Title: Once In A Lifetime 9/24
Author: Karen Jephson
Disclaimer: Not mine, unfortunately. Want to adopt and treat them better
than their owners, but I don't have enough.
Feedback: Live for it.
Note: To Trich and Gail. Thanks for your nagging, your precise beta, and your
constant encouragement.
"Tara's dead?" The pain in Giles' voice was obvious. "Oh, Willow, I'm so sorry. But how?" He looked toward Buffy.
Making sure her friend was coping with the pain, she answered. "Last year. Three guys we went to school with decided to take over Sunnydale."
"The legion of doom, yes I remember." Giles nodded.
"Well, two of them got arrested. But Warren had a gun, and he came to shoot me." Buffy swallowed past the tears in her throat. She glanced around the room. The others were also struggling to contain their emotions. "He did, but he also shot Tara too."
Giles bent his head, his eyes closed. "We found out who they were fairly quickly. You took care of them, scared them into realizing that trying to take over the world perhaps wasn't the best way to while away the summer."
He looked up, anger in his eyes. "How did I let this happen?"
"You didn't. You weren't here." His head snapped back in shock.
........................
"You would never leave me!"
Giles sighed. "I once thought that. But things were - complicated. If I stayed, somebody would have died, again."
"What." Buffy was interrupted by the tooting of a horn. They all looked toward the window.
Xander rose. "That would be my loving wife back from counting all her money."
"Wife? Anya?"
Xander paused. "Yeah. Wait, don't tell me we're not married in your world?"
"Oh, God." Willow's whispered prayer was barely heard in the silent room. "What other horrible things happened there?"
...................
"Spike? You slept with that psychotic creature?"
"At last! Somebody agrees with me." The gloating tone in Xander's voice was obvious.
"Different Spike, Xander. We don't know what Giles, um, his Spike, is like." Buffy didn't bother hiding her irritation. She knew Xander didn't hate Spike as much as he pretended, and she didn't have time for his games.
"Likes his mind games. Obsessed with you. Will stop at nothing to have you."
"Yep. Sounds completely different."
"Xander!" Buffy turned back to the man sitting beside her. "Does your Spike have a soul?"
Giles shook his head. "After he attacked you the only thing he had was my stake in his heart."
They all looked at him, their mouths open. Buffy couldn't think of anything to say to that except, "Oh."
"Didn't your Giles do the same thing? I assume that."
"Yeah. Well, he tried. But you, Giles, he. This is kinda confusing."
Giles shrugged. "My Buffy calls me Rupert if it would be easier for you."
Willow leaned forward. "Do we all call you Rupert?"
"Of course not."
Buffy was curious. "What do you call me?"
Rupert turned to her, sharing a look that the others couldn't see. "Depends what mood I'm in." She hoped nobody saw the flush that covered her neck.
"But Buffy does.call you by your first name, I mean?" Willow's question broke the heated silence before it became uncomfortable.
He shrugged again. "Well, it would be silly for a wife to call her husband by his surname."