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Title: Castaways 11/16 "Anything yet?" Willow shook her head. "Not yet, Dawnie. He doesn't seem to be staying in any of the local hotels, at least under his own name." "Would he even be here anymore?" Anya asked. "Could he have gone back to England?" "He could have, sure. I don't know why he would have stayed." "Yeah," Xander agreed, "he's never really been the type to deal with the fallout. He was back in the mother country about two seconds after he fired Giles." "And his entire army had cleared out by the next morning last time," Willow said. She typed a few more strokes on her laptop. She frowned. "That's funny." "What's funny?" Dawn asked. "Probably nothing. Just...I decided to try another name we didn't talk about, and I found him." "Who, Will?" Xander asked as he moved to hover over her shoulder. He looked at the screen and blanched. "That is so not good." "What? What is it?" Dawn pushed Xander aside so she could see. "I don't get it. What's wrong?" Xander took Dawn and sat her down. "It's bad. Ethan Rayne is back." ***** Buffy listened as Giles' breathing evened out and he dropped off to sleep. She couldn't believe how comfortable she felt in his arms. Less than an hour ago, she'd accused him of being a murderer and he had told her that she'd been trying to commit suicide for nearly a year. Now she lay wrapped in his embrace, content in a way she couldn't remember feeling before. She frowned as she thought back over the last year - or at least what she'd experienced of it. Having a gap of several months was a bit disconcerting, but she did her best to ignore that in her mind. She took a long, hard look at how she'd behaved and all her decisions. Giles was right. She'd given up on life. Spike had been right when he told her she would develop a death wish. She had, and that was when she let him win. Less than a year had turned her from a strong woman who could tell Spike no when he chained her up into the lost soul who didn't care if he decided to get his jollies in the middle of The Bronze. One year had been enough to make her lose all hope. She'd dropped out of school, deliberately distanced herself from her friends, taken a miserable, pointless job she would have sneered at once upon a time. She'd wanted out with every fiber of her being. Perhaps she was brave when she went to her death rather than sacrifice her sister. Or perhaps it was just that she was tired and thought it would be over if she died. And what about Ben? She was appalled to realize that she hadn't given a single thought to whether he'd lived or died until Giles told her what he'd done. She lay with her head resting on his broad chest, his warm, strong hands holding her as if she was a delicate treasure even as she slept, and tried to imagine those same hands deliberately taking a human life. Buffy shuddered at the thought. Giles held her just a thought tighter and murmured something indistinct in his sleep. How could Giles have done that? And yet he had. When Faith had killed the deputy mayor, Giles had told her sometimes these things happened in war. Now he told her that killing Ben had been an act of war. He'd done it so Glory couldn't win control of the body she shared with Ben. When she looked at it that way, she had to admit he had a point. But how could she live with that? Giles had killed a man. Not by accident, but by design. How do soldiers' wives accept what their husbands have done in battle? All Buffy knew was that her head was swimming and her world had been turned upside down, once again, by the man she always thought of as the safest person in her world. And she still felt safer in his arms than anywhere else on earth. But was it enough? Too tired to think anymore, Buffy lay her head on Giles' chest and allowed the steady beat of his heart to lull her to sleep. ***** "No way, guys. I can't do this," Willow said. "I just can't." "Will, nobody's asking you to actually do mojo on the guy," Xander explained patiently. "Just...maybe threaten him with some magic. It's not like he's brave or anything." "He'll probably cave as soon as you say...I don't know...eeenie meenie chili beanie," Anya assured the witch. "You won't have to really turn him into a frog." "Anya!," Willow exclaimed. "Do I make jokes about rabbits around you? No frogs." "Maybe we could call Tara," Dawn suggested. "She could really do a spell if he isn't as big a weenie as you guys think he is." "No," Willow said stubbornly. "Tara...she's...she couldn't...Ethan's a really powerful sorcerer. She's not as strong as him. She could get hurt." "We'll all be there to back her up," Xander assured his friend. "With big, big weapons that will scare him. Will, this is for Buffy. We have to get her back, and Ethan is the only one who can tell us where she is. We have to do something." "I wish Giles was here," Anya grumbled. "He'd know what to do." "We know what to do, An. We do what Buffy and Giles would do. We find Ethan, we threaten him, and then we hit him, really hard, until he undoes whatever he's done. So are you in or out, Will?" "I'm in, but only for the, y'know, threatening and hitting parts. No magic." "Then we have to call Tara." Before anyone could object, Xander went to the phone and dialed.
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