Title: England and the Afterlife 3/7
Author: Saint Buffy
Feedback: I'll make it easy for you: `Dear Saint B, I really enjoyed this fic.' Now cut, paste and send.
Disclaimer: Not mine, don't sue

Yet more blonde hair filled his vision when he opened his eyes again. Giles didn't even like to take a guess. He squinted up at the shape beside his bed.

"It's me," Buffy's voice said quietly.

"How long have you been there?" he asked.

"Not long. Dawn and I went to Xander's. She's still there, with him and… and Willow."

"How are they all?"

"Dawn's okay. Xander should probably be in the bed next door, but he keeps refusing," Buffy said, shifting in her chair. "Willow passed out as soon as Xander got back to the apartment. She hasn't woken since."

"It's a natural defence," Giles said. He shifted slightly, trying to sit up. "When the mind can't cope with reality."

Buffy was quiet. More than ever, Giles wished for his glasses, so that he could see what was going on in her mind. Usually he could see much better than this without them, but tiredness and the numbed pain in his body was making every part of him weaker than usual. He narrowed his eyes and peered up at her.

Her face grew bigger as she leant towards him, and as if she had read his mind, she leant down until her features resolved into focus, her eyes watching his face.

"Better?" she said. Her hand rested on the bed by his side. Giles looked at her. Countless times over the previous night he had been knocked breathless, but never in his life like this. He reached up and touched her face with a slightly trembling hand, brushing a hair away as a pretext. His eyes drank in every detail of the face he loved, the eyes he had missed for so long. He tasted a hundred endearments suddenly on his tongue.

"Buffy," he said, softly, instead. She looked at him for a second longer, then her head dropped down, suddenly, against his chest, her hand scrunching up in his shirt. "Buffy?" he said again, more uncertainly.

"I thought you were dead," she sobbed, hand tightening on his chest, tugging hair beneath as well as shirt. He ran his hand over her hair, feeling softness. His heart felt unnecessarily loud again.

"I'm not," he said, wishing he could think of something less obvious.

"But you might have been," she said, voice muffled against his dampening chest. "And I really missed you."

"I missed you," he replied, voice rougher than he would have liked. He cleared his throat, and Buffy looked up with red eyes.

Their gaze held for a long, aching moment.

The door opened, and the nurse came back in.

"Good news, Mr Giles," she said, seeming oblivious to the storm cloud of tension she had just entered. "Your tests have come back, and everything seems okay."

Buffy had settled back into the chair beside the bed, wiping her eyes. Giles pulled himself up more.

"I knew they'd say that," he muttered. "I don't suppose you'll reconsider the necessity of my pernoctation?"

He saw a look passing between Buffy and the nurse.

"He's from England," Buffy said. Giles was in the process of glaring at her when a sudden movement behind the nurse distracted him.

Anya's form had suddenly appeared on the far side of the room, thankfully out of the nurse's sight.

"Ah, so, he's, he'll be okay then?" Buffy said, loudly, obviously trying to keep the nurse's attention in her direction. Giles watched in horror as Anya saw the nurse, took a step back, and mercifully vanished.

"There are a few precautions he should take, but…" A second later, as Giles's mind was trying to catch up, Anya reappeared, and put something he couldn't see properly on the windowsill. She made frantic pointing gestures at the thing and then disappeared again. "… yeah, he'll be just fine."

"Oh," Buffy said, the relief in her voice not solely caused by the good news. "Okay."

"I'll just go and fetch the doctor, she'll explain everything," the nurse said, and left.

As soon and the door was safely closed, Buffy jumped up and went to pick up whatever Anya had left.

"That was close," Giles said, reaching to feel his heart thumping once again. "What did she leave?"

Buffy turned back to him.

"See for yourself," she said, handing the object over. "Literally." It was his spare pair of glasses, obviously salvaged from the Magic Box. They were a prescription behind, but a welcome sight. He slipped them on gladly and beamed at Buffy's clarified face. She smiled back.

"Better?"

Buffy sat in the waiting room, trying not to notice that it was the same one she sat in once, waiting for news about her mom. She was alone.

She took a breath and let it out slowly. She was alone, for the first time, properly, since the whole nightmare had begun. Even last night, Dawn had crawled into her bed a few minutes after they had said good night. She had been welcome. Now all Buffy had to do was sit and wait for Giles to be released, with no immediate occupation, no people to distract her, no place to get to.

It was a moment to take stock, except she only had the kind of stock that didn't bear taking. Well, apart from Giles, she amended. He was the only good thing she could think of at the moment. Willow was crazy, Xander was totally absorbed in looking after her, Anya was a demon and this last year, when she hadn't been dead, she had been neglecting Dawn. But Giles was back, and he was sorry he left, and he wasn't dead, so things weren't that bad.

She glared. She really didn't want to be thinking this. She didn't want to think at all, to curl up like Willow and sleep and cry it all away.

Willow was still in Xander's room. She had barely moved since he got her back, apparently. She wasn't eating and she could only stay together for a few minutes before something started her crying again, crying until she fell asleep. How could you talk to her? This was a whole new Willow, one Buffy couldn't even fight, one where everything she said felt useless. All she could do was thank God, or whoever, that Xander was there, and that he seemed to know what he was doing. She was grateful to him, but at the same time it felt a little weird; she was the slayer, the leader, and yet over at Xander's there was a whole important story going on where she was only a character, and not even a main one, not at the moment. Buffy sighed again. All she could do was stick to her own script.

As if conjured by her conclusions, Giles appeared at the end of the corridor, walking stiffly towards her, examining his discharge papers. He looked up and smiled at her, then frowned slightly, looking round.

"Xander's not here?" he said. Buffy stood up and glared.

"What, aren't I good enough?"

"No, it's, it's wonderful to see you, but it's quite a way back to your house, and after the medication they gave me, I'm not supposed to-"

"I'm driving Xander's car. It's an emergency," she added, seeing his look.

"Surely one near-death experience in a week is enough," Giles said, looking tired. Buffy pouted.

"Look, I'm the slayer. Rising to the occasion is my job. And if the occasion happens to be driving, then… plus I didn't crash on the way over."

She took his arm before he could say anything else and marched him gently towards the exit, trying not to notice how he leant on her slightly more than he would ever usually allow himself.

"Did Anya pop back again?" she asked as they walked towards the car. Giles nodded.

"Briefly, after you'd gone. She walked in through the door this time, thankfully," he said. "She updated me on Willow's condition."

"What do you think is gonna happen with her?" Buffy asked quietly, not sure if she wanted to know the answer. Giles sighed.

"I don't know. I have a few ideas, but…" He paused. "I want to make some enquiries before I confirm anything."

Buffy opened the car door and hovered as Giles lowered himself in, not wanting to hurt his pride by helping but wanting to stay close just in case. Her slayer hearing picked up a grunt as he sat. She crossed round to the driver's side.

They drove back to the house in silence. Buffy shot Giles a glance every now and then, wondering if he really was okay. He sat with his eyes on the road, seeming too tired to comment on her driving. Occasionally he let his head rest on the back on his chair and shut his eyes. Buffy watched his face as they waited at a set of lights, taking advantage of his closed eyes to study the healing cuts on his forehead and the tired marks around his mouth.

He was a changed man, coming back from England. Looking back, Buffy could see the change coming, could track it through his different behaviour over the years, but now she saw it with new eyes. Even among the spectacle of the apocalypse, Giles had seemed more together, calmer, more relaxed than she had ever known him. More comfortable with himself. It made her realise that there was so much more to the man with whom she had spent the last six years. Buffy pulled the car carefully into her road, surprised to realise that she wanted to learn more.

"I'll need to phone England," Giles said as he got out of the car. "The coven will want to know the details."

"Okay," Buffy said. She let them into the house and followed him in, still watching his back. Her discoveries would have to wait, though, until the storm of Willow's apocalypse had finally passed.

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