Title: The Freshman - Replay 1/3
Author: Gail Christison
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: B/G subtext, brief G/O
Summary: Response to Luisa's challenge to rewrite The Freshman. Mostly exactly that, but with a bit of extra fun thrown in. :-)
Disclaimer: Dang it, Joss...why couldn't you get it right the first time??? Also, a small amount of dialogue from the actual show was worked into the text here because I felt it was too good to lose or ignore and is copyright Joss and Mutant Enemy. See if you can pick the Joss bits <g>
Timeline: Re-working of the season 4 premiere
Spoilers: Not really...many pre-season 4 references.
Feedback: Whatta concept! <vbg> chriscln@ozemail.com.au
Author's Note: This story was inspired by Luisa's BGWM challenge for a re-working of The Freshman, for which I owe her great thanks. Oh, and sorry, mate. I did try to convince them smoochies were part of the plan, but they weren't listening this time <g> Also many thanks to Karesia for her cool beta. I've since polished further, so all mistakes herein are my own. :-)

Dedication: Savvy

"Giles?"

Buffy closed the door of the flat and made her way inside. "Giles?"

At that time of day, with the car parked out the front, she would have expected to find Giles either at his desk or working on his personal library, maybe cross referencing some new volume, or catching up his journal.

She was considering checking upstairs when a door opened and closed down the hall and Giles emerged, still drying his hair briskly, dressed in nothing but pajama bottoms hanging loosely from his hips.

Buffy swallowed, staring, dumbstruck at the unexpected sight. Technically she hadn't even seen Angel like this...not...so relaxed...and....damp...and...chest hair. She swallowed again and contemplated fleeing, but Giles lowered the towel.

"Buffy!"

"Hi, Giles."

"Ah...this is...ah...unexpected," he stammered, glancing surreptitiously up to the loft more than once.

"There's, um, trouble...a-at the campus. Big trouble: the kind of trouble that needs...y'know, research. I should, um...I have to go to the bathroom," she finished in a rush.

Giles blinked and watched her scuttle down the hall.

He'd never exactly planned to have a conversation with Buffy whilst half dressed and with moisture running down his neck from his wet, probably Brillo pad looking hair. Worse, he hadn't planned on having a conversation with her with Olivia asleep upstairs and likely to wake at any time.

Buffy closed the door to the bathroom and gathered her wits. Her bizarro day had just got about as insane as it could get. That was Giles under the towel. First, she'd known that immediately, without even being able to see his head and face, and second, her first response had been to compare the view with Angel... She rolled her eyes and made an aggravated sound.

*Smooth, Buffy*, she told herself. *Very mature...hi-tailing it to the bathroom just because you saw some chest hair...well...lots of...no just the right amount of...* She scowled and made another noise. That was *so* not what she was thinking, really... The issue was a half-naked Watcher...*a Watcher sans tweed or suit or stuffiness...*

Her mind disobediently flashed back to the blue silk pajama pants hanging off those lean hips, the cute curve of his not so rock-hard abs, and the surprisingly strong shoulders above the chest hair.

*...A Watcher with manly bits.*

Bits she'd conveniently omitted to imagine him with. Watchers were like Ken dolls...they weren't supposed to...there wasn't supposed to *be* shock value, like damp, unmentionable things outlined in silk...or wet pectoral muscles that she'd obviously spent entirely too much time staring at.

*That's it*, she decided. *I'm totally scarred for life and it's all his fault. He was supposed to be old. Watcher old.... *Librarian* old, not George Clooney...Harrison Ford...Pierce Brosnan-y old...der.* She stamped her foot on the hard tiles. Her mind was definitely taking an evil turn. That body kept flashing back and intermixing with every memory of each of the other hunk...*older men*, she corrected...without their shirts. How dare her own brain play so dirty...!

In the end she let it do what it wanted, went to the can, washed her face, rolled her eyes at her reflection in the mirror and turned to face the inquisition. There was still the problem on the campus to deal with no matter how much hormonal mutiny was going on in her head.

"Better now?" Giles asked when she returned.

Buffy could have sworn she heard amusement in his voice but his expression was one of innocent inquiry.

"Yes," she said, close to a pout. "New robe?"

"Hm? No. You've just never seen me in it before. Would you like some juice?"

Buffy shook her head. "There's a problem...on the campus. People are disappearing, Giles. We need to research...or at least to find out what's disappearing them. My spidey sense says badness...our kind of badness...but I have nothing yet, other than bodies...missing...bodies. Okay, you know what I mean..."

"Actually," Giles began carefully. "Now that I'm no longer your Watcher and not in a position to be there for you twenty-four hours a day while you're attending college...you're probably going to have start learning to do some of this investigative work, yourself..."

"But..."

"Buffy, it's not like I'm going home to England. I'll be right here...I'll always be there for you. But you're not sixteen anymore. Few other slayers have ever reached this position...none have gone to college...and few have even lived to be your age. We have to start preparing you for the rest of your life..."

Buffy's face grew bleak and a little angry. "Whatever luck I've had up to now we both know I don't have a 'rest of my life' and you wouldn't still be here if you didn't know somewhere inside you that it would be wrong for a Watcher to desert his Slayer...that a-an eighteen year old girl is still an eighteen year old girl...I told you once...I can't do this alone. What's changed?"

Giles looked away. In truth, nothing had changed. But it terrified him that she wouldn't be able to cope alone, and he couldn't be there all the time anymore...

For the first time since the beginning, there was no one there for her. He'd been cast adrift from her day to day life, Xander's had taken an entirely separate turn, Willow's time was now filled with the joy of unbridled access to knowledge and study, freedom from the oppression of high school peers...and the happy distraction of a musician boyfriend. Even Angel no longer skulked in the shadows, no longer the brooding reserve, ever willing to join the battle when needs must...

There were no more aces up Buffy's sleeve, no real backups any more. There was just...herself. She was both entering entirely new territory and revisiting the world of every Slayer before her...the loneliest, harshest reality of being the Chosen One: that in the end, there was no one, nothing...except her own judgement and the gifts, or perhaps the curse, she'd been given.

"A-are you sending me away?"

Giles looked back swiftly. "No...heavens, no. It's just...you simply must be able to handle this kind of situation without relying on others-"

"Without relying on *you*, you mean?" she accused, hurt in her voice. "Giles, I didn't fire you, remember? I fired Wesley."

Giles' eyes narrowed. "What is it, Buffy? This is about more than just me researching some missing students, isn't it?"

It was Buffy's turn to look away. "Right now all that's important is that kids are going missing, and I don't know why. I just know there's badness involved. The kind that goes bump in the night...and I have to do something about it...with or without your help."

"Rupert...?"

Buffy's eyes widened at the sound of the melodious female voice floating down from the loft, every nerve in her body set against every British syllable. She gave a mental huff of exasperation at her reaction. What did she care if there was a woman in Giles' apartment...in Giles' bedroom...which she'd never been in...possibly in Giles' bed...?

Oh, so not going there...think broody vampire...smooth pecs...needs me...wants to hide inside me...eiwww...The comforting image of Angel imploded.

That did it. She looked up at Giles and cocked an eyebrow after he'd answered his guest. "Do I want to know?"

"Do you?" he asked seriously, taking the wind from her sails.

She nodded uncertainly.

"Her name is Olivia and she is a...friend...a very old friend. She now has a frenetic international modeling career and I'm...I'm still a Watcher. We've remained friends...and on occasion, when the opportunity arises, we...well, we get together. We enjoy each other's company, and, in a way we provide a small oasis of sanity for each other in our equally insane lives."

"So...you're dating?" Buffy squeaked, aware that she was being childish in the extreme.

Giles tilted his head and gave her the look.

"Not dating," she amended. "Just friends...but 'grown up' friends?"

He nodded, amused. "Aren't you a little old to be talking about 'grown ups' like a six year old? In my country you'd have been past the age of consent two years ago and eligible to drink, vote and die for your country at this point."

That brought Buffy up short. All the guff about her having to learn to do things by herself had made her feel helpless, like a fledgling bird being shoved unceremoniously out of the nest before it was ready, or like a recalcitrant school child getting a lecture from the headmaster...or the librarian. Now all of a sudden Giles was conceding that she was no child and hadn't been for a long time. This was new...but then so was the robe...and the now drying, slightly fluffy, mussed hair and the no-glasses, and her doing most of the stammering instead of him.

"I'm pretty sure it's okay to vote and die here too," she said dryly. "So you want me to leave...*as one adult to another?*" she added, looking pointedly at the loft. "I don't want to cramp your style, especially if it's about 'gettin' while the gettin's good'."

Giles gave her an exasperated look and changed the subject. "Wasn't there something about people going missing?"

"Oh yeah, them. I got the feeling they were my problem," she replied, sarcasm not entirely veiled.

"Rupert? You didn't answer. Oh..."

Buffy looked up. Olivia, apparently, dressed only in a shirt she recognized as normally covering her Watcher's goodies...and maybe more surprised even than she was at seeing Giles earlier.

"Hi," she said perkily. "Nice to meet you. I'm Buffy. He's mi-my Watcher. That is, he, ah...I was just checking with him on some important business," Buffy amended, realizing she'd just majorly screwed up.

"She knows," Giles said quietly, watching his Slayer's facial contortions. "Olivia, this is my Slayer. Buffy Summers: Olivia Hargreaves, one of my dearest friends. Though these days her career name is simply 'Olivia' he said with suggestive emphasis, and the older woman gave him a filthy look, rather spoiled by a giggle.

She was gorgeous, Buffy conceded, and way too young for him. She wondered how they knew each other and what Jenny Calendar would have said about Giles entertaining...*now there was a word*...half naked supermodels in his flat when he couldn't even put enough syllables together to ask her for a date. She frowned and made a mental note to ask him about that later.

"I'll just, um, go and get dressed, shall I?" Olivia said easily, looking mischievously at Giles, who smiled back.

When she'd disappeared back into the loft, Buffy muttered: "Kinda young for an old friend." It was half question, half criticism.

Giles raised an eyebrow. "Is this an 'eiww' moment?"

"Jury's still out," Buffy conceded. "There's the 'very, very old and kinda gross' school of thought...and then there was you...um....well, there's the notion that maybe kids think all adults are y'know monks...monk-like...not having the-"

"Yes, yes, I've got it," Giles forestalled her, showing his irritation.

Buffy continued: "...and that maybe that might not be entirely...adult...of said kids."

Giles looked amused again. "Does this mean I'm *not* very, very old, and this is not entirely gross?"

"Well, I didn't exactly say *that*," she shot back, her tone as facetious as the dancing of her eyes. "But it is possible that I was, um, mistaken, about certain things."

"For instance?" Giles wasn't going to let the opportunity go any time soon.

"Don't push it, Giles. You just got promoted from old guy to date-worthy. Go with it."

He laughed and raised his voice toward the loft. "Shall I start some fresh tea?"

"Coffee. Black. *Strong* black," came a voice from on high.

He chuckled again. Olivia had a love hate relationship with his single malt. She loved it and it hated her. He decided to get the Tylenol while he was at it.

"Buffy, coffee or tea?"

"Maybe I should go...really."

Giles shook his head. "You haven't filled me in on the crisis at the campus yet."

"Oh, hey, you *were* listening after all."

He shot her 'the look' once again. "Of course I was listening. You think it's vampires but you have no evidence yet, except that people are disappearing. Presumably a new incident drew the situation to your attention? I haven't seen a great deal in the newspapers about students disappearing from the Sunnydale Campus..."

"That's the thing...it's not being treated like: hey, there might be a serial killer, or an alien invasion or...vampires hunting," she added sarcastically. It's being all hushed up, like the faculty is frightened it'll lose money if the campus finds out and people start transferring out or going home...whatever."

"Very astute of you. In this day and age that's probably exactly what's going on. They don't want a panic, not so much for the good of the campus or the students, but to protect their assets. We'll have to make some enquiries." He shook his head. "Sometimes I wonder which is the real evil..."

"Wow...philosophy this early in the morning. Doesn't it make your brain hurt?" Buffy grinned at him.

Giles grinned back and shook his head good-naturedly. "So, tea or coffee?"

"No, really, I'm gonna go now, since it sounds like we're going to get together on this thing, maybe even later today...if...uh...Olivia...has some shopping to do...or nails or a photo shoot or something. Anyway, I'll call...later...okay?"

He nodded.

"Buffy," Giles called after her as she headed for the door. "Don't forget...this is your project now...find out as much as you can and use the campus computers to pull up as much data as you can from newspapers, school records, morgue records, police..."

"Hey," Buffy interrupted, "do I *look* like 'Willow, the super-hacker', here?" Half those places are password protected at the very least. Willow considers at least two of them to be among her greatest triumphs."

"Oh...yes...quite right," Giles subsided. "Then perhaps you could ask her to help...part of that process I was talking about. Consider your options and make your own choices about how you gather the information, and, ultimately, how you act upon it."

"You're really into this do-it-yourself Slaying thing, aren't you?" she teased. "Anybody think you wanted to spend more time with your honey or something..."

But Giles wasn't laughing. "This is not a frivolous exercise...this is your future...and Olivia is a dear friend. You would do well to remember that."

Buffy drew a sharp breath at the power in his very quiet voice. Giles was the only person she knew who was scarier when he was very, very quiet than other people were when they were screaming at you.

"Chill, Giles. This isn't much fun for me either, you know. You're min-" she swallowed and tried again, "You're *my* Watcher...and I was never much good at sharing. Also, not really sure I *want* to do this job without you. I never asked to be the Slayer...never asked to have my whole life hijacked and turned upside down either. I guess they never got the memo..." she added sarcastically. "The one thing the Council did that went any way toward making any of this bearable...was sending you to me. How did you think I was going to feel about not having you there? I remember all the speeches about sacred duty...*our* sacred duty, not just mine."

The resolve had left him. Giles sighed. He'd been so convinced that it was time to let go. Sure that he'd done everything else to ensure her survival in battle and her chance at a future. That all that was left was to make certain that no matter how alone she was from now on, she would have a chance to succeed, to go on and reach for that normal life she wanted so badly.

The truth was she *was* his sacred duty...unto her death, but he'd been willing to violate even that for the chance to give her what no Slayer before her had ever had: a life, a future...something beyond the death and the darkness...

"You're certain you don't wish to strike out on your own? I thought independence was something of an obsession with you...has been for years. Isn't me leaving you alone to 'do your own thing' as it were, what you've wanted all along? No Council, no orders...?"

" 'Doing your own thing's not what it's cracked up to be," she said diffidently, but Giles saw it in her eyes.

"We're a little closer to the real problem now, aren't we? Talk to me, Buffy."

She sighed. Now that it came down to putting it into words it seemed petty and juvenile.

"You'll laugh," she said petulantly, without really meaning it.

"I think not," he said gently.

"College...I thought it was going to be huge, you know? The best thing ever. Y'know, freedom and all, but I don't fit in there...meantime Willow's in heaven, and the library..."

"There's a problem with the library?"

She looked up and met his gaze. "Yeah...wrong librarian."

NEXT