Title: England and the Afterlife 5/7
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

She didn't think it could be that hard, to watch him leave again. The first time she had been too angry, even, to go to the airport and wave him off; this time she didn't have that anger shielding and excusing her from the pain of his departure. Buffy watched silently as Xander, Anya, and Dawn waved them off, watching Giles turn and give her another unreadable aching gaze before he and Willow disappeared through the departure gates.

She knew it was going to be hard. She had begun to miss him even before he left, so she knew it would be difficult. The easy, equal relationship they had developed so quickly, evaporated with similar speed after their argument. They hardly spoke except when the gang was around them, and then only as much as was necessary. It was too hard, to be around him when she knew he was leaving, to talk to him when she didn't have anything left to say. But she missed the new friendship she had found, the discoveries she had been making about her watcher.

She missed Willow, too. Not crazy wanna-kill-the-world Willow, but normal Willow, her best friend, with whom she could normally share all the badness she felt. It made it harder to deal with missing Giles, with mourning Tara, now that the gang was so depleted.

Two weeks after Willow and Giles had left, just as she was getting used to their absence, Buffy received a letter among the usual bills and mysterious offers sent every day. She picked it out and turned it over, wondering who had written. Giles's handwriting spelt out her address.

Buffy went into the kitchen, feeling her heart pounding for reasons she couldn't understand. Dawn and Xander were out, at the shops. She had the house to herself. Sitting at the table, Buffy opened the letter, glanced at the date at the top and frowned- Giles had written on the day he appeared in Sunnydale, yet it had only just arrived, weeks later. She wondered why he hadn't mentioned any letters.

Buffy read on.

"Dear Buffy,

If you receive this, you'll know that I am gone, and why. I'm not going to dwell on that; only to say that I acted for the best, knowing my life is a small price to pay for what my death will hopefully achieve. This is not to say I hold my life at nothing. It has been chequered, unfulfilled in some ways, but there are parts I would not give up, even for the happy normality you once sought. I blame no one for my death, and ask that neither should you. I only want you to move on and become the beautiful, talented, strong woman I know you to be.

This is a difficult letter to write. I don't wish to burden you any more than you have been, by your fate, but I have one more thing to say to you before I can go back to Sunnydale, and whatever awaits, with a clear heart and mind. It is simply this: Buffy, I love you. Not as a father, nor simply as a friend, but with everything that I am. I don't mean to harm you with this knowledge, please, just know that I am yours, and that I always have been, even before you were born.

Forgive me, I never meant to go on. I only wanted to say goodbye. It is time for me to meet with the coven. You'll find out in due course that everything I have has been left to you; I hope this makes some aspects of your life easier. Please, accept it, and all my love.

Rupert Giles."

For a moment Buffy stared at the note, unable to think. Then she turned and ran up the stairs. Her heart racked her chest almost apart; she took the stairs in threes, flew over the landing and crashed into her bedroom, sinking down on her knees by her dresser. Grabbing her address book, she rifled through it, fingers shaking, breath heaving, looking for a slip of paper she had carelessly pushed between the pages; finding it, she turned, grabbed the phone, and dialled the number thus recorded.

The phone rang for ages. Buffy sat in a tight ball on the floor, huddled, her nails tapping on the back of the phone. It rang on; she felt as if she was dying and reliving with every ring.

"Hello?" a surprised English voice asked at last.

"Please, can I speak to Giles? Rupert Giles," Buffy asked.

"I'm sorry, but do you have any idea what time it is here? Where are you calling from?" the voice said, sounding annoyed.

"Please!" Buffy said, trying hard not to scream at the calm tone, or cry, or both.

"Is it urgent? I believe he and Ms Rosenburg are in the wood cottage. I could have him fetched, but you'd have to hang on a good while."

"He's okay?" Buffy asked. There was a pause.

"Yes, I'm sure he's fine," the voice said, as if they were speaking to a slow child.

"Oh," Buffy said, starting to breathe properly for the first time. "Oh, okay. Okay."

"Would you like me to give him a message, Miss, er…?" the voice asked.

"Tell him…" Buffy said. "No, it's okay. I'm sorry to disturb you."

She rang off before the voice could say anything else and leant back against the bed, pressing her palm over her still-racing heart. She knew the letter had been written before Giles arrived in Sunnydale, she knew he had survived, but still, his tone, the farewell message to her, had left her with an overwhelming, panic-stricken need for proof that he was alive.

The letter was still scrunched in her hand. She smoothed it out over her knee, reading it again, and finally found herself crying as she heard his soft voice in her mind.

He loved her. Giles was in love with her. She didn't know what to think. The words formed in her head but the meaning behind them was lost to her, for the moment. She wished, desperately, that he was with her, that she could see his face. When he had come back after she died she had hugged him so hard he almost broke. She remembered the feeling, the feeling of his closeness and the need to hug him, an emotional need that stuck out starkly from the mass of numbness and horror she had felt around it. She felt that need now, too. Giles was in love with her. She still couldn't work out what that meant.

Suddenly she raised her head, wiping her tears away with the back of her hand. Her eyes widened as the underlying meaning of the letter hit her. He had been planning to kill himself. Giles had come back to Sunnydale planning to let Willow kill him in that magic draining thing that she had done.

"Bastard," she said, suddenly, feeling angry. She almost picked up the phone again but the thought of the angry British guy on the other end frightened her more than she would have publicly admitted.

The sound of the door slamming below started her out of her thoughts. Buffy wiped her eyes furiously and stood up as voices called out below.

"Buffy? You back? We got three for two on ice cream," Dawn yelled up the stairs.

"Yeah, there's enough here to build the Sunnydale Ski Slope," Xander's voice added.

"Coming," Buffy called, and headed down the stairs.

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