TITLE: Absent Fathers
AUTHOR: Second Slayer
E-MAIL ADDRESS: secondslayer@hotmail.com
SPOILER WARNING: Everything. I haven’t seen much season 6, but it’s set after Giles leaves. Specific reference made to The Wish. Extensive rewriting of history.
RATING: Er… I dunno, really. There’s references to sex and violence but no actual graphic shagging. How do American ratings work anyway?
PAIRING: B/G sortof and mention of another character with Willow.
DISTRIBUTION: In the unlikely event that you want it, ask.
DISCLAIMER: It all belongs to Joss, the WB, UPN, Fox, Mutant Enemy and anybody else who feels they own it.
They’re all from an AU anyway.
Andrew belongs to one my gay friends, I don’t care how much he denies it.
SUMMARY: An AU story of what could have been.
FEEDBACK: Course. If you don't tell me what I'm doing wrong I'll just keep turning out the same old drivel, won't I?
THANKS: To ooh everyone. Baz Luhrman for making a film I’d buy to go ‘ooh’ at the costumes, and then find I loved. My friends for being strange, especially Dave Stone for encouraging me to write no matter how many times I tell him I don’t. Rari for giving me something to wish I could be as good as, and anyone who feels like giving beta-ish feedback so I have a shot. I’d also like to thank M.E. (the fatigue disorder) for ensuring I couldn’t get out of bed today, but allowing me to move my hands.

I have a bit of the music from Moulin Rouge stuck in my head. ‘The greatest thing you’ll ever learn, is just to love and be loved in return.’

I’m in love with the bass player from my dad’s band. I never thought he’d look at me, I mean they’re rock stars. Can have any woman they want. You’d see me at a showbiz party and start looking round trying to work out whose brat I am. I’m… sturdy. The sort of girl who you expect to lift stuff with the guys, the sort of girl who stops by the side of the road to help poor lost boys change a tyre. The sort of girl who does not own stiletto heels or a little black dress.

I am not by any stretch of the imagination thin, shapely, or pretty. I do not have hidden charm. I have muscle. See me with an attractive man, you’re thinking ‘fag hag’. I’ve been around beautiful people for most of my life. My father, his band, their assorted hangers on… no-one’s ever paid me much attention. I’m just Ripper’s chunky daughter.

Dad’s latest bass player was… new. He replaced a guy who rather tragically killed himself. All very embarrassing, we don’t tend to talk about the details. But, whatever, he was new. He was like lightning into my life – beautiful and devastating, and changing everything. He wasn’t like anyone else I’d ever met, and I fell for him immediately.

Right from the first time I ever saw him smile, got a taste of his stupidly over-the-top drunken persona and of the quiet, educated persona he used when it was just ‘family’ and he’d not had that much… the smell of him, the way his arse looked in jeans, the fact he knew things about cheese, everything about him became just… spellbinding. Except I’ve been around magic all my life, and this was no form of casting I knew about. I fixed his car up, as it happens. I never said anything about finding him attractive, because, well… because I’m not. Because I don’t think I could have stood the expression on his face, the amusement, or the disgust… and then he noticed I was acting different around him and for whatever reason decided he wanted me too. I wonder, sometimes, if he did it for a bet or just to find out how I’d react. Maybe the sheer devilment of having the boss’s daughter.

Should have expected him to get bored, not even the blondes who look like they’d snap if you screwed them too hard keep his attention for long. I lasted longer than most… but this story isn’t about me, or him. I’m daddy’s girl. So of course, Daddy would kill the bass player if he knew… keep on topic, girl. This is about my Dad.

My Dad and his skinny little blonde Princess.

I’m happy for him, she seems good for him - he’s cleaned his act right up. Says she wants him to get his nose reconstructed, now he’s clean and staying that way, for her. She’s actually quite nice, in a dizzy California-blonde sort of way.

The bass player, Andrew, still drinks until he passes out, and makes comments at me, and I’m sure dad just thinks he’s joking. Sometimes I wonder if he is, and I imagined the whole thing. And then I think about just lying there and playing with the hair on his stomach, and the way he smiled… but damnit this is not my story. I know I’m self-centred. It’s part of who I am. Nothing I can do about it.

My Dad. Rock Star Dad. The whole sex and drugs and rock and roll bit. Pays for my cars nicely… I love my cars. Don’t need men when I’ve got cars. Must stop thinking about that time when I was tuning the engine in the MGB. Must remember to get the dents out of the bonnet. There’s a lot of me, like I said. I’m just over 6ft tall, which doesn’t help… It does come in handy, I mean, people don’t generally get in my way… I was in the mini, see. Nice innocent car, utterly untouched by the hand (or any other body part) of Andrew. Unlike me. Heh. And no I’m not too big for it. Surprisingly roomy cars, minis, unless you’re in the back. I call it *the* mini but it’s one of several, I have something of a soft spot for them. This one’s a fully wood-and-picketed cabriolet. I did a fair old bit of tweaking on the engine, natch, so it doesn’t half shift… so anyway, it was a nice day, thought I’d go get lost for a while. Top down, The Who up nice and loud, just driving round southern California. Turned the music down a bit and slowed down to drive through a nice little town, was looking for a place to stop and grab a coffee and a bite to eat.

Completely lost the bloody shopping area, ended up in wide, leafy, idealistic, residential streets. Young girl comes out of one of the houses, watches me as I drive past. Crosses the road behind me. Doesn’t see the SUV which comes haring round the corner until it’s much too late. Only clipped her, but it sent her spinning, looked like she hit the pavement pretty hard. I saw the whole thing in my rear-view mirror. SUV doesn’t stop. Oh did they ever pick the wrong person to knock over a kid in front of.

I threw the mini into a U-turn, and roared off after the SUV. Okay, so it looked like it could run over my car without noticing, and okay, so I could see that there were three lads – tall lads, probably sporty types too – in there and I was on my own. I’m English, so I don’t carry a weapon. Well, not a gun or… nothing I could use against them, anyway. Except me.

When your dad’s a rock star, and you ask for driving lessons from the stunt driving team you just watched, they don’t say no. I overtook the SUV – which was speeding, having noticed I was following – and, at exactly the right moment, I threw the mini into a turn and fast into reverse, so I was driving along backwards, at full tilt, in front of the SUV. Bloody stupid thing to do, don’t try this at home kids, I’m a trained idiot. I should, by rights, have been killed. It’s one thing entirely to do that on a race track or film set where conditions are controlled, and quite another to do it on a California side-street, and in a bloody cabrio at that…. But my GOD did it feel good, and it worked, too. Watching me smiling up at them from my diddy little soft-topped jelly-bean of a car just freaked them all out. They came quietly. As did I. Strange, that, how fear can affect you. I never get scared when I’m… working. I have a pretty dangerous job, see, and it doesn’t exactly pay well… but hey, I’m rich, and… and it’s not like I have any reason to want a long life anyway. There’s not going to be any happy-ever-after for me.

In The Princess Bride they say that not one couple in a century gets to be truly in love, truly happy – well that couple for now is my dad and his wife, so as the happiness job is taken, I don’t really worry about… about getting to spend however many years it is that I have left lying awake at night wanting him, dreaming about him, struggling not to run from the room crying every time I smell him, wanting to scream, to kill him, to throw him on the floor and rape him, every time he touches me. Sometimes I want to tell him the things he doesn’t know – like that it wasn’t *fine* the time he screwed me so hard the condom split, that I hadn’t called the doctor then, because I just… because I… well I don’t know why. I guess I was too busy thinking about the fact that I’d thought I’d felt it split, and that, well, I’m stronger than him, and he was hurting me, so why didn’t I stop him?

But then I think, yes, as much as it would hurt him, knowing I’d killed his child… it would hurt me more, because then I wouldn’t even have the hope that something will happen and I’ll get him back. I know he’s not good for me, I know if I did get him back he’d just hurt me over and over and over… and I want it. I want it, if that’s what he likes, because I want to spend more time around him than I do, and I don’t want it to be this torture of not letting myself touch him, of never looking him in the eyes, of never mentioning how badly I want him.

Dad doesn’t like to see me hurt, and… and he’d kill any man who dared break my heart, even if I am a big girl who really can look after herself… Dad was funny about me driving, at first. Said girls like me could never drive right… girls of my calling, not sturdy girls. But, as usual, I digress. Not knowing where the police station was, I drove them back to the scene – the girl was still there, talking to a blonde, a redhead and a tall dark blokie. Hmm. Bit of alright that one… what, so I’m not allowed to at least try to move on?

I parked right next to them, asked them what they wanted done with the guys… they looked at me like I’d just dropped out of the sky… there was something familiar about the two girls, like they were friends-of-friends or something – I was sure I’d seen them before. The guy – Xander he introduced himself as - took the three guys to the police station in my car. It only seats four, and it’s not like I was worried about him trashing it, once I’d warned him about the amount of go it had….He seemed a little concerned about having to shift with his left hand, but what the hey. You learn something new every day. Be an inconvenience to import another one if he did muff it up, but it’s not like I haven’t got other cars.

The young girl invited me in for tea. The blonde and the redhead sort of hung around in the background, didn’t really talk to me. I could feel magic in the house, which would explain why they were happy to leave the girl with me – the place had more wards than my halls of residence. My dad and his mate Ethan are pretty powerful magicians. None of this sparkles and making stuff disappear rubbish – useful stuff, spells to keep vampires out, to banish demons, that sort of thing. I’m a bit of a fiend magnet. Comes from… I’m the Slayer. There’s only one at any given time, another is called when the current one dies. I kill the evil creatures, the vampires, the demons, the things that go kathunk! Chick-a-chick-a-Whoooommmmm! in the late afternoon. That was one of the more normal things I’ve had to deal with.

“Any chance of a coffee?”

“Oh… I thought you English people all drank tea?”

“Actually our national drink is beer. Real Ale, until you fall over. Bloody expensive getting barrels shipped in, though, so I’ve developed a taste for coffee.” She grinned. I liked her immediately. Dawn, her name, and she makes a pretty good mocha. Skinny little thing, though. Give her a couple of years to grow some curves and she’ll be turning heads.

“So, you let Xander drive your car… how’d you know he’s not going to steal it?”

I laughed. “I don’t. Apart from me being inside your house, and I’m guessing that in a town this size plenty of people are going to know who Xander is. That and it’s got a tracker in it.”

“He might trash it.”

“Yeah well, it’s insured. Give me a good reason to finish off the old Citroen dad bought me. Been sitting in the garage rotting for a few years now.”

We talked about the cars for a while – seemed she was pretty taken with some absent Englishman who’d had a clapped-out Citroen of some sort. She babbled quite happily about him, but kept stopping herself short, like there was something she wasn’t supposed to say about him.

Xander returned, and I chatted with him for a while, about the tweaks I’d done to the mini, while Dawn did some homework. Finally, Xander asked who I was. I couldn’t believe it – they’d never heard of my dad’s band! That’s like never having heard of Aerosmith. I wasn’t about to tell them about the *other* thing, despite the magic – it might not have been put there by them.

“Well, whatever, heard of them or not, my dad’s filthy rich, and I’m living off it.”

“Got a boyfriend?” Xander asked with a smirk. “Just asking!” he defended, as Dawn’s cushion impacted with his head.

“Nah….My dad’s the most special guy in my life. I mean. I ain’t exactly the sort of girl rock stars go for, am I?” I pulled out the Polaroid of Andrew I keep in my pocket. He’d shaved his head, and had been letting it grow out, while they weren’t on tour… just to see what colour it was when it wasn’t bleached. From that haircut to the next bleaching, he had been mine. “This guy went temporarily insane for a few weeks, but he came to his senses.”

“Now that is cute… you know, I bet Giles looked just like that when he was young. All… sexy and dangerous.”

“Uh…Dawn?”

“I just mean from like, the band candy and stuff…the expression looks right, and his hair’s sort of the right colour for Giles.”

I suppose that should have tipped me off for something screwy about to happen, but I know several people whose first name is Giles, and a couple of others who’ve got it as a surname… but then my phone rang, and I was distracted for a while. Dad wanted to know where I was, and if I knew where Andrew was… he’d disappeared yesterday and he was mildly concerned he’d been eaten, and that he’d need to find a new bass player. I wanted to scream that I neither knew nor cared where the cold-hearted bastard was, but I just assured Dad that I’d be back when I was bloody well ready and hadn’t seen Andrew.

I’d missed the arrival of Dawn’s older sister, but something was tingling, and… Jesus, surely it couldn’t be a vampire in daylight? Her sister had gone through into the kitchen, and I was just putting my phone away when a blanket ran in, smoking slightly.

“Bloody hell it’s bright out there. You alright, Niblet?”

“Uh, Spike… we have a guest…”

“Oh great,” I said, glowering at the vampire, “everyone’s favourite lost boy. How’d you find me? And for that matter, what the hell are you doing running about under a blanket?”

“You know me?”

“Jesus, you been snacking on junkies again? And I thought you lot said you’d never heard of the bloody band? You seem to know Spike well enough…”

It appealed to my dad’s sense of humour to have a vampire on lead guitar. They told everyone, too. Course, nobody believed it, even though he was never seen outside during the day… whenever he needed to get around during the day, he was transported in a coffin with an entertainment system built in. Just had a PS2 put in. Wonderful gimmick. Especially when a bunch of fans knocked the lid off saying they didn’t believe he was in there… it wasn’t far from the hotel lobby, and they had a fountain in there… was in all the papers, Spike’s amazing stunt. The news footage had the whole thing, his mad dash, all his exposed flesh smoking, but the papers chose to cover their front pages with giant pictures of him lying in the fountain, looking hurt, pissed off and steaming slightly.

“Have I missed something?” Spike asked, “What bloody band, and who the hell are you?”

“Erm… the band you play 6-string for, blondie. The band my father fronts?”

I’d seen him forget who he was once before, at an after-show party. There were always plenty of girls – and boys – who just loved to have Spike drink their blood. Either someone was very, very wasted when they filled a syringe and added it to Spike’s wine glass, or they’d added something other than their blood. He’d spent the next few hours calling for ‘mummy’ Drusilla to comfort him, because of something Angelus had done to him. He couldn’t quite get his mind past about 1920, no matter what I did. I just pretended to be Dru for a while which calmed him as much as was possible.

“I can’t play guitar. I’m a bloody vampire. I’m the big bad, I KILL people, I don’t entertain them.”

“Oh come on, now is no time for self-doubt, Billy-boy. You’re hardly Clapton, but you’re not that bad.”

“Seriously, love, I don’t know who you are, and I’ve never owned a guitar. I’m William the Bloody! I’ve…”

“Killed two slayers,” I interrupted him, “Yes, I know. I’m *soooooo* scared! OOH! The big bad wampire’s coming to get me! Haylp! Haylp! They were skinny little cows the pair of them, I could kick your arse and you know it.”

Spike vamped out and ran at me. I found out later that he was nobbled here too, still couldn’t hurt ordinary people… but he ran at me anyway, not knowing I was a Slayer. The provocation was enough that he risked the pain to attack me. I deflected him easily.

“Come on, little one! I’m daddy’s girl, you got to do better than that if you want to play with the big girls!” Another thing I can’t help is that I love to fight. Spike and I… my father chose to allow Spike to be able to fight me without his curse crippling him. Purely for training purposes, but this… this was a real fight and I so wanted to see what he had, if he thought he was the Big Bad and not my dad’s bitch.

“What the HELL is going on?” Big Sis had returned from the kitchen carrying a tray and seen me and Spike fighting like … well like a Slayer and a vamp who’s just found out he can hit people after all. “Sorry mum.” I said, “William started it.”

“I don’t care who started it! If you broke anything you’re paying for it. And… did you just call me mum?”

“Yeah… I thought you got off on that, me being older than you and all?”

“WHAT?”

“Sorry, you… maybe my eyes are going funny or I had a little too much fun at Ethan’s last party, but, well, you look like my Dad’s lead guitar player, and YOU look like my step-mum, Buffy.”

“Buffy is your step-mother? Oh! This must be like one of those Anya-wish things! With the bad leather-vamp willow and…I’ll shut up now.”

“OK. I think we need to do some clarifying here about now. I’m Bex, I’m the Slayer. My Dad’s lead singer in a rock band, you’ve seen my picture of the bass player, this little leech is the lead guitarist, and nobody ever pays attention to the drummer. You twitched when I mentioned Ethan, so I’m guessing you know my dad’s best mate already. I’ve never seen Dawn before, but I remember now I saw the two witches by the pool, college friends of mu..Buffy’s. The bass player was trying to pull the red-head, and she was trying to hide behind her girlfriend. Knowing him he got a threesome with them.

“And Buffy, my step-mum. Dad saw her at a concert, had her pulled out of the crowd and taken back-stage. Announced that she was his destiny and married her three weeks later, wonderful publicity.

“I don’t see her much, really, cause she’s always glued to Dad’s side.”

“How… how old is your dad?”

“He insists that a man is as old as the woman he feels, in which case he’s about 22. But I believe 46 is closer to the mark.”

“Oh god… it’s… it’s got to be…”

“Buffy?” Dawn sounded worried.

“It’s Giles, isn’t it? Rupert Giles?”

“Yeah, I bet he would let you call him that, too. Finally the beautiful princess who can tame the Ripper…enough girls have tried. Can’t believe you actually got him off the nose-candy...”

Buffy sat down, suddenly.

“And you’re the Slayer? Not me?”

I laughed at that. “YOU! You’re.. teeny. Not that I wouldn’t love to look like you and keep my strength, but… you look like you’d snap soon as anyone got a decent kick in.”

“You know what I want to know?” Spike said suddenly, “What about my great ponce of a sire? He turn back to Angelus cause of you, did he?”

“What?”

“His moment of true happiness in the arms of our dear Buffy here turned him from sweet simpering little ensouled Angel back into a sire I could be proud of.”

“What did she do, take him shopping for curtains? Buy him the complete works of Abba on CD?”

“What?”

“You of all people should know the Angelus’ sexual preference, sweet-*cheeks*. Remind me how long you were his bitch before your girl took him out?”

“Oh yeah, like I’m going to let anyone take me up the arsenal.”

“Such a waste. You have such nice buns, Spike.” I smirked.

“She’s joking.” He said, not particularly confident. “I do NOT have a gay sire! He might be a bit of a poof now he’s all ensouled again, but the Angelus was all man. We raped and murdered our way across half of Europe! They taste so nice when you’ve got time to enjoy them both ways…”

“eew. And… not in front of Dawn, please.”

“Oh come on. I’ve seen Queer as Folk.”

I smirked. “Whatever, like father like son.”

“I am not a bloody shirt-lifter.”

“Only cause my dad wont let you.”

“Spike and GILES! Oh my god there’s an image to scar me for life!”

“Dawn, go to your room.”

Dawn was protesting, and Buffy trying to keep Spike from attacking me, when my phone rang again.

It was Andrew, drunk as usual. Wanting to be driven home from wherever he’d woken up. I love him, so of course I’d do it… except I can’t at the moment, because… well because I’m not in the same world as him, so I manage, just for this once, to brazen out a refusal. Trying not to think about that look he gets on his face when you tell him he can’t have something, and he knows all he has to do is *look* at you that way and you’ll just grit your teeth and bury your face in the pillow and take the pain, try not to make too much noise… and it’s over, woman, Jesus H Christ on a bike. The bastard dumped you.

Spike had gone with Dawn, apparently to play her some of his punk tapes. I sat down with Buffy, and we talked for a while, about my Dad. About how he’d refused to go back to the Watchers, because of his pregnant girlfriend. She told me about Eyghon, something which while I knew about it, had nothing to do with my father or his mate Ethan – they’d left the group, young Ripper having got all protective about his girl and their baby.

The relationship hadn’t lasted – she’d gone back to the drugs and magic straight away after I was born, and Ripper just kicked her out and raised me himself. Hence, I’m Daddy’s girl.

From what I hear from Buffy, I just never happened in this world, and Dad left, went back to the watcher’s Council. It weirds the crap out of her that she’s her watcher’s wife in my world, that he’s the Slayer’s father rather than her Watcher… Spike being in the band didn’t really surprise her, other than Dad having him around, but his being gay did. Dru having staked Angelus in ’23 surprised her too. Andrew she’s never heard of.

It’s my dad that keeps Spike under control, in my world, see. Utterly besotted with Dad, he is… Chose to be a good boy, just to be around him, to be able to keep him safe – even though he knew he’d never get any. The old Spike would just have taken him, turned him if necessary. He looks at Dad the way I know I look at Andrew when I’m too drunk or too stoned not to. We go out drinking together a lot, get on well, despite the bickering and name-calling… so I guess the fag-hag label isn’t a bad one, most of the times I get seen with an attractive man it’s going to be Spike.

“It just seems… so unreal. A fairytale,” she said, slowly, “That I could be married to a rock star, and not be the Slayer…”

“Rich, young and beautiful, not a care in the world, just you and Ripper.”

“Me and Giles…”

“So do I get to meet him? I’d love to see a version of my dad in the tweed…”

“Uh…. he’s in England.”

“Oh. He going to be long?”

“Forever.”

I laughed. “You’re always so lost when he’s not around…must seem like forever. When’s he coming back?”

“He’s… he’s not. He said… he said that he couldn’t be my father-figure any more, that I.. I needed to be strong on my own.”

“He WHAT? A watcher’s duty is to look after his Slayer. He can’t just… Oh for… Wesley gets like a mother hen if he doesn’t know exactly where I am 5 minutes before sunset. Have you spoken to him?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because… I’d make things bad again. He’s home, with his family and friends and he’ll be happy. I can’t take him away from all that again.”

“Phone him.” My phone started to ring. I’m not usually this popular.

“Find out,” I fumbled it out of my pocket and answered.

I paced round the room as dad tried to explain about some vengeance demon that Ethan had pissed off… said he’d call me when they’d worked out how to get me back… I could hear Wes squawking in the background. Buffy looked up at me and I realised she could hear dad’s voice…

“Hang on a sec, dad.” I asked Buffy if she wanted to talk to Ripper.

“Dad, you’ll never guess who I ran into here?” He had a couple of supremely surreal guesses before I told him. He went quiet when I said she was the Slayer; that I’d never been born.

“So… this Buffy… does she know me?”

“Talk to her.” I handed her the phone.

“Giles?”

“Buffy? I… Do you know me there? Did we meet?”

“Oh yeah. I’m… I’m destiny girl for you, huh?”

“I knew it. I knew it… they… they said she was only with me for my money, that… that she’d never have looked at me if…if I hadn’t been famous. Do… do I make you happy?”

“I’m a wreck. I’m just… a shell of a Buffy… because you’re not here. Because I can’t do this alone.”

I couldn’t hear what dad said to her next.

“Giles… we’re… we’re not a couple here. You… you were my watcher, but you left, went back to England…”

I heard him shout, and she held the phone away from her ear…it went quiet, then he started to call her name.

“Giles?”

She looked at the floor, as she listened.

“I… I make men leave. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him too, so… so I didn’t let him get too close, and then he did leave and…”

She paused, listening to him.

“I miss you so much.” I watched a tear crawl down her face.

“I need you, Giles… I need everything you’ll give me.”

She stopped breathing, as she listened. I strained to hear.

“Tell him that.”

She put the phone down and looked at me.

“What time is it in Bath?” I bent down and hugged her. “It’s about two here now, yes? About 10 at night, then.”

“Is that too late to call?”

“It’s up to you.”

I sat with her as she dialled, and heard an answering machine. She didn’t leave a message.

“We’ll try again in the morning.”

“So… we should patrol together. And… we should shop. You don’t really dress like a rock star’s daughter.”

I smiled. “I guess I don’t. I’m not thin and beautiful like the other guys’ daughters. Then again, all their mothers were models.”

Buffy assured me I didn’t need to be, and proceeded to drag me to a shop down a side-street. A shop in which she had me buy a whole boot-load (that’s the trunk of the car, for you merrikans) of clothes.

She spent the time up until sunset teaching me how to do my make-up. The style she picked for me was nothing like her own, nothing like the clothes my step-mother would wear… but fitted perfectly with my father’s style.

I found a magazine in my glove compartment, with a big article on the band, which I let Buffy read. I’d forgotten about the bit where the interviewer asked about the action figures of the band that had been produced. I looked round at her in a fit of coughing.

“Positions. Articulation,” she managed, and then got herself under control.

“Choking hazard? He *was* talking about the action figure’s little removable shades, wasn’t he?” I reassured her that he probably hadn’t been.

“I know one thing for sure,” she said, smiling at me, “I have so got to buy Giles some leather pants.”

Patrol was uneventful. I told her stories about Dad and the band – and about Dad when I was little. I was so upset when I went back ‘home’ a couple of years ago, went to the playground in the park and found that the witches’ hat and the big iron slide were gone and it was all rubber flooring and nothing over about 6ft high. Dad used to go down that big slide with me on his lap, because I wanted the thrill, but was too scared to do it alone. I had to admit Buffy was good – and she was strong, too… stronger than she looked.

I knew the Slayer got extra strength, but I didn’t realise how much of mine came from that… we were pretty much equal. She stopped, after a while, by something that caught my breath – her own grave. She looked like she was about to cry again. “He wasn’t there.” she whispered. “He wasn’t there when I… when I dug myself out and he… he’d left me. And he came back and I was so scared he’d go away if I let him get too close I… I didn’t let him and he… he left anyway. Do you think he… do you think he’ll come back to me? Do you think your dad’s right? Do you think he wants me?”

I looked at her, “He wanted you enough to pull you out of a stadium crowd when he’d never seen you before. You know he married mum three weeks after that? It’s because she wasn’t quite 18. He married her on her birthday, so their wedding night could be their first time.” She did start to cry, then, and I took her home. It was getting later - 8am in the UK. At half past we called him again, and this time he answered. Buffy had insisted I make the call for her.

“Mr Giles… I apologize for bothering you so early. You don’t know me, I’m the daughter of an ex-girlfriend… but that’s beside the point… I understand you’re a Watcher.” He tried to give me some line about being a keen ornithologist.

“Mr Giles, I have your Slayer.” He demanded to talk to her. I refused – though largely because Buffy had run away to make tea, unable to take the strain of listening to the call.

“I’m not harming her, Mr Giles, but I do know what she needs. Buffy needs to be kissed by a man who loves her.” He suggested I call Angel. “That won’t work, Mr Giles. He’s not a man. Are you saying you can’t save her? Are you telling me that you don’t want to feel her lips against yours, to be her knight in shining armour?”

“Of course I want to save Buffy, but I don’t see how I can, I….”

“That’s not what I asked you,” I repeated “Can you kiss her and mean it?”

“Let me speak to her.”

“Mr Giles, did you or did you not leave your Slayer because you could no longer bear to be around someone you wanted so badly and didn’t dare take?”

“She’ll reject me. I’m… I’m old and gross, that’s what she said.”

“I can’t guarantee you she won’t change her mind, Mr Giles. I know it just hurts all the more after they reject you. It’s hell on earth. But it’s better than being apart, any little crumb they’re willing to throw you, every good memory… it’s worth it.”

He demanded to speak to Buffy. He didn’t shout, but in seconds she was crying.

“Come home, Giles. I… I’ll make it all worth it, I promise. I’ll… I’ll do anything, I swear…”

He refused her. She handed me the phone.

“I will not make Buffy my whore,” he hissed at me, “what is wrong with her?”

“She’s just been rejected by the one man who can make her complete.” I said, coldly. “Tell me you don’t want her.”

“I… I love her like a daughter, I… I have no sexual feeling towards Buffy.”

“She told me about you assuming Spike was your son, when none of you knew who you were… it’s strange, how a girl will settle for a pale imitation of what she really wants. You want to leave her to an imitation that pale?”

“She… she wouldn’t.”

“I’m not so sure.” I’m not sure quite when I worked it out… Buffy and Spike, I mean… I just had to hope that it would do the trick.

I gave the phone back to her.

I don’t know how it worked out for them, really. They talked for hours, and I fell asleep on the sofa. When I was woken up by the sunrise, there was a pad on the table with flight details scribbled on it, in my step-mother’s handwriting. We chatted about the differences in our worlds, we patrolled, we practiced my make-up, and I taught her how to make the three ginger soup my Dad taught me. Only way you’re going to get vitamins and minerals into rock stars is if you make it spicy as hell, their five basic food groups being Sugar, Spice, Fat, Girls and Alcohol..

Dad called me a couple of times, to assure me they were close to finding out how to get me back… and I told Buffy about Andrew.

About the first time we met, after he’d been with the band a few weeks, and I was around for a party, how he hadn’t looked at me at all strangely – I’m never in any magazines or anything, there’s no reason he would already have known who I was. He just accepted me. About a night out in London, with Dad and Spike, when Andrew’d insisted we all go into a sex shop in Charring Cross Road, bought a dildo and gave it to a homeless guy.

He slid down the escalators, too, going into Piccadilly Circus tube station, hit his arse on a Keep Left sign and put a bloody great dent into his hip-flask. Reckless sod’s lucky Spike held on to him as long as he did, or he would have broken his leg or something.

He had us singing Queen songs all the way back to the hotel – they didn’t want to let us in, but then someone recognised Dad… I told her about her friends Willow and Tara being around with her, but I really had no idea if they were still friends with Xander… All she really wanted to hear about was dad, about Giles. She kept looking at the little wedding picture of them in the magazine, sat and sketched the dress. We worked out that the differences went back a long way – Spike being gay, Angelus having been killed by Drusilla rather than being cursed, but were the differences because she wasn’t the slayer… or was she not the slayer because of the differences?

I dropped her at the airport, to pick up her Watcher… about six hours before she needed to be there, but she was so overexcited, and as much as I would have loved to meet him, I couldn’t. I had to be on the outskirts of LA, at a location not far from our home. One of the places Dad and Ethan went for their casting.

Everything went without a hitch – the portal arrived right where I was expecting it to and Dad, Ethan and Buffy were waiting for me. I rode home with Ethan, behind Ripper and Buffy. She chose to hold onto Dad, rather than the handle on the back of the bike. Any chance to have her hands on Dad’s body, any chance to be leaning her head on his shoulder. I know how she feels. I know how wonderful it is to just pull them close and take a great big sniff, to touch every inch of them, to consume them, to be taken by them, to just look at them in a group of people and think ‘That’s mine. That owns me.’

It was getting dark when I got home. Wes came running out to greet me – Dad never liked him around for casting, just in case the Council didn’t approve, and decided to do something about it.

Spike was in the kitchen, just heading out to the pool, by the time I got changed. He raised an eyebrow at me, at the clothes I’d bought with Buffy, and the make-up done the way she’d shown me. I was transformed from chunky, frumpy old me into the sort of Amazonian Goth chick who wouldn’t be out of place at one of Dad’s gigs.

“My god, who is this metal princess! Beer?” he waved a bottle of Hobgoblin at me, and we went out to join the others.

“What *I* need,” Andrew was declaring, waving his wine glass around madly, yet somehow not spilling any, “Is a great valkyrie of a woman, to put me in my place. I am a naughty boy, and I need to be punished.” His volume and his pitch both went up when he was drunk – I knew he played it up, sometimes, acted far drunker than he was, but I didn’t think this was one of those times. Fair enough, I thought. In vino, veritas and all that. I picked him up, chair and all, and dumped him in the pool. Spike thought this was far too good an opportunity to miss, and for the next ten minutes he chased Ripper round the pool, before finally managing to grab him round the waist and wrestle him into the water. I didn’t see everything, because I was busy legging it away from Andrew, but Spike did a very good job of groping my dad at every opportunity. Buffy was loving it, she knew Ripper was all hers, she had no need to be jealous. She joined in, at one point, managing to drag my utterly unresisting father into the hot-tub, before Spike dragged him out, sans Speedos. He was screaming and Buffy was laughing in delight, waving the trunks in the air. Spike looked like his eyes were about to pop out of their sockets.

I suppose you’re expecting this to have a Moulin Rouge ending and have Andrew be dead… but he’s not. I suppose now you’re thinking my new image, my standing up to him… that he took me back. That I’m with the man who for some reason, despite everything, I’m in love with and that I’m happy.

Well yes, I’m with him. He’s still in Dad’s band, and I was right about him scoring with that witch and her girlfriend. He’s acting like he’s found his Buffy in stereo, and of course I’m… I’m still going out every night and saving the world, and coming home to a double bed I don’t share with anyone.

I’ll comfort Willow and Tara – especially Tara, because she’s batted for the other team longer – when he gets bored, and I’ll keep hoping that he’ll look my way again. I like to think I’ll brush him off, but I know I won’t. I know I won’t have to.

So I just go through every day, pretending it’s not hell… and just hope I live long enough to find out for myself if it really is possible to stop loving someone. But as I said, this isn’t my story. It’s Dad’s story, it’s Buffy and Ripper’s story – and Buffy and Giles’ story, and from what I can tell, they both share a happy ending.

I don’t think I could stand it if they didn’t.

END