Buffy wiped the dust from her hands on her black sweatpants. The third vamp of the night and she was still trying to recover from her argument with Giles. She wandered the darkened streets of Sunnydale, always surprised by the night activity. In a town that seemed stalked by death you'd think people would just stay indoors. It just never seemed to end. The fighting and the dying and the leaving.
"Let's not forget the leaving," she muttered to her self. "Can't ever forget that."
Giles' announcement just seemed to come from nowhere. One minute they're training as usual and then he's calling her a spoiled brat and she's calling him a bastard and ordering him to go.
"By now I ought to be used to men turning on me," she reflected.
First her father. Then Angel losing his soul and becoming Angelus after giving him her virginity. The worst three months of her life until her mom got sick last year. And then when he was cured he left again in body. Couldn't deal with her life. Scott in high school. And that one stupid night with Parker Abrahms. Like reliving that morning after with Angel again. Feeling inadequate and useless. Dirty. And Riley. Big, blond Riley, another man who just didn't get that slaying wasn't a part-time gig between raising babies and getting her toenails polished. Now Giles. The one guy she thought understood about duty and destiny he was gonna leave her too.
Buffy wanted to blame his words on shock that she was alive, but truthfully their relationship had never really recovered since the debacle of her freshman year when jealousy had driven her to abandon him in favor of the Initiative. Jealousy? For a moment Buffy's focused on that moment in Giles' apartment when she had seen that bitch Olivia standing in her Watcher's kitchen wearing her Watcher's shirt glowing from her Watcher's ...... No. No. No. Can't think these thoughts. Not about Giles. Never about Giles.
Sure things had improved once she asked him to resume his duties as Watcher. And he had been a rock of support after her mother's death. That moment in the dessert when she thought he might die after being impaled by a spear. It was worse than driving a sword into Angel's gut. But she could never forget their fight at the Magic Box just hours before the ill-fated attempt to rescue Dawn from Glory.
Blood. Dawn's blood would open the gateway between dimensions. When the blood stopped flowing the gate would close. And Giles said he would kill Dawn before allowing Glory to open the gate. In all their years together, in all her defiance, it was the first time she had ever threatened to kill him.
But what had been her choice? Her father confused and hurt by her erratic and violent behavior, had long ago abandoned his first family in favor of a string increasingly younger secretaries. Her mother was dead. Dawn was all she had. Even if her sister was created from mystical energy, and existed for mere months of real time, Buffy remembered more. Remembered how the house smelled of talcum powder and Gerber food after her baby sister came home from the hospital. Remembered Dawn breaking her collarbone trying the ride Buffy's two- wheeler instead of her own tri-cycle. Remembered how that first night she returned home after killing Angel and running away to L.A. she awoke to find Dawn snuggled against her. Green energy or flesh, it didn't matter. Dawn was all that remained of her family. No one would take her. Not Giles. Not even to save the world.
And now Giles gone. Giles leaving her. It didn't seem possible. There must be some explanation. Perhaps the Watcher's Council. Were they behind this abandonment? Maybe they had threatened him. They hated Buffy. Had probably danced on her grave. She didn't know if another Slayer had been called. Giles hadn't told her and she hadn't bothered to ask.
In fact, come to think of it he hadn't told her anything since her return. Had they talked about anything other than her money problems? And had they even touched? Buffy stood still. Except for that bone crushing hug in the Magic Box when he returned from England there had been no physical contact except during training.
She stumbled over a curb, barely catching her balance. She glanced around to reorient herself to her surroundings and wasn't surprised to see that lost in though and memories she was outside Angel's old mansion on Crawford Street. Still abandoned after all these years. So many nightmares and heartache in this place.
She entered and immediately sneezed three times. Cobwebs hung like thick curtains from the ceiling and draped the furniture. The heavy iron chains she had used on Angel when he returned from hell were still bolted to the wall. He had been so afraid, so tormented and she'd wanted to help him so much that she hadn't told the others of his presence. And Giles had been so hurt. No wonder Angel ... no Angelus wearing Angel's face had tortured him for hours. Tortured him in this place. If she ventured to the garden patio would Giles' blood still stain the carpet?
She walked to the sofa and lay down. It smelled faintly of soot and she remember lying there with Angel, both exhausted from training in those heady days when she believed love would sustain them through the fires of hell. She sank into the worn couch, exhausted from her argument with Giles and the strain of life's responsibilities.
Breathing the familiar scent of decay Buffy slept. She dreamed.
Music pulsed. Cigarette smoke hung low, making her blue eyes burn and her vision blur. Though she moved among the press of dancers caught in an orgy of sweat, lust and life, Buffy felt separated from the surge. She smoothed her dress, reveling in the sensation of silk against her skin.
A cool hand brushed her shoulder, acheingly familiar, Angel. She turned and her heart jerked with memory. He looked just as he had upon their first meeting in the ally of the Bronze.
"I don't need a friend."
"I didn't say I was yours."
Dressed in a white shirt, dark pants and a velvet coat that begged to be touched. A Heathcliff to her Catherine. Dark, mysterious and so handsome he made her chest hurt. Eagerly she moved into his embrace, welcomed his chilled lips on her own. Tongues dueled as he held her gently, as though she might break from too much contact. They remained clasped together and the teen-ager Buffy had once been rejoiced in the arms of her dark prince.
"This isn't a fairy tale. When I kiss you, you don't wake up from a deep sleep."
"No. When you kiss me I want to die."
"You were great. A real pro," the harsh words echoing in her mind and ears even as she sensed his face morphing into vampiric ridges. No longer her teen-age love, but her darkest nightmare, Angelus.
"No," she gasped, trying to push away in horror. His fangs sliced into her lips, filling her mouth with copper blood. He pulled back and nausea struck as his face twisted into a mocking smirk, his tongue lapping at traces of her blood dripping from his lips.
Angelus lunged and Buffy braced for his attack, too stunned to defend herself, but instead of cold hands, she felt warmth. And these lips suckling her neck were feverishly hot. She pressed her face into Riley's broad chest and inhaled. He smelled of wheat, wind and sanity. Picnics in the sunshine rather than Hellmouths and the cloying stench of vamp dust.
"Loving you is the scariest thing I've ever done, Buffy," he whispered.
Buffy tried to move closer, but cold fingers bit into her shoulder whirling her into the hard, narrow planes of Spike's body. The blond vampire crushed his lips against her own. Harsh and cold, unrelenting in his desire. Spike pulled her into his darkness, promised eternity without warmth, pleasure and pain, passion but never tenderness.
"Slayers dance with death," he reminded her, his chilled hands bruising her in his intensity. "I can feel it, Slayer, you know you want to dance."
And then they were all surrounding her. These lovers of her past and future. Three pairs of undead hands and two sets of human, for Parker had joined Riley. They clutched and grabbed, gentle and harsh.
Pulling her in all directions. Snatching at the pieces of her broken heart and soul. She moved with and against them, offering her body if only then would make her feel alive.
Her vision swirled and beyond Angelus' dark shoulder, she spied Giles. But not her Giles. Younger, harder and menacing. Dark jeans, black turtleneck, work boots and leather jacket. A cigarette dangling from his lips. Green eyes glittering with lust and rage.
Dimly, Buffy realized that her other partners had vanished and she stood alone on the dance floor. Giles, "No Ripper," her mind corrected strode toward her with the controlled grace of a panther. And it was Ripper. Not the cocky hooligan released by the band candy, this was a man who controlled the darkest of magics. He plunged a sword into the mayor's chest and withstood hours of Angelus' tortures. Arrogant, dangerous, he stood behind her now, his large hands skimming over her bare arms. He pulled her flush against his body and Buffy felt his hard cock press into her ass.
His warm breath brushed across her cheek and she shivered. "That feel good luv?" he whispered, wriggling his hips and grinding his erection closer.
One of his hands splayed against her taut belly, the other possessively caressing her hair, her cheek, the side of her breast. She arched into him, eager for his insistent touch. His fingers delved beneath the silk of her dress until it was hiked around her waist, the only thing separating them was her panties and his jeans. Moving in a sensual dance, he rubbed his knuckles into her crotch. Buffy moaned and he responded with a rumbling growl of his own. With a hard twist of his wrist he ripped the flimsy scrap of silk from her thighs and sunk two finger in her dripping core. The Slayer's cry of surprise became a purr of urgency as her partner brushed a callused thumb across her clit. Buffy rocked with the bruising rhythm and her eyes opened wide with her mind shattering release.
But as she came, her eyes focussed on her Giles standing just feet away, looking at her with raw anguish and dismay. Her heart clenched, even as her body quivered from the persistent touch of his alter ego.
"Buffy," his lips mouthed her name and she reached for her Watcher as she jerked awake.
"Oh Giles," she sobbed. "What have I done?" Huddled on the filthy sofa, Buffy cried for the first time since she'd been thrust back into her world. The first rays of sunlight fell across the stone floor as the Slayer wept. "I'm not going to let him go," she resolved. "Not this time. Not him."