Buffy returned from a quick trip to the bathroom to find Giles fully dressed in the loaner pajamas and sitting on the end of her bed. She'd been semi-quiet--maybe quieter than she'd intended-- making her reentry, and for the moment Giles hadn't noticed her return. He had his back to her, his face turned toward the window she'd climbed in and out of what seemed like a million times, either on Slayer-duties or other, not-exactly-so-praiseworthy adventures.

She wanted to say something, but didn't for a minute, wondering instead what he could possibly be thinking at that moment. He looked unguarded--that's what his posture said to her anyway--the hair sticking up on top of his head in a way Buffy longed to smooth down again, not because it looked bad, just because they hadn't been able to touch, really, for a while now, tonight's kisses aside, and she longed for the nearness, the feel of him under her hands.

Behind her, the lights switched off, and in their place candles lighted, until the room took on the scents of flame and lavender. With them came a little ripple of amusement--oh, so he'd realized she'd come back, then--and, underneath, something deeper and more complicated. Still, Buffy didn't move. She felt frozen, though not in a cold way--more as if time had stopped suddenly between one breath and the next, and was waiting for something to make it move on again.

Giles was humming something, very softly. Buffy didn't know the tune, but it gave her a weird feeling inside, all welling-up warm and weepy, though not necessarily in a sad way--more like the feeling she'd get sometimes, watching little kids on Christmas morning, all excited, able to believe in anything.

Without turning around, Giles reached an arm out to her, and Buffy half sleepwalked toward it, surrendering herself to his hold, loose and warm at the same time, his hand resting lightly on her hip. She could see what he'd been watching now: falling stars, a meteor shower, maybe, like fireworks across the indigo sky.

Buffy didn't know what to say, or what to do, even. Only, a lot of things rushed back to her: how close they'd been to so much loss. She could feel her body start to tremble in a way that almost made her feel as if she was standing outside it, experiencing what some other girl, some other Buffy, felt.

Giles moved slightly, then turned all the way toward her, gazing up at her with obvious concern.

"No, no, it's nothing," she told him. Mumbled at him, really. It was dumb to be so upset and not really know exactly what it was she was upset about. Nothing and everything, maybe.

"Buffy," Giles said softly, putting a whole world of sympathy into her name. Before she knew it, Buffy found herself on the floor, kneeling between his parted knees, her face pressed against his chest, burrowing into the silky warmth as Giles's arms enfolded her.

"I'm hurting you," she muttered, but all Giles answered was, "No, you're not," in his best I-will-tolerate-no-arguments voice. Buffy had to laugh a little at that.

"Yes, I am," she said finally, pulling away just enough to be able to see his face--but if that was true, Giles hid it pretty well. The look he returned to her was full of tenderness, and maybe something else. Not Ripper, exactly, but not exactly reminiscent of library-Giles, either--as if she hadn't had that same thought about a million times since this summer began.

To Buffy's surprise, he lifted her, laying her down on the side of the bed she usually occupied, then sliding up beside her. With impossible gentleness, his fingertips stroked the hair back from her face, his eyes fixing on hers so intently that from anyone else, in any other circumstances, she would have found the gaze unnerving. With Giles, though, she could return the look, studying him as he studied her until at last the beginnings of a smile quirked up the corners of his mouth.

"You're all right, then," he said softly. "Truly."

"Mmn, pretty much," Buffy answered, which wasn't anywhere near what she wanted to say. Though, on second thought, it was good enough, really. Her smile get a little wider as she thought of the boys she'd had crushes on not-so-very long ago: Owen, Scott--God help her, Angel. The way she'd felt she needed to babble on to them, filling up every minute with words, as if she had to prove something--like she'd been take some kind of test she hadn't really known the answers to, and figured the more she said, the better her chances were of getting something right.

Well, she had this time. She'd gotten something right. She knew the answers--most of them anyway. At least a B+'s worth. Maybe even an A-.

Giles gave one of his quiet laughs.

"What?" Buffy found herself laughing too, a little.

"For a moment, love, you'd the oddest expression."

"So, I'm happy." Her laughter was really threatening to turn into giggles. "No, not happy. Umn...contented. Or that's not it, either. Aargh!" Buffy let her own fingertips brush his cheek, his mouth. "You know what I mean." She held onto that thought for a minute, letting it amaze her. "You really do know."

"Mmn," Giles answered. For a second or two his eyes held that sparkle that said he was going to tease her, but then it softened into a different expression entirely. The fingers of his right hand combed through her hair, until his palm cupped the back of Buffy's head and Giles was pulling her close, deep into another kiss, his tongue exploring her mouth with a gentle intensity.

Probably, Buffy told herself, she should have been concerned, at that point, about Giles getting his rest, about him not putting any more strain on his battered body than was totally necessary, but at the moment none of that seemed to matter. Not that she was indifferent to his well-being--far from it--but that Giles himself needed their closeness, their completeness, more than he needed her solicitude.

Buffy couldn't help but smile. Solicitude. How was that for a hundred-dollar high-scoring SAT word?

"What?" Giles asked her, pulling away slightly but--Buffy was glad to see--grinning back, with that smile that never ceased to amaze her, because it not only took years, if not decades, off his age, but made him look so totally Giles, in a way he'd maybe never allowed himself to be with anyone else in his entire life.

That alone would be enough to astonish her, Buffy thought--she'd been the one, the only one, ever able to bring his whole self out in him.

That she was, truly, his Chosen One.

"You," Buffy answered, and Giles laughed softly.

"Perhaps I shouldn't be precisely certain as to your meaning."

"But you are," she said, turning on her side, as he lay on his side, scooting closer to him until there was no separation between the warmth of his body and the warmth of hers. Buffy stretched her face up to kiss him again, tasting the sweetness and the saltiness of his skin, her cheek brushing his, savoring the roughness and the smoothness. Giles buried his own face in the crook of her shoulder, his mouth lingering just a moment over the scar Angel had left on her throat.

Once, Buffy would have felt self-conscious about that scar. Once, she would have felt she had to say something, explain something.

None of that was needed. Slowly, she rolled onto her back, bringing Giles over with her, as he kissed the hollow just behind her collarbone, and the scar, and the shallower hollow at the base of her throat.. His lips made their way softly down between her breasts, the tips of his silky hair tickling a little beneath her chin until Buffy found herself smiling again, even as she slid her fingers in beneath the elasticized waistband of the silk pajama pants.

Giles's hipbones were more prominent than she remembered, and her fingertips could easily trace the defined muscles of flank and thigh. He gave a little shiver against her, pressing the greater hardness, and the heat of him, between her legs. Just like that Buffy felt herself open, felt the answering hotness there where he touched her, the readiness and the wanting, like a ball of lightning alive inside her body.

A minute or so of awkwardness with bedclothes and pajamas followed, but then there was nothing to separate them, only the crisp coolness of the sheet above as they lay on their sides, facing each other, Giles's large, warm hand traveling the curves of Buffy's body as if he needed, somehow, to learn her all over again but touch as well as sight.

Again, Buffy buried her face in his chest; her arm circling his waist as tenderly as possible while her left leg crooked up over his hip, holding him close, and closer still. As close as she could make them. Giles stirred, and Buffy gave a little cry as he entered her--not because he'd hurt her, nothing like that, but because it struck her, in that moment, that they'd almost never had this, or any part of one another, again. That they'd almost lost each other for ever and ever.

"Ssh, my love," Giles was saying to her, his body moving slowly against hers. "We've lost nothing. We will lose nothing."

In answer, Buffy's hold on him tightened--she couldn't help herself--and her own movements quickened, strengthened, until every pulse drove him deeper inside her, and deeper still. She rolled to her back, clutching him desperately and once more Giles followed her, matching her rhythm, his good hand rubbing her breast, moving down to her thigh, kneading the muscles there, stroking the smoothness of her skin, until her body gathered itself into a ball of pleasure so tight and so complete it was almost painful. Buffy arched up against him, crying out--though she tried to muffle the sound against his shoulder--holding him inside her as Giles followed to his own climax, his heat exploding inside her in another one of those instants that seem to last forever.

"Promise?" Buffy asked, still holding him, though the tension began to release itself, slowly, from her body, even as the candles extinguished themselves one by one.

"Promise," Giles answered, so firmly that she had no choice but to believe him.

And whatever lay outside, here, where they lay together, there was nothing to be afraid of in the dark.

The not-completely unpleasant odor of warm leather upholstery right below her cheek finally clued Willow in to the fact that she'd somehow, without the least idea when or why or by whom, been transported from the magic forest and into the back seat of someone's car.

Since the last thing she remembered was being stretched out backward over a rock as cold and slippery-smooth as lizard-skin, with mean laughter in her ears and chilly lips on her throat, Willow thought she had a right to wonder about recent events. The truth was, she'd never expected to find herself in such surroundings ever again. Which was kind of laughable, really, considering that she hadn't exactly spent her whole life riding the magic express.

Or maybe it was just that she'd so totally expected to die that anything coming afterward had to feel weird. And alarming. It wasn't lost on her that it had taken less than a month to turn her life into the equivalent of a four-car freeway pileup--with or without leather upholstery. There was the destruction and the injuries and the fear, and Willow knew for sure that no amount of trying to fix things would ever put them totally right again.

Lying there, without even know she'd started, Willow found herself crying. Sobbing, really. So hard it even went beyond the way she'd cried the day she found out about Xander and Faith. It went beyond anything she'd ever known could be inside her, and with the tears the grief welled up until it blotted out everything else--guilt, shame, fear, pain.

A soft laugh interrupted her. Soft, but not in any way nice. Familiar too--in a "I've heard this before but I never, ever, ever wanted to hear it again" kind of way.

A rush of panic cut momentarily through the grief, giving Willow, finally, the strength to raise her head a couple inches. Never mind that it hurt, especially her neck, which burned and stung like a gallon of salty lemon-juice being poured into a thousand papercuts. For a moment, she couldn't see or think, it hurt so bad, but once her eyesight did come back to her, Willow hardly needed to look anymore: she knew.

Or she should have known. Known, anyway, that Angelus wouldn't have made things so easy on her. Known he'd just keep squeezing and squeezing until he'd drained out the last little drop of suffering she was capable of..

The laughter had stopped, thought, and so, after a minute, did the car. Willow hadn't even realized it was moving.

She felt too scared to look, really, but the edges of her vision showed her green leaves ruffling in the breeze and a night sky overhead all sparkly with stars. The wind was blowing in from the ocean, bringing with it a clean, salty scent that somehow blended perfectly with the smells of freshly-cut grass, and sprinklers, and a zillion flowers.

Willow almost started crying again, because--cliche, cliche--she hadn't realized how much she'd missed it all, every little ordinary thing. Which probably just proved how totally ordinary she herself was, after all.

What had she thought, that she was so special? So magical? So much better than anyone else that regular rules couldn't possible apply to her? As if.

Already her memories of that other time, her days and nights with Morgana, had started to feel hazy, more like something from one of the bad movies she and Xander used to watch way late at night, fighting to keep their eyes open, the stupid plots and their half-awake dreams getting all mixed up together until she couldn't have said what belonged and what didn't. If she tried really hard, she could even halfway make herself believe that the things she'd done weren't really real.

Only she knew better.

The door by her feet opened and a dark man-shape blocked out her view of the night sky.

"Hey?" Angelus's voice said to her. "Hey, Willow, don't. I mean..." His hand reached down to touch her arm. Willow flinched, but at the same time, she was all confused, because it hadn't sounded like Angelus after all, full of evil un-life. It had sounded like Angel--a little hesitant, a little confused, a little lacking in the basic social skills--and that was something she totally hadn't expected.

"Hey," he said again, still sounding kind of at a loss. "I guess...I mean, when I found you..."

"Please," Willow croaked, not even sure who she was saying it too, only that she wanted it to be true and not the reverse.

"I'd ask--only, obviously you're not okay, so that wouldn't be much of a question, right? Right." He straightened, rubbing his hands together. "I should take you somewhere. The ER?"

Willow managed to shake her head about half an inch.

"Buffy's?"

Another shake. It hurt, and she was so tired.

Angel paused, looking down, seeing her, Willow could tell, way better than she could see him. "Your house?"

He knew where that was? Oh, sure he did. The fish.

Angel paused again, obviously having a hard time getting out the word. "Umn...Giles's?"

There wasn't anywhere, Willow realized, feeling hollow and fragile as a blown egg. She didn't belong anywhere anymore. She didn't belong to anyone. She'd even forfeited the right, really, to feel sorry for herself. Any loss now, any defeat or discomfort or moments of terror, she had them all coming to her. And then some.

"Here," she breathed finally, not even recognizing her own voice. What did it matter anyway?

"Willow, this is...I mean, there's no one around." He still sounded confused, and that was so Angel-like she had to believe him once and for all. "Are you...umn...is something wrong?" Yet another pause. "Other than the obvious."

She couldn't talk anymore. Either he was evil and tricking her, or not evil and--it came to Willow suddenly--just as geeky and socially awkward as she was, only with better clothes. Whichever it was just didn't seem to matter. Willow let her head fall against the leather upholstery again, shut her eyes and sank into total indifference.

Somewhere a lifetime away she could hear Angel shuffling his feet, then clicking the door-lock button up-down, up-down about a million times.

Stop, Willow thought. Stop it. But she didn't say anything.

Finally he bent over her again, his arms sliding under her shoulders and the crooks of her knees, lifting her. It felt weird, to lie against a chest that was so still--no heartbeat, no living, breathing lungs. The coldness of his skin, through his silk shirt, seemed to suck the last little warmth out of her, and for just a minute Willow's fear sparked again.

"It's okay, it's okay," he crooned then there was a weird feeling, like flying, a brief scramble and the soft creak of roof tiles under Angel's shoes. A second later and he'd brought her someplace indoors. A second after that, Willow found herself on a bed, blue-striped ticking just below her slitted eyes, fabric that smelled like some kind of spray-on freshener. Febreze, maybe.

Angel sat beside her, the bedsprings not swaying nearly as much as they should have, considering his size.

"I guess I should have..." Another of those long Angel pauses. "Made the bed?"

"Doesn't matter," Willow told the mattress.

"Oh. I've never..." Yet another silence. "I mean, you're not usually..."

"Evil?" Willow couldn't help but ask him.

"Yes. I mean, no. That is--" There was a space where anyone else would have taken a long, steadying breath. "You were always so...perky. It was cute. Endearing."

"Not so much of the dearness now, huh?"

"Not so much, " Angel agreed. "I--I guess I miss that. About you."

"I can't pretend."

His hand touched lightly, hesitantly, on her hair--hair which, Willow could tell, wasn't all long and silky anymore. "I never knew you were jealous of her," Angel added, just as softly. "I figured Buffy had her thing, and you..."

"Were happy to follow along in the Buffy Pride Parade? Would you be?"

Angel thought about that a long time. "Yeah," he said at last. "Yeah, I guess I would be."

Angel lay down beside her on the bed, rubbing Willow's back with that same soft touch, one that confused her and made her feel comforted at the same time. She didn't want to feel that way, and she told herself it was all lies, and that she didn't deserve it, any of it, even if it was the truth. But then Angel was speaking to her again, so quietly she couldn't make out any real words, only a gentle murmur, like the sound water makes against the bottom of a boat, lulling her into sleep.

Xander held his breath, simultaneously hypnotized by the light show going on in front of him and too scared to moved so much as a toe. It hit him that Mothra's bugvision must have been drastically different from his own, because after a few more luminous flutters, the wings folded up again, as their owner resumed its gently-swaying slumbers.

Slowly, Xander finally allowed himself to let out the breath it felt like he'd been holding forever. Actual movement still didn't seem possible. Except his eyes. What harm could there be in moving those?

Cautiously, as if the monster might be able to hear, he shifted his eyeballs left, then right.

Four empty pink strings dangled from the ceiling like gummy stalactites. Closer was his own ripped-up shroud, the end of one sneaker-lace trailing forlornly from its side. Beyond that, ten full sacks hung, their occupants still with either terror or actual unconsciousness.

Xander tried to remember how many people had been on the bus with him. It hadn't been crowded--at least he didn't think so--but he could have sworn there were more than fourteen total. Or maybe not. The truth was, back then--which seemed like a thousand years before--he hadn't been up to noticing much of anything. Now, he had a feeling his life might depend on how well he paid attention.

Which meant he, and probably all of these other people, were doomed. Now there was a cheery thought.

Still, Xander couldn't quite help but laugh, in a kind of noiseless, motionless way. He was being terrorized by a butterfly. Okay, a big butterfly, but still...

There was no way in hell he'd ever be able to make this adventure sound anything but lame when he got back home.

Xander stopped, surprised at himself. Back home? Since when did he have any intention of heading back to Sunnydale?

Since always, it came to him. Despite all his intentions to the contrary, he knew that he would go back. Maybe he'd leave afterward, maybe even join the army...or something. Only, sneaking off the way he had, that added whole new layers of lameness to all the ones he already had going. The Scoobies might be a thing of the past, but he at least owed Buffy and "I'm sorry" and "goodbye" in person, not just some pathetic note shoved under a door.

And when they had a wake or memorial service or whatever for Giles, it was only right that he be there--not because of the guilt, to feel everything he'd done or hadn't done like stakes through his heart--but because Buffy shouldn't have to face all that alone. She deserved to have someone who understood there beside her, even if it was only Xander, King of Cretins.

Xander squeezed his lids shut tight, feeling that pressure behind his eyeballs that meant he was really, really about to cry again. And he didn't ever, ever, want to cry again.

Instead, he forced himself to move, wishing, just once, for stealth-guy abilities to take the place of his normal klutziness. "You're Wolverine," he told himself. "Silent. Strong. Deadly." Only he felt more like Peter Parker. Pre-atomic spider bite. The overwhelming Bubbliciousness of the air didn't help, either, since it made him both spacey and light-headed. And speaking of light, whatever brightness there had been inside the cave seemed to be fading. In fact, Mothra appeared to have folded in even tighter on itself, it bug-body casting a kind of silver-gray glowiness, like a lamp made of pencil lead, that did nothing for the overall visibility of his surroundings.

Xander glanced around, hoping for inspiration. What he needed was a tool. Men used tools--and overlook the double meaning there, please, this was no time for bad jokes at his expense. He bent over, grubbing through the loose rocks and debris on the cave floor in search of something, anything, useful. Half a dozen finger-cuts later, he finally found something of roughly caveman knife-shape.

"Me Xander," he muttered under his breath. "Me rescue. Ugh."

Ugh was right. Hardly daring to think, he turned to the nearest of the bubblegum bags. It was big and lumpy and--pretty much as he expected--just as thick and sticky as his own had been. At least his improvised knife managed to saw through some of the gumminess, and of course it helped, this time, to be outside instead of in.

About ten minutes into his rescue effort, the bag's occupant woke up with a jerk that made her prison bounce and sway on its tether--the knife had jumped off a particularly rubbery section of cocoon and stabbed all the way through before Xander could get it under control again. Muted swearing came from inside, and a pair of too-wide gray eyes glared out at him from one of the bigger holes he'd managed to cut..

"Sorry," Xander muttered. "Sorry."

A hand appeared next at the opening--a woman's hand, he guessed, since it was lots smaller than his own, and less knuckley, with long, tapered nails polished dark red.

"Push," Xander whispered. "You know--stretch out the gum." He kept cutting, praying silently for no more caveman cutting accidents.

Obviously, the realities of their situation hit the woman inside the bag a lot faster than they'd hit him. As Xander sawed and pulled the woman inside pushed, giving it what had to be pretty much everything she had, until all at once one whole side of the cocoon gave way, dumping her on top of him in a tangle of arms and legs and pink gum.

Even trying to be as quiet as they could getting unglued again, Xander was in an agony of apprehension, thinking Mothra must hear them this time, because their version of quiet was so very much not.

Only, nothing happened. But the time they finally managed to disengage themselves and scramble to their feet, the monster butterfly still hadn't moved, or shown any other sign of alarm.

The woman, who was short but athletic-looking, in a way that reminded Xander of every woman gym-teacher he'd ever known (except for the one with the chest hair, but that was a different story) stretched a little to get out the kinks of having been trapped inside a small, sticky bag for an indefinite period of time, then stood looking up at him, her expression clearly asking, "What next?"

Xander stared back at her, feeling glazed and stupid. He'd rescued her, what else did the woman want? At last (after what was probably no more than five seconds) he got tired of the staring contest and passed her his rock, returning to the cave floor in hopes of finding something similar. His eventual replacement didn't quite share the perfect caveman knifeness of his original choice, but beggars couldn't exactly be choosers, so it would have to do.

And, once again, there he was, a frightened guy with a rock.

He turned to yet another cocoon, starting the process of sawing and stretching the thick rubbery fibers , trying to strike some sort of balance between haste and not slice-n-dicing the person inside. He'd gotten about halfway through the job--with no help whatsoever from the totally out-of-it occupant--when a strobe of blueness so intense it made Xander's optic nerves feel as if they were literally on fire flashed through the cave. Eyes streaming, he felt the rock slip through his suddenly-numbed fingers.

A pulse of sound too low to actually hear followed the brightness, the tone lingering on and on, throbbing in his head until Xander was sure the bones of his skull must be slowly vibrating apart. The non-sound grew as it reverberated off the cave walls, until he knew he was screaming, even though he couldn't hear himself--and even thought he knew screaming, at that moment, was the last thing he wanted to do. Hot wetness spurted from his nose and his ears and just when Xander knew he couldn't stand one minute more, it all stopped.

He picked himself up off the ground, his ears ringing like fourteen alarm clocks going off at once, his vision filled with swirly black dots and squiggles. Despite it all, he felt blindly over the cave floor, in a panic to find something he could use as a weapon before Mothra came for him--as Xander totally knew it would.

Only, what actually came toward him was the gym-teacherish woman he'd cut out of her cocoon, and she was grinning, even though her hands dripped with glowing blue goo--it was actually that glow that allowed him to see her face, and her expression, in that blue light, struck Xander as one of the scariest things he'd ever seen.

She kept smiling even as her lips moved, saying something to him that Xander was nowhere near being able to hear. Whatever lip-reading abilities he'd ever possessed also seemed to have gone south along with his hearing, so that all he could do was stare at her, mouth open, Idiot Jed to the Nth degree.

Then in a flash nothing like the one that had temporarily blinded him, the truth dawned: she'd killed it. No hesitation, no fear, she'd just seen what had to be done and gone for it. Death to Mothra.

He himself, of course, had been too utterly chickenshit to even consider the possibility, or for the thought to even cross his tiny brain. What was he, after all, but a follower--Buffy's follower, her groupie--and content to be so, until it had whittled away whatever teeny capability he'd ever possessed for acting on his own.

Was that the real reason he planned to go back to Sunnydale? Xander wondered. So he'd have someone to tell him what to do again?

He sank down on the floor with his head in his hands. Nice. Very nice. Like he'd needed something else to make himself feel more pathetic.

"What?" the woman asked. Xander could lip-read that, at least.

"Nothing," he answered. Which more or less summed up his whole existence. "Nothing."