TITLE: Sepia Strangers (part 3 in the Calling Marco trilogy)
AUTHOR: Jacqui
RATING: G
DISCLAIMER: Um, strangely… these
characters are mine, although, their memories probably aren’t. Maybe Joss might claim them. Anyway, it makes me feel really good to say, "They’re mine! All mine!" Oh, um, maybe an unauthorized cameo at the end.
COMMENTS: I felt like writing angst (that’s not like me! and couldn’t resist.
FEEDBACK: I pay cash. Well, not literally, does monopoly money count? Either way, you’ll have to write to me to tell me.

Dust rose in large billows when she lifted the last trunk from its hiding space in the far corner of the attic. Jessie fought the urge to sneeze. She loved this job, cleaning out all the old junk from the old house. They’d been at it for several days and it looked as if this would mark the last of it. A small sense of disappointment washed over her.

If it hadn’t been for the copious amounts of dust, and Caroline’s constant whining, it would have been an ideal, if bittersweet, task. Sorting through her family’s old things, looking at long forgotten memories, gave her a sense of her own self.

"What have you found, sis? Anything valuable?" The greed and delight in possible gains that thickened Caroline’s voice made Jessie stiffen her back.

"I haven’t opened it yet. God, could you be more selfish? This isn’t a personal treasure hunt, you know."

She turned her attentions back to the old trunk. It was locked, but time had weakened the lock and rust had done the rest, Jessie was able to break it with very little effort. She lifted the lid and then gently pried apart the layers of tissue paper that protected what was inside.

Books, mostly albums, some were what seemed like diaries, old letters, stray photographs. Somebody had taken great care to preserve these things, making sure that they lasted the test of time. In the bottom of the trunk lay an old chain, silver, with a cross. It was plain and simple, Jessie lifted it out with awe, something about it commanded respect.

Caroline huffed over her older sister’s shoulder and returned to her previous task of sorting through the old clothes.

Also, way down in the bottom, were two rings. They matched, they’d obviously been made to fit each other, the designed linking and overlapping when they were pressed together. One was larger than the other, thicker, as if made for a man, the other small and delicate, a woman’s ring.

The day, and the gruesome reason for it, forgotten, Jessie settled herself down, she lifted the first album, heavy and thick. The cover stuck to the pages when she tried to lift it, gently prizing them apart Jessie looked at the first pages with confusion.

Who were these people? Girls, mostly, a little bit younger than she was now. They were in high school, possibly an American school, their outfits bordering on lewd. Photograph after photograph showed the same group, minus or plus different girls. There was one, though, a small petite blonde that drew Jessie’s attention, with her friends, with her family. She positively glowed from the pages.

After a while, the scenery changed. The same blonde girl had changed schools, changed personalities it seemed, something was different, something had been lost. Then it hit her, the photo crept up on her so suddenly, she hadn’t been expecting it.

Flipping through a stranger’s old memories was one thing, but this was something else. Jessie nearly dropped the album, her shock palpable and thick. Something grew inside of her, an interest, an excitement that she hadn’t known before.

"Caroline!" She hissed across the room. "Hey Caz! Look, I think it’s grandfather Giles!"

"So? Like you haven’t seen enough photos of him brooding off into the distance. The man must have held the record for angst in his day. Hey, does this scarf look okay if I wrap it around…?"

"No Caz, I mean before Grandmere Sarah."

"Before?" Caroline’s voice had dropped to a whisper. The scarf floating to the floor, forgotten and unheeded. She stepped over to Jessie and crouched down, looking hesitantly at the album presented to her.

"It’s definitely him. But he looks so… so… different. Happy, even."

Jessie brought the book back to her lap and turned the page. She sighed wistfully as her fingers lightly traced the faces. It was hard to marry this image with her memories, with the real life thing, the older, sadder, broken man.

"He had a nice smile." She looked questioningly at her sister. "Did you ever see him smile? I mean, really smile? Like this?"

Caroline shook her head softly. She reached out and lifted up the silver cross on its chain.

"Look, it’s the same one that that girl is wearing."

They both looked at the photos. Sure enough, around the girl’s neck sat the chain. Their grandfather smiling down at her, pride in his eyes, his face lit up just looking at her. They sighed. It was a side of him that they’d never seen.

"Hey!" Jessie’s eyes floated to another, separate, photograph. This one in sepia tones, the two of them dressed in olden clothing. Something seemed different about the pair in this photo, they’d grown closer than they’d been in the album.

They held each other as if they knew each other.

Her hand brushed against something underneath it. An envelope, the envelope that had originally carried it, she supposed. The faded address was barely readable, but she was able to make out the words and they stuck in her throat.

"Mr. and Mrs. Giles. Sunnydale, California?"

"Huh?" Caroline looked up from the album. "When did Grandfather Giles and Grandmere Sarah live in America?"

"They didn’t." She turned the photo around so that her sister could see it. "I think he lived there with his first wife."

"His first what? Oh no. Jessie, you’re insane. He was never married to anyone else. He wasn’t even alive before he met Grandmere Sarah." Caroline edged back on her ankles, distancing herself from the photos and other items, but she held on to the cross like a fading memory.

"Do you remember that year I was really sick and they wouldn’t let me go to school?" Jessie looked thoughtfully through the rest of the album.

"Like I could forget. They made you study at home with Grandfather Giles and you cracked the biggest tantrum. I don’t know why, you came back twice as smart and they had to skip you a grade."

Jessie smiled, a little dream smile, behind her eyes memories began to dance.

"He knew everything. Want to know the best thing? When I was sick, I mean really, really bad, he’d let me climb up on his lap and cuddle up to him while he told me stories. He used to tell me about this Princess. I forget her name, Beth or Bronnie or something, anyway she used to fight all the dragons and demons. It was sweet, the way he told these stories, he spoke like he really knew her, like he loved her."

She could still smell the scent of his chair. Funny, she thought, it wasn’t him she connected the smell to, but his chair. The big, enveloping arm chair that sat near the fire. On rainy days she’d climb up into that chair and listen to the logs crackle in the flames, before she was chased out.

Caroline held the chain up in front of her eyes. She didn’t know why she liked it so much, it was plain. Her tastes usually ran to more ornate, fancier things. In a flash, as she listened to her sister speak, a memory came to her.

Six years old and she’d crept out of her grandparent’s house in the middle of the night. She had been going to go on a big adventure. She had been tired of everyone treating her like she was a little kid. She had found herself in a land different to the one she knew, it had been dark and ominous. Color bleached from everything and only dead noises to be heard in the dark.

An hour later had found her crying herself into hysteria as she roamed the streets, not recognizing anything. It had been Grandfather Giles who had found her, wrapped her up in a large blanket and carried her home. All the while cooing to her and calming her down.

When the others had begun to yell at her for running away, it was he who had faced them all down and comforted her in front of the fire with tea he cooled on a saucer before giving to her. He’d made her feel less silly about running off, but made her promise not to go out alone again. He’d told her she was very brave and when she was old enough, he’d buy her a pretty silver cross that brave women wore when they went out at night.

Jessie turned to the last page and gasped.

There it was, a memorial out of a graduation book. Our hearts are heavier for our loss, Buffy Giles, it read, We’ll always remember you. The words surrounded a photograph of her, entwined with black and white sketches of roses. It was extremely beautiful.

"Buffy. That was the name of the Princess. Princess Buffy. She looks like he described her."

The two girls looked at each other. They smiled shyly.

"I guess." Jessie said softly. "We knew him better than we thought. Maybe he wasn’t so unhappy?"

"There’s only one way to find out." Caroline raised her eyebrows suggestively.

"Oh no. You can’t be saying what I think you’re saying." Jessie sighed. "You are saying what I think you’re saying. Do you think she’d tell us?"

"Only one way to find out."

* * * *

"You don’t have to do this, you know." Stephen rolled closer to the naked form beside him, spooning himself into her back. His arm came up from underneath the covers and his fingers traced the side of her face on the pillow. The harshness of the cold air contrasted with the heat of her skin.

"Yes, I do." Jessie let herself relax into his arms and smiled. "I need to know."

Her eyes focused on the stand next to the bed. There stood the old photograph, she’d taken it to the photography store three blocks away and had them restore it, had them mount it properly in a frame. The couple smiled out at her, to her it seemed that they were grateful to be released again.

* * * *

Jessie stood outside the door and breathed in, she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to go through with this or not. From inside the room she could hear the regular beeping of the machines that now kept her grandmother alive. The labored breathing that seemed more effort than it was worth.

In her hands she held the sepia photograph, it had been a week since they’d found the chest. Over that week, Caroline had managed to put this task off until she’d had to go back to school and now it lay on Jessie to ask the questions.

She’d lost count of how many times she’d studied this one photograph, memorizing the expression on each of their faces, the look in their eyes, she’d even begun to imagine the sound of her voice, the sound of his voice younger and smoother than the old man in her memory.

The other things, the diaries and letters and books, Jessie had left for now. It had taken a great effort, but she didn’t feel right reading them. Not until she knew the story. She breathed in and knocked lightly, letting herself in.

Grandmere Sarah lay on her back with her eyes closed, on the tray next to her bed lay a meal untouched. Picked at, maybe, but not eaten. Jessie’s eyes scanned the old woman, looking for what she was not sure. Trying to read the secrets of the past in an unguarded face maybe.

"I know you’re there."

Jessie let a nervous laugh escape her lips at the sound of the old, crackled voice.

"Hello Grandmere. It’s Jessie. How are you today?"

"Old and dying. You?"

"I’m good. We, me and Caz, we finished cleaning out the attic. Mum says the house will sell quickly."

One eye opened and scrutinized the skittish, young form standing next to the bed.

"Mm Hmm. I bet she does." Sarah smiled cheekily. "Tell me, did you find any family skeletons?"

"Maybe, that’s kind of why I’m here." Jessie noted the smile fade on the older woman. "I was wondering, I mean, if it’s okay with you… Tell me about her." She placed the photo in Sarah’s hands.

"My. My, my, my." It seemed, for a moment, that Sarah was lost in a memory, then she looked up at her granddaughter. "I’d forgotten about that old chest. Did you read the diaries?"

"No, I wanted to talk to you. Who was she?"

"She was Buffy." As if that answered everything. "The love of your grandfather’s life."

Jessie waited in the following silence, waited for the explanation that needed to follow, or some revelation to sink in that would make things clearer. Maybe she was just waiting for a sign of life from the hands that held the frame. The hands that used to hold her with such strength and now struggled to hold a mere photo in paper thin, see through, skin.

"But… but you and he...?" She couldn’t wait any longer and was startled by the cheerful laughter that escaped her grandmother’s lips.

"Sit down, Babygirl." Sarah patted the empty space on the bed, her own frame took up very little space. Neither woman glanced at the chair that sat, empty and patient, to the side of the bed. "It’s a long story."

Jessie pulled herself up onto the bed and nestled herself into the thin sheets, feeling so much like the little girl she used to be. Underneath the harsh hospital chemicals, the disinfectants and nameless soaps, she could smell the scents that drove her memory back to days when she and Caz had spent their time with Grandmere Sarah and Grandfather Giles.

"I first met your grandfather when he came to work at the museum. He was a heartbreaker, all us girls had a crush on him, but he was a private man. Everybody loved him, but I don’t think any of us knew him, not back then. All we knew was that he had a dark, mysterious and shady past. It just added to the attraction.

"Then, one day, all of a sudden, he decided to move to California to become the librarian of a local high school. None of us understood why, we thought he’d burst an aneurysm or something. Well, I found out later, of course, it’s all in the books if you want to read them. I’ll let you decide whether you accept or believe what they have to say. I never had any reason to doubt him."

As she lay there, her eyes closed as she let her grandmother’s words wash over her, trying to allow her brain to receive the words without seizing on each one and examining it, to just hear the whole story, Jessie tried to picture things as they happened.

"Before he left, like I said, he was quiet, reserved, not distant, but not forthcoming. When I next saw him, it was when he brought her to England. Yes," Sarah felt the sudden shift next to her. "I knew her. We talked a few times, Buffy and I, she was so nice. Words can’t explain how special she was. It was easy to see what he saw in her.

"When he was with her, he was a different man, so free, so easy. So happy. They fed off each other, it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. He loved her, he loved her so much I think it hurt him to think about it."

Sarah paused in her story. She was silent for a while as she contemplated her words.

"They married not long after her eighteenth, and they were so happy together, but it didn’t last long. So many problems they faced, they did it all together. She died not long after. I think they had a few months. It broke him. Part of him died with her that night.

"He was there, he held her in his arms as she died. He even asked me, later, pleaded with me to tell him why she didn’t take him with her. I went there to bring him back to life, to help him get over her. It was something I couldn’t do. Nobody could.

"He was a shell. There was nothing I could do but bring him back here. It was killing him, being there where it all happened, being with the people that reminded him of her. So we came back here. Eventually he went back to the museum, went back to opening his eyes day after day."

Jessie looked at her with wide eyes.

"Is that… is that when you two fell in love?"

"Ha!" Sarah’s laugh didn’t sound at all like she was amused. It sounded as if she couldn’t believe her own flesh and blood could be so naïve. "It had nothing to do with love. His was an empty soul that cried for comfort and I was still too foolish to care about the consequences my actions had.

"When I got pregnant with your father, Rupert and I did the right thing, we got married, we lived as husband and wife. But I never occupied half the space in his heart that Buffy did."

"How can you say that?" Jessie sat up and distanced herself from the old lady’s touch. "How can you sit there and tell me you never loved each other?"

"No, no. Oh don’t think that. That’s not what I was saying. Your grandfather loved me, I don’t think he ever had it in him to play with someone’s life like that, but he was never in love with me. Do you understand that?"

"Yes?" It wasn’t an answer, but Jessie did try to understand. "I… I think so."

"Rupert Giles was a good man, don’t ever think otherwise. I knew he loved me, I never doubted it for a second, but I never fooled myself either. He loved you, too, he loved your father and you girls. More than he ever let on, I think it hurt him to love you so much."

Jessie took this in, her mind was screaming with the sudden knowledge, it felt as if it were about to explode with all the pressure. She had to lighten the mood, her instincts told her this, she had to take the pressure off or break down.

"Is that why he and dad fought so much?" Her voice was a little too weak and she felt more like a little girl that ever.

"Your father and Rupert, oh they were a pair, weren’t they? Your grandfather, he was so used to dealing with children on a different level. He’d encourage them to be creative, to push the boundaries, to question every authority. It came as a second nature to him. Your father however, like all teens, rebelled in the only way he could. He obeyed. Every ‘t’ was crossed, every ‘I’ was dotted with perfection. Every word was law.

"It frustrated your grandfather so much. They were both stubborn. But they loved each other, in their own way. You girls, the two of you, were the only things they agreed on. Rupert loved you both with such a passion it scared him. He would have done anything for you both."

"I remember." Jessie smiled, wistfully, as a picture flowed through her mind, then a million pictures. Forgotten memories plagued her and she realized just how much of her perceptions had been jaded by time. He’d really been a happy man, surely not jubilant, but he had found good times in his life.

Two girls, five and three, playing on the swing set at the local park. Behind them stood an aging man, alternately pushing one girl and then the other, a satisfied smile on his face as he watched their laughter. Two girls, nine and seven, whispering and giggling to each other in the dark as a loud voice told them to go to sleep, but neither paying attention to it as they recognized the indulgence within.

Two girls, thirteen and eleven, dressed in somber grays and navies, standing at the edge of a precipice. The thick, raw earth dug up and smelling strongly in the sunshine. Two girls watching as a polished coffin was lowered into the ground. One girl, thirteen, suddenly feeling lost and wondering why.

"Did it…?" Jessie broke the heavy silence. "Did you ever resent her? That he kept all these things?"

Sarah let her fingers trail over the glass of the frame. Did she ever? Of course she had, over the years she had cursed that face, spat out the name with all the acid it produced, but it had never lasted. And it had only been in her weakest moments. Buffy was not to blame, there was no blame here. She’d known how the song would end before she’d ever pressed play.

"He didn’t. Keep these things. I did. He wanted them gone, burned, destroyed, out of his life forever. I was the one who kept them. This photo, it arrived in the mail for him a week after she died. They’d gone to some fair, some little school fete and had taken this at whim. He wouldn’t even look at it."

In Jessie’s pocket, the two rings burned and finally she gave into her itch, bringing them out and placing them on the sheet that covered Sarah’s lap.

"Aren’t they beautiful?" Sarah picked up the larger one, the man’s one. "I received a telephone call from one of their friends over there. Apparently Buffy had had these made specially for Rupert’s birthday. Only, she never got to give it to him. Here."

She gestured for Jessie to pick the other one up and fit them together.

"See that? It’s an ancient language. It translated, roughly I think, on this ring," She jerked the man’s one slightly. "into ‘So deep our hearts,’ and on the other, ‘never to part’."

"Wow." Jessie kept her eyes fixed on the silver rings. "That’s so beautiful."

"Isn’t it? And it’s true, you know, they never did part."

* * * *

Sarah closed her eyes to the sound of muffled doctors’ voices. They were doing their nightly rounds and murmuring amongst each other. She was so tired. Tired of everything, of the effort it took to keep on breathing, of the constant drain of her memories. Of knowing that when she did finally give in, there would be nobody waiting on the other side for her, because the one person she wanted had already been taken.

Her lower teeth chewed on her upper gums, deftly feeling the spaces left by her dentures, as she thought back to that time, that blessed time when she’d actually been needed. When Rupert had cried into her arms and begged her never to let go.

When he would reach out for her and she was only too glad to answer. A time when she was young enough to believe that grief was equal to lust and time would sway his heart to hers. Back to those days when, placing Rupert’s son in his arms, she’d still been able to hope.

Memories drained her.

* * * *

Jessie looked at the diaries. She’d arranged them in date order, from first to last. If anybody had dared to call her superstitious, she would have laughed in their faces, but she’d managed not to read a single word as she catalogued them. Something told her to keep the actual words separate from the removed task of placing them in order. She wanted to read them at her leisure.

Her eyes darted to the closed door down the hallway. He was asleep, she was sure of it, she’d waited all evening for him to fall asleep. Had watched him, silently frustrated, as he’d sat in front of the television. Had swept scathing glances at the back of his head as he spoke on the phone to a friend, had counted the minutes as she’d watched the sliver of light under the door until it disappeared.

This was an alone thing, she felt it.

Drawing one foot up underneath her as she curled up onto the couch in front of the fire, Jessie sipped her tea and relished the clean, hot taste of it before she picked up the first book.

* * * *

The telephone reached her consciousness, ringing loudly, ringing shrilly. Heat was the first thing that she was really aware of, a blanketing, smothering heat that made sweat trickle in long drips down her back and between her breasts. The smell of dust and old books close to her face was next.

The phone kept ringing.

Jessie sat up, her mind clouded. She’d fallen asleep reading these old books, her eyes devouring the familiar script, her mind falling in love with the images, with the couple in them. It had such a tragic undertone, because she knew what was to come.

A moment later and she was answering the insistent ringing. Her mind barely registering the fact that Stephen had left for work already, so it must be later than she’d thought.

"’Lo?"

"Jessie? It’s your grandmother."

That was all she’d needed to hear, her father’s cool and emotionless voice coming through loud and clear. Underneath it, she could hear the pain and desperation in his words. Her mind refused to digest anything past those words. It wasn’t a surprise, really, but it was damned hard to hear anyway.

* * * *

His arms blanketed her, reaching around her shoulders and holding her close. Jessie stood in the graveyard, leaning back into Stephen, as the priest mumbled his words over a worn bible. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust and so went the familiar litany.

Words that held no meaning. Not to Jessie. She shivered and tried to stop the kaleidoscope in her mind. The old woman in the bed, face contorting with the effort to remember, or maybe not to remember. The same woman, years younger, making biscuits with her granddaughters. The young woman in the old photo albums, even the little girl with her dirt smudged dress and band aid covered knees.

One person, one life, pressed into a box like an arrangement of dried flowers.

As Jessie stepped forward and threw the single, long stemmed rose into the earth, she heard the voices in her head as if they were sounding right then and there. A stifled voice, angry and full of a confused panic arguing behind a door. Another voice, trying to soothe and placate.

"I refuse to let her out of the house looking like that! What was Phillip thinking?"

"Rupert, it’s Halloween, the girl only wants to dress up. She doesn’t know any better."

"I don’t care. I don’t… It’s not right, she’s a Giles."

"She’s eight years old! So she wants to wear a cape and fangs, it’s not like she takes it seriously."

"She should!"

And as much as the little girl had wanted to play the vampire, Jessie could remember taking off the cape and the teeth, wiping off the gory make up and replacing them with a sheet. Just to please her grandfather. The longer she thought about it, the more Jessie remembered taking his side without a word.

When the priest had stopped talking and the people began to talk to each other in low voices, Jessie stepped forward, placed a kiss on her trembling hand and touched the cold headstone. Then she turned to join her sister and Stephen. She hadn’t cried.

* * * *

"Jess? What is going on in your head?"

She tossed her bag onto the table and gave him a small, wry grin as she walked to the fridge. Without saying anything, she pulled out a bottle of water and twisted the lid off before sculling half of it down. The icy water hit the back of her throat hard and she reveled in the shock of it.

"That’s the second night this week!"

"So? I’ve decided to learn self defense. This is a bad thing?"

"No. But I think you’re taking those diary entries a little too seriously. Come on, Jess, it’s all just fantasy stuff."

Her shoulders tightened under her gym clothes. She knew she shouldn’t have told him. Right from the start, weeks ago when she’d began to read them, she’d felt that they were personal. Her and Stephen, they’d never kept anything from each other before.

He stepped towards her and placed his hands on her neck, she shuffled out of them and stepped away. This was something she’d had to do, she knew it. With every punch she threw she could feel a tiny grain of self assuredness plant itself in her.

She was beginning to feel in control of her life, for the first time ever.

"You just wouldn’t understand."

* * * *

She closed the book and wiped away a tear. That was the last of them, the story was finished and she felt like yelling. Crying out to whoever was at fault, whoever had written the lines of their life like that. It had been so unfair.

The very last entry, written in the familiar script of her grandfather, had been dated the day before Buffy’s death. Each word carefully plied to the paper with the smooth rolling of the pen, each letter crafted with care.

Jessie could picture the scene, she could imagine her grandfather sitting at his desk, leaning over the leather bound volume dimly lit by a desk lamp. She could imagine the slender form creep up behind him as he wrote, placing her arms around his neck and resting her chin upon his head. She could imagine the lazy grin he would have given her.

Her mind knew these little scenarios well, she felt as if she’d come to know them over these weeks. She refused to acknowledge the logical part of her mind which told her the details of the last entry pretty much ruled out the cozy scene in her head. Their last days had not been safe or cozy or happy.

But they had been full of love.

Her grandfather’s words had hardly changed, from the first diary entry to the last, he had been enchanted by her. The only difference had been the intimacy with which he allowed himself to write of her. It had grown stronger.

It was not right. It couldn’t have happened that way. Jessie would not accept that, she wouldn’t believe that things had ended so abruptly. There had to be more to it. There had to be more to the story. She uncurled her legs from beneath her and slipped off the sofa onto the floor.

The chest lay open, the items inside carefully examined with reverence and awe. She’d cleaned everything, preserved everything, had fallen in love with everything. She knew every last thing that was in that chest, but that didn’t stop her from pulling it all out again.

There had to be something else. There just had to be.

When the chest was empty, when she’d scoured every last book and shaken out their pages, undone every page of every album, taken the backs out of every frame, Jessie sat back on her heels and cried. Frustration welled within her.

A loud roar grumbled in her throat and she reached out and ripped out the tissue paper that lined the box, tore it to shreds and let the little pieces fall around her. It didn’t help. She let herself droop, drained of all energy. Her eyes drifted to the worn fabric of the original lining.

Her face tightened with excitement and tension when she saw the large, flat bulge underneath.

* * * *

Dear Buffy,

You would not believe how exceedingly foolish I feel writing this letter, but Sarah says it must be done. She says I cannot move forward if I do not let go, and I suppose she is right. It’s been almost two years. Two excruciatingly long years.

Tomorrow, I plan to wed again. I wish I could say I do not want this, that it’s something I was forced into, because I feel guilty, as if I were betraying you. But I do want this, in a way, and I think I’ve almost convinced myself you would have wanted it too. Believe me when I tell you, you are the first thing in my mind.

It hurts too much and I can’t let it go on like this.

I miss you so much it feels as if I might be swallowed up by my own misery. In my head the big things rattle for attention, screaming and shouting for me to think about them. Yet, it is the smaller things I miss the most, the smaller things that make me cry, even still.

Like the way your hair smelled after the rain. Or the way the skin on your eyelids would pucker when you slept. I miss the sound of your voice when you smiled, the deep resonance of your laughter, oh god, I even miss the pain of your tears.

I miss the way you could make my whole body tingle with just the lightest kiss. I miss the way your skin would burn under my fingers, the curve of your instep, the crook of your elbow. Only you could make me grin with your teasing.

Do you remember the way you’d look at me? And the way I looked back? We were a team, you and I. We could do anything together and we did almost, didn’t we? You know, I wouldn’t change a single moment, no matter how hard they were at the time. We were a team. And they took you from me.

Eight months ago I received a telephone call from the man they sent to watch Faith. He called to tell me that she’d died. I asked him to tell me how things had been since I’d left, what had happened. Like an overeager youth willing to please, he told me everything.

The hardest thing to hear was what he told me about the alternate universe. Apparently you were still alive, a little harder, a little colder, but still alive. I wanted to throttle him then and there for the cruelty it took to tell me that.

I wanted to find the spell to bring that world back, just to hold you one more time, just to feel you in my arms, to hear your breath as you slept. I’d finally found a way to change reality, to say ‘screw you’ to the fates and have you back.

But it wouldn’t have been you.

It doesn’t bother me so much now, I think it’s almost a blessing actually. Knowing that there is a reality in which you’re still breathing, still laughing. In my darkest times, I cling to the knowledge that somewhere, out there, there’s still a place where you can roll your eyes and sigh to the roof at something I’ve said.

That somewhere, your whole body will rise to the tender touch of my lips.

I pray that there is a reality where that happens. There has to be.

I think, though, that it is this thought that finally allows me to take a step forward. I’ll always miss you, Buffy, a large part of my heart will be forever keening in your absence, the wound will remain, but it will no longer be so raw and open.

Perhaps, somewhere out there, I’ve taken hold of your slender little hand and raised it to my lips, taking the time to memorize the feel of your skin as I kissed you goodbye. I’ll always remember it like that.

* * * *

The earth smelled thick and wet. Rain still dripped from the trees, but it had ceased to fall from the sky. In the darkness, all the green had been bled from the leaves and the whole cemetery looked like it was colored with different shades of grays and blacks.

Jessie’s eyes saw nothing as they swept over the graves, glazed in a fevered pitch of emotion. Her steps were hard and they had purpose, but a careless purpose. As if she had somewhere to go, but wasn’t quite sure where.

Her ears were tuned to the silence, but the longer she listened, the noisier the silence got. Crickets croaked, birds twittered and in the distance there was the sound of suburban pets and traffic. Somewhere close by the muffled sound of music from a house could be heard. Near her, however, tantalizingly close to her, was nothing. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be listening for.

Her arms raised out as she turned in a large circle, her head thrown back as she stared at the sky. The clouds were still there, but they parted in places and the stars could be seen poking through. Again and again she span around, her arms reaching out for something.

"Where are you then?" Her voice sounded loud to her, and a little too fast, but she didn’t lower it. "If you even exist at all!"

Her foot caught on an exposed tree root and she stumbled.

"I’m here! I’m waiting for you! Isn’t this what you want?" She wasn’t even sure if she believed in the things she was calling to. All she knew, all that mattered now, was finding out whether the words had been true. "Damn it! Come and get me!"

She’d reached hysterical proportions. Her voice shook with the strain. Her face was red and splotched as she screamed into the empty night air. Everything she’d read, the photos that she’d seen, were flying through her mind at an unbelievable speed. If she didn’t stop them soon, she’d go crazy.

Her crazed pleas and rushed, careless steps stopped when her eyes fell on the twin graves. Rupert and Sarah Giles. Buried side by side. After a long life lived side by side. She stood perfectly still as she stared down at them.

Where was Buffy buried? Who lay in the grave next to hers? What ghostly hand reached out for her? What would Rupert Giles have really wanted? Where had he really wanted to be in those last few days, when he hadn’t been able to recognize his own flesh and blood? Had he wanted to go back and spend eternity with her?

She didn’t feel the hand that came to clasp her neck until it was too late. Her body was spun around and her eyes bulged as they took in the sight of a wrinkled and veined face. The strength in his fingers was unbearable.

"Sorry I took so long, I believe you called?"

Jessie couldn’t move, she barely knew how she was breathing, as she watched him bend down to rest his teeth on the pulsing vein in her neck. A million things were running through her head, the self-defense training she’d taken, the lines in her grandfather’s diaries, the whole vicious irony of it.

Just before his teeth pierced her skin, he turned to dust in front of her. Jessie looked up into deep brown eyes.

"Look at you, Jessie. Haven’t you learned anything? Didn’t your grandfather teach you anything in those books of his?" Large, smooth hands reached out and picked at the chain around her neck, bringing the cross out from under her jumper. "This goes on the outside."

She tried to catch her breath, tried to think of something to say. It was almost uncomfortable, the way his eyes drank her in, like he was trying to fit her image up close with an image in his mind. He looked like he wanted to reach out and touch her.

"Now run along home and don’t come out alone at night, until you can think properly."

"Who are you? How do you know me?"

He raised his eyebrows.

"Let’s just say," A smile danced over his lips before he turned and walked away. "I’m a friend."