Zigpal- Thank you for the review, and naturally, my claps. And I've finally clicked about why Joyce always seems to get the bad stuff. Giles is kind of a hard guy to directly hurt (I mean this is the man who doesn't give under torture and can contain his emotions for Britain) but Joyce is the person he cares about most, or one of the people anyway, and in a way she's an extension of him. Joyce gets hurt and so does Giles, particularly if he believes he's the one who has caused it. Which this time round, he has. Tut tut.

Rabidreject- Intense? Ooh, I must be something right. And yes, Joyce and Rupert do tend to have beaucoup d'issues. Like Xander said though; it's a hellmouth and therefore impossible to have a normal happy relationship. There's bound to be issues...but I have faith in this couple. Wonder on earth why...haha

A/N: Fairly short chapter as it's just a continuation of the last, just going into the aftermath. This is also a bit heavy, but I plan to have humor in First Date. Willow is going to be casting a spell. What could possibly go wrong with that I wonder? Haha

"Can you hear voices?" Anya asked with a frown as she and Xander sat in the living room with Willow and Tara while Buffy was in the basement seeing to Spike. "Upstairs?"

"Giles and Joyce are up there," Xander shrugged in answer.

"But they're shouting Xander," Anya said as though the concept of the couple shouting at one another was completely unbelievable.

"Probably about Spike," He shrugged again, "Giles'll be opting to kill him and Joyce will be...well, saying no"

"It does seem to a be a running theme with them two," Willow added with a smile, "Some couples have a constant argument over who takes the sheets. They argue about the welfare of a vampire." She grinned, "It's kinda cute"

"Oh my god, I am second choice aren't I?" Joyce asked, horrified as the two argued in the bedroom. It couldn't be really called an argument as neither one was mad at the other, rather it should be classed as an 'upset'.

"No, of course not, I-" He tried to say, but Joyce talked over him and he wasn't sure whether she was talking to him or to herself.

"I thought it was just me. Me over-worrying. After everything that's happened be, before you I thought, I thought I was just being paranoid, but..." Her voice broke ever so slightly as she looked at him, "But it is true isn't it? I was just convenient"

"Joyce you're being ridiculous,"

"Do not tell me I am being ridiculous when you're the one who has just been having a lovely trip down alternate memory lane"

"But if anything that proved how much you weren't just 'convenient'," He insisted, taking hold of her arm so she would stop pacing and turning away from him, "When I...when I saw you. In L.A. And I handed you back the food you'd dropped. When our hands touched- even though it was just for a split second- I knew. It's you. Only you"

"It doesn't matter," She shook her head sadly, not even bothering to pull her arm away from him, "It doesn't matter that you know that now. What matters is that you even had to consider those choices at all"

"What? Joyce, I-"

"If you loved me as much as you said you did," She continued sadly, "You would have known anyway Rupert. You wouldn't have had to," She laughed without amusement, "had to check"

"I do love you that much. I'm not perfect, far from it in fact, and I never give illusion to be. I-" He sighed, "I made a mistake I know but...but it wasn't to, to see if there was something better. I don't know why it was. Maybe to see if it was all circumstance? I don't know. I don't know what I was thinking, but not for one moment did the thought ever cross my mind to consider you second best or convenient. Not once. I know I love you"

"You know now that you have evidence," She sighed, looking up at him, "And I'm sorry, but that's...that's not what a relationship should be built on. There's no trust in, well maybe not each other, but there's no trust in the actual relationship. It's a one where one half sees more in it than the other and I won't- I can't- go through that sort of relationship. I just can't." She gently pulled her arm out of his grasp.

"What are you saying?" He asked, worry crossing his features.

"I...I don't know what I'm saying," She admitted, "I just..." She sighed and Rupert was sure she was blinking away tears though they were gone too sure for him to be completely positive, "I think I need some time. Alone. I just need to be alone. Think...to myself." She turned and left the room. Giles soon followed after her.

The group were still sat in the living when saw Joyce rush down the stairs and head directly for the front door, grabbing her coat off the side quickly. Giles was hot on her heels.

"Please, don't try and come after me Rupert. Please," She asked simply and a little desperately, before walking out the front door, closing it behind her and leaving Giles stood there in the hall, looking completely dejected and shocked.

When Dawn had come home the only person in the house was Giles. And Andrew. Buffy had taken Spike somewhere to sort out his apparently misfiring chip. No one was sure exactly where she had gone, but it had been generally suspected that she had gone to where the old Initiative lab had been based. The Potentials were obviously away with two of the Watchers on some quest so they weren't hanging around the house like normal and the others had gone back to that place they sometimes remembered; their home. And her Mom was out.

Several hours later and her Mom was still out and Dawn realized she didn't eve know where. She hadn't even asked. She had just assumed she was out, perhaps at work, and would be back at some point, but now it was starting to reach ten pm and Dawn was growing concerned.

She tossed the magazine she had been reading aside, and climbed up off of her bed deciding to ask the one person who would know where her Mother was.

"Giles?" She called out as she walked along the hall, checking if he was in the bedroom. Peering in she saw that he was. He was sat on the bed, but didn't seem to acknowledge or hear her. "Giles?" She asked again, calling his attention and he looked up over at her.

"Uh, yes Dawn?"

"Where's Mom?" She asked, "I thought she was at the gallery. But she'd be home by now...so where is she?"

"I uh..." Giles threatened to go into stutter mode as she struggled over how to answer that unintentionally loaded question, "I uh that is...I ah...I don't actually know Dawn"

"What do you mean you don't know?" Dawn frowned, "What about her cell? She can't have just..." Dawn trailed off as regrettably Giles' silence spoke horrific volumes to her. "What's going on? Something's happened hasn't it? Where's Mom?"

"It's...complicated Dawn," Giles said tiredly but the teenager wouldn't accept that answer.

"Where's Mom?" She asked more insistently and more firm, demanding an answer. "What happened?"

"As I said, it's a little too complicated to go into right now Dawn-"

"I don't care from complicated!" Dawn burst out, anxiety and mounting worry coming out in anger, "What the hell is going on Giles?"

He still didn't answer and he still didn't look her quite in the eye. Dawn knew something was wrong and she tried to sense what it was. She was usually good at reading body language and could sometimes figure out an entire situation without the people involved ever saying a word. But right now she couldn't be sure, she just wanted to know where her Mom was. But why wouldn't Giles know? She wouldn't just leave without telling him.

"Oh my god..." She gasped as it dawned on her, "You two...you're splitting up aren't you?"

"What?" Giles asked quickly, eyes wide, "No, of course not. Where on earth did you get that idea from? Of course we're not. We just...we had a little falling out is all. We-"

"No," Dawn shook her head as she backed away slowly, "No. You are. I can tell. This is just how it goes...it's how it went with Dad. Everything was perfect and then suddenly Mom was out...and then it was separations..."

"Dawn," He said, getting up and going towards her but she stepped away, back towards the door.

"No...I-I can't believe you'd do this," Dawn looked on the verge of breaking down, "Both of you..."

"Dawn, I assure you, your Mother and I-"

"No," She shook her head again as she backed out of the room, "I'm going...I'm going staying over at Xander's" She suddenly decided, turning and running to her room to pack her things into a duffel as quickly as possible.

"Dawn," Giles said, following her, "You can't leave now. How are you going to get there?"

"I'll walk," She shrugged in reply, stuffing her pajamas into the bag followed by a spare t-shirt for the next day, "It's not that far"

"Dawn, don't be ridiculous," He sighed, "It's dark out. You can't walk around to Xander and Anya's at this time"

"Well, I'm not staying here,"

The harsh reply threw Giles for a moment which is what he considered to be the only possible reason that he didn't stop Dawn leaving her bedroom. When he heard her begin to walk down the stairs though, he snapped out of the mild shock and headed after her.

"Dawn. Your Mother wouldn't want you going out alone at this time, it's not safe"

"Well, Mom's not here is she?" Dawn retorted, pulling open the front door and rushing outside before Giles could stop her.

"Dawn!" He yelled, running outside after her, but he came to a halt at the end of the drive as he saw Dawn running around the corner far up ahead. She was gone. Feeling helpless, hopeless and dejected Giles turned back to the house with a sigh and slowly headed inside, glancing a moment up at the sky to see a few dark clouds scattered across the night sky. How fitting.

There was a persistent knocking at the door. Persistent and loud. Anya and Xander, who had been sat on the sofa, curled up together watching a Meg Ryan movie at Anya's request turned and frowned at one another as though that questioning look was going to tell them who was at the door.

"Who could that be?" Xander frowned

"I don't know," Anya shrugged, "But you'd better answer it. The knocking is annoying and it's not going away"

With a sigh Xander clambered up off of the sofa and shuffled over to the front door, pulling it open just enough to see who it was but not enough to let that person in. Just in case. This was Sunnydale after all and you could never be too careful.

Once he saw who it was though and that he knew her, he pulled the door open wide.

"Dawn," He said taking in her appearance. She was disheveled, carrying a duffel and her face was tear stained, "What happened? What's going on? Are you okay?"

"No..." Dawn shook her head sadly and her eyes furiously tried to blink away tears that were threatening to come before she rushed into Xander hugging him tightly, "It's all going wrong..." She sobbed, her voice muffled in his shirt.

"What?" Xander asked.

"It's all going wrong and horrible..." She spoke into his top again.

"What's gone wrong?" Xander asked kindly.

"And Giles isn't here now either so it's not like I can ask him what's going on," Buffy said as she talked to Xander and Anya in the dining room while Dawn was asleep upstairs in her room.

After Dawn had cried out what was going on to Xander and that she wanted to stay over, Xander had immediately drove her, with Anya, back to Buffy's to find out what exactly was going on and to hopefully fix it. However when they had arrived they had found not only was Joyce still not back yet, but Giles was now also missing. Buffy was back though, with a recently fixed Spike.

Dawn had been too upset to tell Buffy was going on, so Buffy had convinced to go to bed and get some sleep, while she talked about the situation with Xander and Anya.

"I know," Xander nodded, "I just...I wish we knew what exactly was going on. I mean Dawn's the only one with any clue and she's too much of a wreck to actually tell us anything"

"Well, she's always been a more dependent on Mom and Giles' relationship," Buffy reasoned, "I mean she was like twelve when they got together. It's understandable that she'd be more effected by them...god, I just don't buy it!" She suddenly burst out, "Why would they be splitting up? They were happy. Really happy. I-don't-want-to-go-past-their-bedroom-door-when-they're-in-there-together kind of happy. It doesn't make any sense"

"Well the only ones who can make any sense of it are your Mom and Giles and they're both missing," Anya simply, "So till they come back we can't do anything"

"That's another thing," Buffy said, "Where the hell are they both?"

She didn't know why she ended up here. In point of fact, she didn't know how she had ended up here. L.A was a fair way away from Sunnydale. But when she'd gotten in the car, she had just wanted to keep driving. And that's exactly what she had done. Drove and drove until she had found herself here.

The place of her and Hank's first date. Given the circumstances she would have thought her subconscious would have drove her to her and Rupert's first date. But maybe that wasn't where the problem lay. Maybe the problem lay here.

A slippery slope from Hank. Slippery slope all the way down to betrayal zone. She sighed, unbuckled her seat belt and got out of the car.

She hated anyone being self-pitying and yet here she was doing exactly that. What was the matter with her? She had daughters at home, a home full stop. She shouldn't be here indulging in...feelings. She wasn't even sure what exactly her feelings were. She was so confused and conflicted she wasn't even positive about what had gotten her so upset.

It was wrong how Rupert had even considered that their life might not be what he wanted. It was wrong for her to drive away when she had so many responsibilities. It was wrong to be here. And what was even more wrong was that while she was upset and heartbroken by Rupert at the exact same time, in all bluntness, she wanted to go home and screw him senseless. Now there was some complicated sexual tension for you. Freud would no doubt have a field day.

With a world-heavy sigh she settled down into one of the small park's picnic benches trying to ignore the fact that an array of chewed gum was likely to be stuck underneath the wooden table.

Why was she here? Why wasn't she at home? Why did things keep happening to her to make her want to run away? Things never used to be this sucky, she was sure of it.

How could she be even sure what she saw? What she heard? How could Rupert be sure either? In all their rising emotions and turmoil they both seem to have neglected the fact that it was The First that had spoken to both of them.

But he had still considered it though...and god, this was so frustrating! What on earth was she supposed to do? What was she doing? It wasn't liked he'd cheated on her for crying out loud.

No, he'd just, if even just for a moment, considered their life together to be second best.

Or had he? Did she even know the full story? God, she just didn't know anymore and she was just so tired, exhausted by all of it.

It was the house. But it wasn't quite right. It seemed empty, But she knew there must be somebody in. She walked though the hall, toward the kitchen.

In the kitchen there were people. All people she knew. There was Lily, but Lily when she was older. Lily the same age that had visited them. Buffy. And Jenny.

Jenny was stood in the far corner of the kitchen, crying into her hands. Looking over she saw Lily was comforting her.

"Why are you doing that?" She found herself asking.

"The dead can do no wrong," Lily answered calmly as though it should have been obvious.

"Just because a heart isn't beating doesn't mean it can't break," Buffy said calmly. She was sat at the island drinking coffee. "And just because it's broken doesn't mean it can't carry on beating"

Jenny continued to cry.

It was getting on for the early hours of the morning when Giles finally returned and it was still dark outside and the clouds Giles had seen a little before were now gathering strongly in the sky, preparing themselves for South California's once in a while downpour.

At the sound of the front door being open the group sat talking at the dining room table craned their necks to look over with keen interest, to see if Joyce was with him. She wasn't.

"Is...er Joyce hasn't come back yet has she?" He asked.

"No," Buffy shook her head, getting up from her seat and the table and walking over to him, "She hasn't. Giles, what's going on?"

"To be perfectly honest Buffy, I'm not entirely sure," He admitted.

"Well something must have happened," She retorted, knowing he was keeping something from them.

"Yes, I just would rather not go into it right now," He said firmly, "Okay?"

Buffy looked for a moment as though she were going to say a lot more, but it died and she sighed in frustration, shaking her head.

"Fine," She said tightly, "Well, just so you know Lily's tucked away asleep and thankfully unaware of both yours and Mom's sudden disappearance" Giles paled as he realized he had left without fully considering Lily and the look Buffy was currently giving him showed she knew that, "Just...stop obsessing and get over it. There are more important things going right now than some...spat" She shook her head in slight disgust, "Both of you just...grow up"

On that note, Buffy turned her back on him and headed up the stairs to bed leaving behind a very awkward atmosphere for Anya and Xander.

"Well, we'd uh...better get going too," Xander announced, clearing his throat nervously. "I mean we just came to to uh to drop Dawn back off here. She's upstairs in bed"

"Right," Giles nodded, only just about taking in the information.

"So we're going to...just go...now..." Anya trailed off, grabbing Xander's arm, "Come on Xander let's go"

The two quickly exited, leaving Giles stood in the hall alone. He'd done that a lot in the past twenty four hours. Stood alone. He sighed, another thing he had done a lot, and turned to close the front door as both Anya and Xander had neglected to do so. When he looked though, Joyce was stood in the doorway, looking anxious.

"Joyce," The surprised and hopeful tone in his voice was palpable as he went over to her.

"Hi," She breathed anxiously, a split second before Rupert kissed her, totally throwing her a curve ball. She wasn't quite sure how to respond at first, but she gave in, indulging in the kiss, savoring the taste before she eventually and reluctantly pulled away, the two of them still remaining close together, only centimeters apart. "We need to talk," She said to him, her tone heavy.

The clouds that had been threatening all the past day, finally opened on them as morning came,the sheets of rain slamming down onto the concrete outside.

"It's just one more day, no one said there would be rain again. Won't blame it on myself, oh no, I'll blame it on the weatherman"

Dawn knew what was happening and felt that same sickening feeling in her stomach that she had had when her Dad had said he was 'moving out for a while'. She knew what was happening when she saw her Mom helping Giles make up the bed on the sofa. That's where he was going to be sleeping.

"Get away, for a while. Here I am out on my own again. Won't blame it on myself. Yeah, I'll blame it on the weatherman"

As Joyce looked outside the kitchen window, she just wished the rain would stop. It seemed to be never-ending and was turning the grass in the garden into mud. It also meant no one was leaving the house and everyone was essentially locked inside. All wanting to ask questions they knew wouldn't be answered. They all knew what was going on.

"Only clouds will see, tears are in my eyes, empty like my heart. Why'd you sa goodbye?"

They'd talked last night. After the kiss, Giles had presumed, hoped, that everything was going to work out. That despite the obvious issues, they were going to be together to work past them, that everything would turn out alright. But that wasn't it at all. Joyce had told him how she believed it just wasn't working. She wished to god it was, but it wasn't. He had told her he loved her. She told him love wasn't always enough.

"The rain goes on. On and on again. The rain goes on"

Her Mom and Giles had had problems before, Buffy knew. The first time had been in her first year of college, and the next had been shortly after she had been brought back to life by Willow. Both times they had gotten through it. But both times they had been mad at each other. Or rather her Mom had been mad at Giles. Buffy smiled to herself as she realized how she believed it impossible for Giles to get actually mad at her Mom. But this time...this time, her Mom wasn't mad. Just resigned and accepting. And that's what made this situation all too real. It wasn't some drama, it just was. And that was what worried Buffy. That maybe they wouldn't come back from this one. She looked out her bedroom window at the pouring rain.

"Maybe I can't pray. Maybe I can't wait. Maybe I can't blame the weatherman"