Chapter 4:

As he paced the living room for the hundredth time he was absolutely certain noon would never come, had no intention of coming, and had never been before. The pot of Bovril tea sat untouched on his coffee table with two delicate teacups sitting beside it. He thought he remembered how she took her tea though he wasn't much of one to serve it back in the day – at least not formally. At last he heard the telltale tap at the door and rushed to open it feeling downright giddy. She offered him a small smile in return for his, shyly coming in to the room after his invitation.

"I've made tea. I seem to recall sugar and very little cream."

"That's right. I'm surprised you remember."

"I didn't but it's coming back to me. I've spent a great deal of time thinking these last few days I can tell you. About the boys and about you and about the decisions we made as children – the best we could do considering the circumstances."

She nodded, looking more composed and relaxed this time than she had been previous. The pain was still there but with it determination. She took the cup and thanked him, taking a seat across from him again. The sunlight from the windows caught her face and lit it up. He looked and had to pause, watching, likening the sight to a boy seeing his Christmas tree light up for the first time. He stared dumbly until she caught him and he had to look away with an embarrassed laugh. He poured his own tea and took a sip.

"You are still the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, Lilla. I can't believe how time hasn't touched you."

She laughed, waving a hand to push away his silly comments. "It has, believe me. Every morning I find I recognize myself less and less than the day before."

"Why did you never marry?" he asked softly, jade eyes staring still. She blushed.

"At first I was too busy to look for a man. And then I assumed no one would have with both of the boys to raise but when I saw you again I knew those reasons were rubbish. I never married because there was no other you out there to be had." She wasn't looking at him as she spoke and for good reason. She wasn't sure how she felt being this vulnerably honest with him yet. "Why haven't you married?"

He smiled, letting out a short breath. Turn about was fair play. "I was busy with Buffy, mostly. I fell in love once, just after I came to America. Jenny…she was killed by Angelus. After that happened I realized women in my life just weren't meant to be. The two women I managed to fall for both ended up a world away by circumstance." He didn't mention his occasional dalliances, though only a few of them were him in control of himself. She was sure she had her own. Liliana remained quiet and took a sip of her tea. She didn't begrudge him his love even if she hadn't managed one of her own.

"What have you decided?"

"I want to meet them." He returned sincerely. "I owe it to them and to myself to see if there's something there I can salvage. I keep imagining them and I could not live knowing I came this close just to give them up again."

"If you're determined, Rupert, I won't stop you."

"I don't want to hurt them. Or you. The last thing in this world I want to do is put you through anymore pain than you've already been through."

He rose from his chair, cup abandoned, and moved to take her hand. She pulled away from him almost immediately and they both somehow managed to look stung but for wholly different reasons. She darted over to the right, keeping her eyes on him. She was resigned to talk but with him close like that…it wasn't the same. She couldn't handle it. He looked stricken, wondering if he'd done something wrong only trying to comfort her.

"Liliana, I…I wasn't trying to hurt you."

"No! I know. I'm just not. I can't. Your touch."

"What about my touch, Lilla?" he kept his voice low, daring to come closer to her. He used the pet name deliberately. She returned his look, watching him close but she didn't move away just yet.

"You know what this does to me, Rupert! You're this memory in my mind of the earliest and only time I've ever felt love and I don't understand how so much joy could be tied into so much pain. I see you now and it's like time hasn't passed."

"Time has passed and I'm only trying to make it right. I'm not trying to change your life."

"But it does! God help me, it does! I thought I was over you but then you answered the door and I laid eyes on you again."

"We were children. We did the best we could manage under very poor circumstances. No one could ask more of us. No one has." He reached out and took her by the forearms, pulling her close, almost eye to eye. She tilted her head up to meet his gaze.

"You're a memory to me, a ghost. We weren't even together long enough to know if we loved each other."

"I loved you. Of that I'm absolutely certain. I loved you for years wondering how and where you were."

"But you never tried to find me!" She burst out, wrenching herself from his grasp. He let her go.

"I wrote you. I wrote every address I had for you. I tried phoning God knows how many times and I never received an answer! I did it for close to five years until I gave up. The letters to your home always came back and the ones care of your aunt's house were rejected. Travers never told me what became of you or where you'd been sent."

"Five years?"

"Yes. More or less constantly for five years; through my time in the Watcher's Academy until I started to become an established Watcher, I wrote and phoned until I had no other avenues to try."

Now she really looked pained and sank into a nearby chair, not her own but he didn't think that mattered much at the moment. He wanted to reach out for her again, to pull her close realizing she'd never been told of any of his tries to contact her. No wonder she was so hurt by all this! She thought he'd given up on her the day the Council sent her away and pronounced judgment that they couldn't see each other again. It wasn't his choice but he hadn't found his backbone yet. He convinced himself that it was for the best. He hadn't allowed any other thought. Now he was realizing just what that cost them both.

"Lilla…" But she interrupted him.

"What am I supposed to do, Rupert? Fall in love with you all over again and pretend I wasn't alone to raise our boys? They look so much like you it was a constant reminder. I can barely be in the same room as you now without the entire torrent of emotions crashing over me."

She was pleading with him to provide some alternative she could cling to.

"Wait!" This was too much even for him. Was that a viable option? To fall back in love with him? "No one said you have to fall in love with me."

She looked down and he knew she was aware and still chose her words anyway. It made him hesitate. He didn't know how he felt about her now. There was some part of him that would always love her. She'd been the first for him and that was important. She'd been the foothold into the normal world he had when he was trying to muddle through his transition from Ripper to Rupert. At some point, however, he was pragmatic enough to realize you simply can't go home again no matter how much you may want to sometimes. For her, evidently, this was an issue of conflict. It was a fear of hers to be so vulnerable with him again and he grieved to put that fear in her heart. He knew he couldn't have done better but still, it wounded.

"Liliana, I don't know what you're expecting but I want you to know I don't expect anything of you. Or the boys. If they meet me and they want to try to have a relationship with me then I'll be there. If they don't…if too much time has passed then it will be their decision."

She lifted her eyes and stared at him. "Why do you have to be so bloody nice about all of this? It would be a damn sight easier to hate you, you know."

"I realize." He chuckled amiably and she eventually joined in on the laughter and it succeeded in breaking the tension. He sat back down in the midst of his laughter and studied her profile caught in merriment. He wasn't the sentimental sort but he wished he had a camera to capture the moment and the expression on her face. He doubted she'd seen a lot of moments like these in those hard years but God, he loved her smile!

"When shall we?" he offered when the laughter died down, hesitating so she had the lead again. He thought he'd unnerve her less if he left things up to her.

"Roland plays guitar, Rupert. He developed a taste for music in his early teens. Though Alistair despises the music his band plays he always goes to the shows. Maybe you could meet them there, unobtrusively?"

He couldn't have planned it better himself. He was still somewhat of a musician if his hands still remembered the chords. Music seemed the perfect segue into their lives. "Brilliant!" he murmured. Liliana looked please.

"It's a little pub down across Piccadilly called the Stomping Grounds. Usually only a few people show up. I've even been myself once or twice when I was fully stocked up on aspirin. It's all noise to me anymore."

Rupert chuckled again. He felt the same way about things Buffy considered music. Of course, it was the same attitude his father had taken toward Pink Floyd and Led Zepplin. At the time he'd thought this opinion of his father's was quite dull and dismissed it outright. By the time he moved on to the aggressive punk of the Ramones and the Clash he'd gone from thinking the sun rose for his father and set when the man decreed to deciding quite adamantly that the man knew nothing of the modern world. By then he considered his father over the hill and antiquated. With no small amount of chagrin he realized very soon his sons may develop this same idea in his regard. Everything full circle.

"That's brilliant, Lilla. I'm sure we'll get along just fine."

He smiled at the woman sitting across from him and before he thought about it he reached across the coffee table to take her hand. He was beginning to feel hopeful that they might get through this in one piece without too much disruption. Who said time has to be a deterrent? What was the old adage about hearts growing fonder? Right. Absence. Well, Rupert could certainly call their time apart an absence and he was certainly fond of the woman he was staring at currently. His thumb shifted back and forth across the smooth skin of the back of her hand and surprisingly she didn't pull away. She looked back at him, looking for something she thought should still be there somewhere. He was all but a stranger to her but the familiarity of him even after all this time threw her. She couldn't understand it.

He stood, bringing her hand up with him and walked around the coffee table to stand by the side of her chair. For a moment she was confused but gazed up at him tolerantly. Perhaps their time had come to a close. The man in front of her muttered the words "forgive me" and before she could ask what he meant he'd pulled her up and she found herself in his arms kissing him. His lips burned pressed heatedly against hers, the simple chemistry between them sparking to life as it had the first time they came together. His hands traveled to the small of her back, pulling her close, and she melted against him. In all of the time she'd imagined this exact moment nothing came close to the intimacy and passion she felt bursting to bloom inside of her heart.

He had to know. It was one thing to think about her and all of the subtle intoxicating ways she was herself and wonderful. It was another to know the red blooded chemistry that made him fall head over heels in love with a woman he'd known less than three months was still there and still so palpable he could touch it or cut it with a knife. For a few precious seconds he considered not surrendering to the logic that eventually he'd have to pull away from her. She was and always would be his first love and the woman still capable of making him go weak in the knees on sight.

"Rupert." she panted, finally pulling her lips away from his and he found the separation nearly painful. She kept them close, however, so that was a blessing. Both of them were breathing hard, lost in a kiss they weren't aware had traveled so deep. Apparently their unresolved feelings and the abrupt end of their affair had left them with more than enough fuel to spark this lingering passion they held into a bonfire. They weren't the same people but being in this position together felt entirely too familiar. Time wasn't a factor. His blood was still pounding in his ears and his eyesight was swimming with visions of her the last time they made love. He head thrown back in ecstasy and her milky skin stripped and waiting to be devoured with his eyes and lips, memorized with his hands.

"Good Lord." He murmured, pressing his lips to her shoulder. "You still make me melt, Lilla. Even after all this time I still want you just the same as I used to when you get close to me."

Her eyes widened and he knew she felt the same way but his words made her pull away from his embrace. "I'm not ready for this, Rupert. You don't know what your kiss does to me."

"Yes." He disagreed lightly, drawing his thumb over her cheek. "I bloody well do."

"Then you know I can't, Rupert. Twenty five years apart isn't time you can make disappear. We're not the same. I'm not the same. This just feels too good to be true and the last time I felt this way I ended up alone wondering if you were alright while I raised our children."

"That won't happen again." He assured her, but he was polite enough to keep his distance. "I don't want to leave you or our boys ever again. We didn't have a choice before. We have one now."

"I can't. I can't risk my heart again like this, Rupert. Please don't ask me to." Because if he asked, she wasn't sure she could deny him anything. "Meet the boys. They need a father. Talk to them. Maybe your presence can help them make sense of what they want from life and what's expected of them as men. I can't do those things."

"Lilla…"

"Please." She begged. His heart broke and he relented.

"I'll be at Roland's concert tomorrow. Thank you. For everything you've done. Thank you."

She smiled and shook her head to indicate that she hadn't done a thing. She was accepting him into her life again, whether she admitted it or not. If the boys did want a relationship with him he'd always be there by proxy, in their lives as much as he could be. He had no intention of being separated from them again if they wanted him around. She may not realize yet the full implication of that yet.

"I should go, Rupert. I have things to do and I'm sure you do as well."

In point of fact, he didn't. He could have taken time to write more surviving members of the Council or try to phone them but it wasn't something he had to do right this second. Still, to put her at ease he nodded. "Yes. Of course. Plenty to do." He saw her to the door and when she was gone he leaned against it, his heart and loins still throbbing with something between joy and pain. He had something to look forward to, though, and the excitement of meeting his sons was almost overwhelming. Rupert was a man of patience born of practice so he simply steeled himself for the wait and moved further into his flat.