Title: Dreaming True
Author: Sweetdoggie (stirling_summer@yahoo.com)
Pairing: B/G
Rating: FRM
Summary: What Giles dreamed the night Buffy was resurrected..
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: No permission has been granted to use the characters. They are owned by their creator, Joss Whedon, Twentieth Century Fox, UPN, WB, and Mutant Enemy. This story is non-profit and is intended solely as entertainment. No copyright infringement is intended.

Rupert Giles rolled around on his bed caught in the throes of a very vivid nightmare. He was back at Oxford, deep into his Watcher training, surrounded by his friends and associates. There was Bunny Thompson. Why, he hadn't seen Bunny for nearly twenty years. He'd been skewered by a Polgara demon and Giles knew he was long dead, but here he was again. Bunny was saying something to him about old Collchester.

“Look at that old fool! He's so besotted with his Slayer that he can't be away from her for more than ten minutes!” Bunny gave his trademark giggle.

“He's thirty years older than her. How can he begin to keep up?” Giles wondered aloud.

“Maybe she has some mercy on him?” Bunny offered.

“She's very beautiful, a real Amazon,” Giles noted, somewhat envious of the older man.

“Too much for that old bookworm. Wonder if she'd give me a tumble if I asked her? She can't be fulfilled with Collchester in her bed.”

“She's married, you toad!”

“She's an eighteen-year-old girl married to a fifty-year-old man. Plus, she's a Slayer. You know what they're like! They have the sex drive of three women.”

“If Collchester catches you sucking around his wife, you'd better have a life insurance policy all paid up. He's hell with a saber.”

“He's old! When I'm that age, you won't see me mooning about after my Slayer. I'll be all business. Collchester thinks she's a real person, but the Council knows better. All these girls are just disposable assets—one dies and another is Called. It hardly seems worthwhile to learn their names.”

“That's a rather callous attitude, Bunny. They can't help being what they are.”

“What they are, is tools. You don't fall in love with your hammer.” The young man gave Giles a good leer. “Doesn't mean you can't use it while you have it, though, does it?”

“You're disgusting, Bunny.”

“I'm also right!”

The dream Rupert just shrugged and grabbed up his books. “Come on, you toad. We're going to be late for class.”

Suddenly, he was in a cafeteria completely surrounded by his old schoolmates. Look! There was Carlisle who, Giles knew, was going to spend out his years howling in a mental institution. There was Geordie Gregory, hadn't he been killed by a vampire? Giles was sure of it. Oh! There was his good friend, Sean Chandler. Sean had hung himself from the rafters of their dormitory over the pressures of his studies. Giles looked around, glad to see their faces once more.

“I've missed you all so much!”

“Look at you, Rupert! You old dog! You've gone and gotten yourself a Slayer!” One of his gathered comrades laughed.

“How is she, Rupes?”

“She's an excellent Slayer!” He defended her hotly.

“You know what we mean! Is it true what they say about Slayers? Have you tried her? Given her a tumble?”

“We don't have that sort of relationship. Buffy is a very special girl, but she doesn't look at me that way.”

“And why is that, Rupert? Is it because you've turned into an old man?”

“I'm not old! I'm forty! Buffy's twenty. It isn't right for me to look at her that way.”

“But you do, don't you?”

“I may have looked,” Giles admitted to his dream peers. “I'm not dead, you know.”

“Well, most of us are, old boy!” They all laughed heartily, as if death was just a joke.

“Are you going the way of old Collchester? Going to top yourself because your Slayer is dead?”

“You don't understand. None of you have been gifted with a Slayer. You don't know the bond we share...”

“That would be 'shared', old boy. She's dead now, you know.”

“I know. I miss her so much. If only I had taken the chance to tell her my feelings...She deserved to know.”

“To know? To know what? That a man twenty years older than her was mooning about after her like some sort of pervert?”

“It wasn't like that! I loved her. I still love her.”

“Oh, he loves her! Well, that makes all the difference then, doesn't it, lads?”

There was a general chorus of laughter that, while teasing, was also genuinely sympathetic.

“I think you wouldn't know what to do with the girl if you did get a second chance with her!” Somebody snickered, he thought it might have been Sean. “I'd bet that you'd just slop along after her, worshiping her from afar. You never had the guts for direct action with the ladies, Rupert! Admit it. If your Slayer came back to you, you'd piss away your last chance. You'd tell yourself that you're too old, she's too young, you're her Watcher, her guardian, she doesn't look at you that way...blah, blah, blah. We know all the excuses you'd use, Rupert.”

“I wouldn't. I wouldn't waste my chance if I were given another opportunity!” Giles declared hotly. “I'd take her in my arms and tell her I love her. I'd kiss her, worship her! Oh, I miss her so much! I just wish I could touch her one time. She was so beautiful. Her soul was so pure. She was like a light in the darkness. You would have loved her too, all of you.”

“We know her, Rupert. After you move on as we have, you learn to know them all.”

“She's there, with you?”

“She was, but she's gone on now. Her work isn't done, you see.”

“What do you mean? Where has she gone?”

“Why, Rupert, she's come back to you!”

“Nobody comes back,” Giles told him sadly.

“Pish-tosh, old chap! Your little girl has already died and come back once. She's got the knack!”

“But she's been dead for six weeks already!” Giles protested.

“She's a clever girl. She'll figure it out.”

“I've got to go now.”

“We know. It was good to see you again, Rupert. Say hello to that Slayer of yours for us, won't you?” The dead melted into the background of the dream just as he woke himself up. His phone was ringing.

“Hello? Who is this?”

“Giles? It's Willow. I've got some amazing news...”

END