Where are you going? Where are you going? Can you take me with you?

[consultmybooks]

Who:slaying and consultmybooks
What: Watcher and Slayer talk on the way to the tunnels.
When: The morning of October 26th
Where: Outside of Building 7, before proceeding towards the tunnels.
Summary: Despite a bad night courtesy of the Phanto Mask, Buffy and Giles have a date to keep. Knowing is always better. But Buffy has dropped enough hints of what he's missing that

Comments

[slaying]

When I ever not? Ready, I mean.

That was the extent of her reply -- after the journal had rung and she had been knocked out of a light-but-troubled sleep at Jack Sparrow's side, Buffy had been pleased to see the familiar handwriting. She did not resent the wake-up call despite the fact that she probably only dropped to sleep a a few hours before it came. Fortunately, the Slayer did not need the same full complement of seven hours to feel rested. Certainly, some nights, she didn't sleep at all. But if the pirate was in her bed she seemed to manage a bit of slumber before the dawn. Even if just to reassure him that she still could sleep.

As she sat on the edge of the bed, she felt a nervous energy take her limbs. He would become whole again, she thought. Complete. Her Giles. Therefore, it didn't take her long to get ready and pull on a very low-impact outfit. The sort of thing usually reserved for evening patrols. Comfortable, maneuverable

[slaying]

She shrugged it off and did her best to stick to fact: "No. But it stuck enough for Kendra to be called. I'm guessing you don't remember her, either."

[consultmybooks]

A pause, as Giles mentally ran through those years he did remember. Sometimes pieces could be pulled together from later words, but...

"...no. Sorry."

[slaying]

"...Really? You never wondered how Faith got called? Huh." Buffy stared down at the lid of her mug. "Anyway. I undied and finished off the Master and it wasn't until a few months later that we met Kendra."

Her voice darkened. "She didn't last long."

[consultmybooks]

"...hence Faith."

He hadn't wondered. His deepseated and impossibly complicated affections for Faith had probably had something to do with that.

[slaying]

"Drusilla killed Kendra." She was cliff-noting this at a break-neck speed. Going through the most salient, Slayer-related information before she touched upon the more heartfelt things that Giles ought to be warned about. Jenny, for example. She needed to work her courage up to that.

"She shouldn't have. I should've been there. I was too late; I was tricked."

[consultmybooks]

To this, Giles said nothing. His first impulse was to ask who Drusilla was, but...no, she was rushing. There had to be a reason for her rushing through this, if only the fact that Buffy didn't want to discuss it any further. And so he let her cliff note.

[slaying]

"Kendra only came back because things were...well -- Angelus was out, Giles. The curse was broken."

A stiff-backed posture and she glanced sharply to the ex-Watcher. Did he know about it? He couldn't have. After all, Jenny had...Jeez. It had been terrible enough to let him know the first time.

With a sweetened kind of agony, she thought upon their conversation in the car. Support and respect. She needed that, now -- not the later flavours that had developed in the most recent years. But that love from that night.

[consultmybooks]

"...Angelus?"

He knew Angel. He knew Twilight. He didn't know Angelus, but for a hazy, frantic, stilted argument after Angel had agreed to help them stop the end of the universe.

[slaying]

"What? I know you didn't live it but...not even from the history books?" A frown. "What Angel used to be, before his soul. Before he was cursed with his soul."

[consultmybooks]

What soul? was the obvious next question, but...no, that wasn't fair. Giles refrained.

"Probably forgot the point where I looked it up, then. If I did."

[slaying]

A deep breath. "A gypsy curse, then. It restored his soul and doomed him to years of guilt-ridden torment. Hence the him working on our side -- soul does the body good, I guess. It's triggered into breaking at a...well -- that doesn't matter. But it broke. And he got less than friendly."

[consultmybooks]

"Go on."

It wasn't as though he hadn't tried to get this information out of Angel, after all.

[slaying]

"He terrorized us. All of us. People I love. People we love. Someone you...there was someone, Giles. Someone was killed."

[consultmybooks]

"...someone I forgot."

He knew there were people he had forgotten, had known since that first night. Cordelia, queen bitch of high school.

[slaying]

"...Someone you loved."