Title: The Visitor 1/5
Author: Gail Christison
Rating: NC-17 for eventual romantic sexual scenes
Summary: Giles has a visitor at his Bath flat. Angst, revelation, transition...
Timeline: Anytime soon :-)
Disclaimer: All belongs to Mutant Enemy...well the bath is mine, though my tiles are Italian bronze not faux marble < g >
Distribution: OMWF http://www.wickedsky.com.oncemore ; Everyone who already has my permission, anyone else would like it, please ask first. :-)
Feedback: chriscln@ozemail.com.au Always love to hear what you think
Author's notes: This story began as a writing exercise to get some inspiration back because the season had become so depressing and GilesLESS...and grew into a real live ficcy < g > Big hugs to Liz and Gileswench for their support and encouragement and to Melissa for taking time out from her wonderful epic to take a peek :-) I also want to wave to Dawn M and Kirstin and to just say *thank you* and another hug for Gylzgirl for her inspiration which lead to the tub and the damp PJs < g >

Dedication: To the Giles we love and miss so very much

Giles rose from his leather recliner and put down the book he'd been trying to read since dinner, the aroma of which still hung heavily in the air. He supposed that it didn't help that he'd opted for an old university days' standby: bangers, mash and boiled cabbage...

The knock at his door was the first since one of the elderly neighbours had called with a pot of Minestrone soup about a week earlier. One thing that he hadn't had to adjust to in the historical but smart Bath flat, or townhouse, was visitors.

He reached the door still stretching his back. Exchanging jogging for tramping had seemed like a good idea, and a little romantic with it, and it had been...there had been a certain cleansing associated with his forays across the countryside, into the old, old places, but the legacy was the reminder that one wasn't twenty-one any more, and the damp British winter wasn't kind to more mature, and oft-damaged bones.

The still mostly-tawny brown head stooped a little to look through the keyhole, and froze. The long fingers of one hand splayed convulsively on the wood of the door and those on the other clenched slowly into a tight fist. It took him several seconds to find his centre, calm his racing heart, nerves, and the chaos of his thoughts.

When he thought he was ready, he unlocked the door.

"You locked it," she said softly, looking up at him with tired, old eyes.

He looked away. His door had always been unlocked...for one reason, and one reason only.

"Come in," he said hoarsely, and stood aside to allow her to come in out of the cold air.

"Nice," she said softly. "Nicer than the hotel even."

"Can I get you...?"

"S-some tea," she filled in, emotion gripping her entire frame for a moment, then the smile flickering at her lips vanished again. "Tea would be great. Hot tea, the hotter the better. This is some cold country you've got here, bud."

"H-have you been here long?" Giles asked with difficulty.

"Long enough to find this place, drive down here and find you."

"Drive?" he demanded, startled. "You don't...!"

"No I don't," she agreed. "Unmixy things, *remember*?"

"Then how...?"

"I borrowed a driver. The Council and I understand each other real well these days. We had a nice talk and afterwards they were happy to buy me a plane ticket and let me have a driver and a car."

Giles closed his eyes for a moment. "You coerced the council into providing transport simply so that you could visit me?"

"There's no 'simply', here," she replied sombrely and sat his chair.

Still not sure what was going on, he finally forced himself to look her in the face. "I-Is everyone all right? Has something happened? Dawn...?"

Buffy's eyes closed, a furrow forming between her brows as she shook her head. "They're fine. Everyone is fine, a mess, but fine. That's not what...I don't..." She stopped and then restarted. "You said tea."

"Oh. Oh yes, tea. You always preferred Orange spice. Do you still...?"

A flicker of something that could only be described as pain, lanced through her eyes. "Whatever," she said flatly. "I haven't had tea since...not for a very long time. Anything will be fine."

Giles frowned but headed for the small kitchen. It was beautifully appointed and crafted but he'd have given every copper pot and pan, every oak panel, to be back in the pokey little Sunnydale apartment with her at that moment, preferably long before Buffy had died, long before Dawn's arrival and long before his world had become such a relentlessly unhappy place...

When he returned with the tea she was dozing in the big leather chair, and didn't stir when he slid the tray onto the coffee table. He sat on the sofa end nearest her with his mug and watched her for a long time, aware that jet lag had probably caught up with her.

She had changed, and not for the better. Also, surprisingly, her hair was shorter, and drawn back into a mature chignon. She wore a high-necked brown sweater, dark green trews and a long, even darker brown suede coat, gloves and boots.

She hadn't been as conservative with her appearance since their trip to the desert. Not only that, but it was obvious that she was neither relaxed nor at peace. In fact she soon grew restless, and showed signs of subconscious distress.

Giles reached out and touched her arm. He still wasn't used to that. He had never felt comfortable with allowing himself even the least of intimacies with her. He wasn't sure why, when he was more than comfortable about the occasional casual contact with Xander or Willow. With them it was easier, familial, but with Buffy it had always been...

Except for that one moment. As the memory of it flooded back he watched her face. She'd stopped fretting but hadn't woken.

It had been the most wondrous and incredible thing...Buffy back from the dead. His heart had almost burst with the joy of seeing her again, looking up at him, almost exactly the same. Almost. Without realising he was doing it, his fingers moved to brush her cheek.

But she hadn't been the same...there had been no joy, no spark, no life in those eyes, only pain. He closed his own for a moment, lost in the memory of that crashing feeling when his joy had been usurped by the realisation that she was not the same girl he lo...remembered. The furrow in his brow deepened and his jaw twitched.

In the midst of the rising hurt, warm fingers closed around his but he was too self-conscious to open his eyes.

"I missed you," her voice said, a world of emotion in the slightest tremble of each word.

"And I you," he whispered hoarsely. "When you...died...I thought I would never know joy again." Her fingers tightened their grip. "And when you came back..."

"I came back wrong," she said sadly. "At least I thought I did. It hurt...so much...and I felt so dead inside."

He drew a jagged breath and forced himself to look at her. "I'm sorry. If I had known..."

"I know," she told him, affection making her eyes bright as they looked into his. "I heard you...with Willow."

"You...?" Giles voice trailed off and he swallowed, remembering what had been said. "I never meant you to hear any of that, but I meant what I said, Buffy. I would not have allowed..."

"I know," she repeated, with even more affection. "I wish you'd been there to stop them. It doesn't matter now, though. If I've learned anything since you left, it's that I really don't want to die again. I've kinda learned some other stuff too. Like, I don't like me very much, right now. It's like every time something bad happens in my life, which is kind of a lot, I become this evil, horrible Buffy."

He tried to smile, but it was little more than an emotional lift of the corners of his mouth. "I'm sure it can't have been that bad. At least not as bad as your rather trying Initiative period," he teased, light finally reaching his eyes.

Her blue-grey ones rolled up to his. "Thank you for reminding me that I have been the bitca route before," she retorted dryly, but without malice. "And yes it could. It could be worse. A lot worse."

His own gaze dropped. "I'm sorry I wasn't there."

"Be glad you weren't," she countered, almost amused. "You really didn't want to be there for all that. But it might have been...better...if you were. I wish you had been. Even being stuffy and disapproving of everything I was doing, it would have been so much better to have you there, instead of stumbling around on my own proving just how stupid I really am."

"Why are you here?" he whispered, without looking up.

"I like it," she teased. "Direct, to the point, no stammering, no ums."

He did half smile, half chuckle then, but only fleetingly. "Yes, well..."

The smile faded from her face. "I missed you. I-I knew you wouldn't come, so..."

His head shot up and he stared at her. "Buffy...I would do anything for you...except allow you to be less than you are, or could be."

Buffy held his gaze. "I-I know. But you wouldn't have come," she reiterated.

"Dawn seems to be worried about you," he offered, not knowing what else he could say to that.

She shrugged. "There's worry. About me, about her...all of us."

"Y-yes, you mentioned a...mess?"

"God, where do I start?" she said, more to herself. "And what has Dawn told you?"

"Not a great deal," he said in an oddly neutral voice. "She's very obviously been unhappy, though I believe she thinks it doesn't show in her correspondence. She's vocalised concern about you on a number of counts, talks about Tara frequently, Xander and Anya occasionally, and conspicuously does not mention Willow."

Buffy, a shade paler and her expression a little hunted, swallowed. "What...um...what did she say about me?"

Giles made a dismissive gesture. "It's what she doesn't say that bothers me more. For a long while she has given the impression that she is very much alone, unsupervised and that you are preoccupied with issues which don't include her."

"Well, yeah," Buffy admitted reluctantly. "It's no secret I suck as a parent, and then Will and Tara broke up and everything, and I...well, I suck majorly in the Dawn raising department."

"Willow and Tara are no longer together?"

"Well, they weren't, for a long time. Willow kind of let the magic get control of her, y'know, like she didn't mean to do bad things...they just kinda happened."

Giles drew in an unhappy breath. "Things will, if you let magic, or anything else, control your life." He didn't see the look of misery that momentarily twisted Buffy's features.

"It must be my turn to make the tea, huh?" she offered, suddenly needing to put some distance between them.

His eyes widened a little in bemused surprise. "If you like. You know how I have mine."

For a moment Buffy didn't move, then she nodded and headed for the kitchen, hiding her suddenly overbright gaze from view. Within minutes she was back, collected and ready to face him again.

They sipped in silence for a few moments before Giles spoke. "Buffy, is there something you want to tell me?"

She froze, her expression changing several times from surprise, to terror, to denial, to resignation.

"Yeah, but I'm not really ready yet," she admitted.

"Fair enough," he replied, and resumed sipping his tea.

"I hate when you do that," she muttered into hers.

"Do what?"

"That," she said stubbornly. "I'm really not ready, okay?"

"Fine," he said evenly and picked up one of the shortbreads she'd brought with the tea.

Buffy banged her cup in its saucer and slopped tea over the sides before putting the whole thing down with a clatter and getting up to prowl the room.

Giles knew it was serious, but he knew his Slayer well enough to know that the less he pushed the more likely it was that she would rise to the bait and volunteer whatever it was that was worrying her. On the other hand, if he insisted in the least, she would, in her contrary way, close up or defy him out of sheer perversity of nature...or possibly as an extreme defence mechanism. He'd never quite worked that one out.

"We can go out on the common if you feel the need of some exercise, or a spot of training," he offered easily.

"No," she said quickly. "No, I'm fine, it's just...I need..." She made a frustrated noise. "Never mind. Giles, why here? Why not London?"

"I have no fond memories of London," he mused. "Actually, I already owned this flat, and my roots are here in the West Country."

"So this is like...coming home, to you?" she asked, surprisingly timidly.

He nodded. "Very much so."

"Are you happy?" It was a rushed question, almost as though she had to get it out before she changed her mind.

That gave him pause. He looked up slowly, then stared at her for several long moments. "At times," he said finally. "But on the whole I must honestly say...no."

"Me neither."

Giles frowned. "You're unhappy? I thought you had come to terms with your return?"

Buffy shrugged. "Kinda. But it didn't help much."

"Do you know why you're still unhappy?"

She stopped prowling again, and nodded unhappily. "That's why I came. For a long time...ever since I came back, I didn't know why I was unhappy, dead inside. And then a little while ago I found out."

"Buffy, why didn't you call, talk to me about this earlier? I wanted you to take responsibility for your life, to learn to be independent. I never intended for you to be miserable or unhappy."

"Me neither," she repeated whimsically. "But that's how it was. And my ideas on how to fix it kind of sucked on a whole 'nother magnitude of suckiness...badness actually. Major badness."

"Which, presumably, is what you're not ready to tell me about yet?" he guessed.

She twisted her fingers together. "Yeah, actually," she admitted then started to prowl again. "The thing is, no matter how I say this you're going to hate me." He started to shake his head. "YES, you will," she insisted in a tone that brooked no argument.

His heart dropped. "Buffy, you didn't kill anyone...?"

"Of course not," she shot back, irritated. "Well, I thought I did for a while, but that wasn't my fault..."

Giles raised an almost dazed eyebrow.

She shook her head. "It's not important." After a moment's silence she explained quietly: "I...um...I was seeing someone."

"Oh? Someone I know?" he asked, barely over the possibility that Buffy had killed someone, and trying too hard to hide the turmoil those last words instantly invoked in him.

Again Buffy looked wretched. "Um, well, yeah. That's sorta the problem."

Possibilities trampled through Giles' thoughts. Angel. Or Riley was back. Or Buffy had poached Xander from Anya and was in peril of a vengeance spell. Or for some unfathomable reason she'd become involved with that Parker creature again. He sighed heavily. None of those choices were healthy and all fraught with the possibility of heartache at a time when she could least deal with the inevitable upheaval...

"Best you tell me and get it over with," he said kindly. "I was there through all of your romantic, um, travails, remember?"

"Not this one," she said darkly, and looked like she might actually flee.

"Buffy?" Giles went from concern to surprise when she burst into silent tears and began to tremble. "Buffy?"

She shook her head. "I can't. You'll hate me. I'm dirty and horrible and you can't like me; you won't even want to look at me when you know what I've done!" she cried, and fled toward the front door.

Giles shot up after her but wasn't quick enough to stop her. He stopped as the door slammed in his face, unwilling to pursue her in her current state, frustrated, but confident that she would come to no harm.

He turned slowly to go back to his chair, firmly repressing a distinct urge to find that single malt he'd unearthed when packing in Sunnydale all those months ago.

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