Neither of them hung up the phone. Instead, Jenny holds the receiver almost painfully tight in her hand.

"I tried to find you after we brought Angel back," Rupert continues. "But your pager service was disconnected. I had no other way of tracking you. Willow looked on your computer, the blogs you used, for your family, for any clues but there was nothing. I took that to mean you didn't want to be found and it was all my fault."

Jenny shrugs even though he can't see her. "I didn't want to be," she tells him. "If the curse didn't work, I didn't want there to be a way for Angelus or anyone he sent after me to find me. Believe me, Rupert, I wanted you to find me."

She'd worried about him. Even lost in her pain, she remembered what he did to himself when he felt guilty. His composure slips and the self-recrimination sets in for the long haul. He's stubborn and bullheaded and refuses to let anyone help him find another way out.

Then there's the stuff he hides from the rest of them. They might think he's repressed and detached, but Jenny knows otherwise. She's seen the other side; his concern, his fear, for Buffy, for all of them. His willingness to protect them all by valiantly and stupidly thinking he could face the Master to avert a prophecy of Buffy's death.

Buffy might need to fight and face whatever big bad there is, but Rupert is fully aware of the ramifications if she loses. Fate aside, he's had to live through her death a couple of times and that's going to take its toll on anyone especially when you shoulder the blame as Rupert does.

At least when Jenny was there, he had her to talk to, talk it out with. Or even when he couldn't, there was no other way to deal with how screwed they were, she would sit with him so he wasn't alone. The kids had so many of their own emotions to deal with to notice his most of the time. It was in those moments when she thought of something to draw him out of his own head.

"You know, I'm still pissed at you for going after Angelus," Jenny tells him to temper her own thoughts.

"Yes, well, you never saw my apartment that night," Rupert says suddenly.

"What are you talking about?"

"He'd already prepared it for your body. Music, flowers."

A thousand images fill her head. Enyos had prepared her before going to Sunnydale by making her read every account of what Angelus had done before he was cursed. He was creative, to say the least. Whimsy, Rupert had described it.

If he'd been planning on leaving her body for Rupert…

"Oh, Rupert." She's so relieved they'd gone to her place that night.

"Your letter," Rupert changes the subject so quickly that Jenny doesn't know whether to thank him or cry with relief. "How you described…How you told me to stop doing stupid…It was quite apt because I grieved as though you died that night and part of me died with you."

"I know that feeling," Jenny swallows the lump in her throat. She's beginning to realise what he meant by getting to know each other as they are now. They're changed by what they went through to process how they parted. Their relationship won't be the same as before. They're not the same as before.

"Jenny, I wanted to keep that from you," Rupert apologises. "This conversation isn't how I envisioned it."

"It's okay. We had to have it sometime, right?" Jenny wipes at her cheek, her tears transferring to her fingertips.

"Did we?"

"We've avoided it for long enough, Rupert."

She glances down at herself, feeling the chill from sitting in nothing but a towel and the fresh knowledge of what Angelus had planned for them that night. Her shoulders are bare and her hair is dripping down her back. She grimaces. She needs clothes. She needs to do something to anchor her, to remind her they survived that night and they can survive talking about it.

"Rupert, I don't want you to think I'm backtracking but I'm about to put you on speaker," Jenny tells him as she hits the button and rises from her bed.

"If you're busy, I can call back," he offers.

"No!" She says more forcefully than she intends. She needs him on the other end of the line, needs to feel connected despite being three and a half thousand miles apart. "Don't go, I'm a bit cold and just need clothes."

"Um, clothes?"

She glances at her phone, her lips quirk at his question. She can still make him squirm, she'll file that away for later.

"I was in the shower when you called," she explains moving to her dresser to grab some pyjamas from the bottom drawer, leaving the phone on her bed.

"Shower?" He squeaks and she's half convinced he's putting it on to make her feel better. "So you're…?"

"Naked, Rupert," Jenny finishes for him, pulling on her underwear. "Yeah, I am. Give me a minute, okay?"

She doesn't wait for his answer as she steps into the shorts she grabbed. She slides on the tee shirt before grabbing the damp towel to get the rest of the excess moisture from her hair. Combing her fingers through her hair she decides she doesn't have time for the hair dryer. Feeling warmer, she moves around to the other side of the bed to lie in the dry spot.

She pulls the receiver closer as she curls onto her side. "Alright, I'm back."

"Uh, Jenny?"

"Yeah?"

"This is why I called," Rupert's words are clear and deliberate. "Whatever happens, has happened, no one grounds me the way you do."

She's stunned for a moment, wanting to be there with him. "I think I was wrong about it being too soon to call, I think it's long overdue."

"But it's not too late?"

Only he would ask that. She tried to tell herself over the last four years that she imagined what they had, romanticised their relationship into being more than it was. She wanted to believe that so badly, wishing she could put it behind her. It was a lie she couldn't quite sell.

"Never," Jenny vows with absolute certainty. "I never lied to you about us, Rupert. You were the one thing I never prepared for, but one of the few things that made sense about Sunnydale. I hated myself for hurting you the way I did."

She hadn't meant to tell him she was in love with him that day in her classroom. For the first time in weeks, Rupert hadn't turned her way or turned away when she spoke with him. She'd wanted to be honest with him about looking for the curse but there were so many factors, and there was a huge chance it wasn't going to work. She didn't want to tell him and then be accused of manipulating his feelings if she was wrong. She just wanted to tell him the truth, one of her truths, and that's what she blurted out. For a moment, she thought he was going to say it back – he wore his heart on his sleeve, and she already knew how he felt about her. But she didn't say it for him, not really. She needed to be honest. She was putting everything right, she didn't expect forgiveness or a reconciliation.

"Jenny, you were, you are incomparable," Rupert whispers.