Title: Castaways 2/16
Author: Gileswench
Spoilers: Through Older and Far Away
Feedback: Constructive criticism always welcome. Praise abjectly sought.
Disclaimer: It all belongs to Joss, Mutant Enemy, etc., etc., etc. I just let them have all the fun Joss won't. I own nothing except my twisted mind which you really don't want. Please don't sue.

After a while, Buffy found herself unable to keep up the pretense of sleep anymore. She mentally cursed her bladder and stirred.

"Did you have a nice nap?"

Buffy found herself resenting Giles' quiet tone. Maybe he'd figured her out and just wanted to trap her into giving herself away. Well, she wasn't going to fall for it.

"Sure," she yawned ostentatiously. "All rested now. When do we land?"

"Any time now, I should imagine."

"Well, I gotta make a pit stop first. Don't let them turn on the seatbelt sign without me."

She headed for the tiny restroom at the back of the cabin and Giles returned to his reading. He shook his head sadly. Did she really think she could fool him like this after all the years they'd spent together? She might have slept, but it certainly hadn't rested her. The circles under her eyes were heavy and dark. And nobody yawned like that. He began to suspect that she'd been awake the entire time. Well, fine. She'd shut him out for years, what difference did it make if she did it one more time?

He couldn't lie to himself. It mattered because he knew she wasn't being honest with anyone anymore. Buffy had always lied. Alright, give her her due, she more often avoided subjects or rattled away so she couldn't possibly hear any objections so she could say later with a clear conscience that nobody had told her no. Actual, specific lies had been much rarer with Buffy. And, while he was on the subject, Giles had to admit he'd been less than honest with Buffy on far too many occasions himself.

A tiny voice in his head reminded him he'd never told her about Ben.

He turned the page and searched for something new to think about.

A minute or two later, Buffy emerged from the bathroom. She returned to her seat without a word and stared out the window. Giles decided he'd had enough. He closed his book with a thump and turned to her.

"Are you going to speak to me at all on this trip?"

She shrugged her shoulders glumly.

"I already talked to you."

"I suppose so, if one takes the phrase quite literally," he allowed as he tugged his glasses off, "but if we're going to work together we have to do better than this. I know you're still angry with me, but we have to find a way to communicate."

Buffy finally looked him in the eye. Hers were carefully blank, her voice neutral.

"Or?"

"Or what? I don't understand?"

"Or...anything. What happens if we don't talk much?"

Giles replaced his glasses with a sigh.

"Of course, I forgot that you don't think I have anything important to say. But Buffy, there are times when talking over the facts and the theories in a situation helps us find the answer."

Buffy shrugged.

"You're answer guy. You'll get the job done, except for the killing part. That's my gig. Point me at what needs killing and I'll do it. Easy."

"You know perfectly well it's never worked like that with us."

"Well maybe I finally see what the Council wanted and I've decided to do it."

"That's not like you, Buffy."

She rolled her eyes.

"Great. So I'm not me. When do we get where we're going, already?"

Giles sighed in defeat and returned to his seat.

A few minutes later, Buffy looked up.

"Hey, Giles? When do we get there anyway?"

Giles looked at his watch, then out the window. He saw nothing but ocean.

"We should have been there by now, and I don't think Miami is quite that...aquatic. There's something seriously wrong, Buffy."

"I knew you were gonna say that. Does the pilot guy know he's gone out of bounds?"

Giles shot her an acerbic look. "Just a moment while I read his mind long distance."

"We can't just let him fly us to - to Europe or something. I don't have a passport. And I can't take that kind of time off work. Lorraine will decide I just disappeared and she'll take me off the clock."

"In a plane this size, we won't have enough fuel to make it to Europe. We'll end up in the Atlantic ocean. Where the hell does he think he's taking us?"

"Stop him, Giles!"

"I thought I found the answers and you provided the brute force."

"But I can't fly a plane!"

"And what the bloody hell makes you think I can?"

"Hello! Fighter pilot? Childhood ambition? Come on, Giles, work with me here."

"I never became a fighter pilot, Buffy. I was too busy becoming a Watcher."

"So this is all my fault?"

"Wha - Buffy, what are you driveling about?"

"You had to become a Watcher so you could watch me and that's why you never learned to fly a plane and that's why we're gonna crash in the middle of the ocean and die, is that it?"

Giles took a moment to stare, dumbfounded, at Buffy.

"I was ten sodding years old when I wanted to fly planes. There are a million reasons why I might never have done it anyway and not one of them has anything to do with you."

"So now I'm nothing to you at all?"

"That's not what I said!"

"Well it's sure what it sounded like!"

Giles shook his head to clear it from the mind boggling exercise of arguing with Buffy. He'd forgotten how confusing and tiring it could be.

"We don't have time for this nonsense, Buffy. Every second we stand here yelling at one another takes us further from where we want to be. We have to think, to - to - to figure some way to get this plane landed safely somewhere in the general vicinity of where we wanted to go."

"I never wanted to go to Miami."

"Nor did I, but that's beside the point. Look, I'm going up to the cockpit and see if I can have a word with the pilot."

Buffy blinked at him.

"You couldn't have thought of that before you gave birth to all those cows?"

Giles looked a bit sheepish.

"I...panicked. It's been a while since my life was in danger every waking moment. Not used to the adrenaline rush anymore, I suppose."

At Buffy's glare, Giles rolled his eyes and made his way up the aisle to the cockpit door. Once there, he knocked tentatively.

"I say, excuse me?"

He waited.

No answer.

He knocked again, harder.

"Is everything all right in there?"

He waited again.

"Did you know the plane is quite a way off course? Hello? Anybody in there?"

"Giles," came a voice at his shoulder, "I think you'd better open the door."

"A conclusion I certainly would never have reached by myself," he said in reply to Buffy's helpful suggestion.

He tried the handle. No luck. He stood back and gestured to the door. Buffy took a deep breath and kicked the door in.

The pair peeked in. Their eyes widened. They looked at each other.

"Okay," Buffy said. "We can now officially panic."

They looked at the empty cockpit again.

"So what do we do now?" Buffy asked.

Giles ran his hand back through his hair.

"I don't know. I swear there was a pilot when we left Sunnydale."

"Could he be in the bathroom?" One glare from Giles answered Buffy's question. "Okay, so no pilot. What do they do in the movies? Y'know, the ones where the pilot eats the chicken dinner with botulism or has a sudden attack of cholera or something?"

"Our pilot hasn't had a sudden attack of cholera; he's disappeared."

"I know, but it's like the same thing. No pilot either way. I know! There's a radio and you call the airport or something and some guy talks you down. Right?"

"Do you know how to work the radio?"

"No. You?"

"I suppose one of us has to learn."

"Not the time to be taking crash courses in this stuff."

Giles glared again.

"Buffy, would you please refrain from using the term 'crash' until we're safely on the ground again?"

"Sorry."

They entered the cockpit and looked at the controls of the plane. They tried to identify the radio. They looked about wildly for some indication of how to either handle the plane themselves or contact the outside world for help.

"Is there an off switch, at least?" Buffy asked.

"Wonderful idea," Giles grumbled, "we'll just switch the plane off while we're twenty thousand feet above the ocean. That should do the trick."

"At least I'm trying to find a way to get out of this."

Giles rubbed the back of his neck in frustration.

"I can't even identify anything up here."

"What about this?"

Buffy held up the book she'd found in the pilot's seat. Giles took it and skimmed through several pages.

"Magic. I should have known."

"Known what? Giles, share!"

Giles closed the book with a thump and tugged his glasses off.

"It's a spellbook I recognize from...well..."

"Your Ripper period, I'm guessing?"

"Yes."

"Ethan?"

"Most likely."

"So he's the one who's got his mojo working in Miami?"

"I shouldn't be the least surprised. He'd have known that once he got to a certain level the Council would involve you and that would mean they would involve me."

"So this is some sort of payback for shipping him off to the army? He's going to kill us?"

"No, I don't think that's his intent, but he'd like us to be as stranded as he was."

"So I'm guessing the plane won't actually crash into the ocean."

"I very much doubt it."

"So where's it headed?"

"I wish I knew."

The pair slumped against the walls of the cockpit and looked forlornly at one another. At last Buffy spoke.

"Giles? If someone was to accidentally turn Ethan into...oh, say, a hamster...would it really be murder if I let Miss Kitty eat him?"

*****

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