longer tolerate as if instinct told her she was so infinitely brittle that even a small touch could break her. She shrank from him and he retracted his hand. Another bird screeched overhead, a piercing shriek that drove a wedge into one of the fractures inside of her, splintering her thought and along with it the emotion. She was grateful. Smaller emotions were manageable. She could block them, push them aside, and entomb them like one of those ageless insects trapped in resin and buried in the earth to be discovered a millennium later as a small, hard rock with a dead thing inside.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

The cave was darker now. The sun hadn't set but it was below the mountain and shed no direct light inside, as the space seemed to close in on them. Birds had been screeching overhead for what seemed like hours. Mostly single birds, but some pairs and the occasional flock. It was like a scene out of that Hitchcock movie, she thought. What was going on out there in the world to cause such a commotion, or was the world always like this? Giles barely noticed them.

Buffy sat with her body clutched tightly, arms and legs drawn up, holding herself in and keeping the world out. Giles slid down the wall until he was seated next to her on the floor, not touching, but close enough to share body heat. She stood and moved away. The meaning was clear to him. Her body language all day long had screamed 'stay away, I don't want your help.' The hours alone with her had become torturous. He was wrung out and drained of ideas. How do you get through to someone who didn't want to be gotten through to? He rose and moved next to her, wanting to speak, not knowing what to say and hoping the words would come when needed.

But before she was able to move away from him, the earth rumbled, a small shudder lasting only a few seconds. She gasped and instinctively reached out to him as he did to her, hands meeting in midair, fingers intertwining, anchoring one another. Dirt fragments fell from the cave ceiling. They waited it out for a few seconds, still holding on as it quieted. Buffy was the first to pull her hand away, but Giles wouldn't let her go. "Just a small aftershock," she said as her eyes clouded over hard and gray, trying to distance herself once again.

"No." His hand held onto hers. "Buffy, I'm not letting go. I'm not leaving. I don't care what you think you want or need." He spoke with the raw voice of emotion.

She raised her head to meet his eyes and wore the frozen stare one took on while trying not to cry, trying not to concede to the emotion tearing at the edge of everything. Her glare reached into him like tentacles wrapping his nerve endings. He wavered, then gave in to his deeper instincts, ignoring that she'd pushed him away at every turn that day. He pulled her to him. She shuddered and closed in on herself tighter. Holding her close he felt her pain as if a hundred tiny knives dug into him. Escape was all she wanted but he wouldn't let her. The more she tried to pull away the harder he wrapped his arms around her. Each knew Buffy was the stronger and should have been able to pull from his grasp, but she couldn't. It frightened her as much as anything had that day. It had been a struggle for survival and now she knew she'd lost. No matter how hard she'd tried to keep herself together it still wasn't enough. Nothing worked. There was no point in fighting any longer. So she stopped.

The shaking came first, then a pain filled gasp of realization forced out the first tear. It ran down her face leaving a mud trace like a crack in the earth's crust. As the tears came stronger the sharp edges eased slowly and her body softened against his while he rocked her ever so gently. Soon her cries drowned out the silence until all that was left were shoulders heaving with each cleansing sob as the force of memory pulled the pain from her and her grief found acknowledgment.