Xander woke to silence, bright light, and the discombobulating feeling that he'd overslept by hours and hours, but still didn't have the slightest idea what time it might be. For a minute more, he couldn't even remember where he was.

He'd been dreaming that he was a boy, sleeping in his old messy bed at his mom and dad's house. In the dream, he'd clamped a pair of headphones over his ears to drown out as much as he could of the nightly parental fightfest--a good enough idea, in theory, but not one that had ever really worked. Hundreds of times he'd wished his dad came with a volume control. Or better yet, an off switch.

Every morning of his teen years Xander woke up with a sudden, frantic certainty that something was coming to get him, or that he'd be late for school--equal horrors, with Principal Snyder running the show. Ever morning he'd tear off the headphones and be shocked at the thick, dead, morning-after stillness all around him, and for a minute he'd wish for...

"For what?" he asked himself, knowing that beneath the secret depths of his own denial the answer could only be, "for nothing"--nothing to fear, no responsibility, no tough choices. Thirty years gone by, and he hadn't really changed all that much. Cordelia had been right, he still didn't have anything to teach except advanced loser-being. One thing was for sure, though: he neded to pull himself together or he wouldn't be any good to Giles or anyone. The dreams meant nothing. He didn't go to school, hadn't been in that old house in Sunnydale for more than thirty years, and furthermore didn't even have any particular real-life deadlines to meet. Even the screenplay he'd been so stuck on the night before wasn't due in for another month. He had nothing to stress about.

Xander groaned and rolled over, kicking back the heavy down comforter. The chill struck right through to his bones, bringing with it a foggy dampness that let him know for sure that he was in England. Outside, it wasn't even sunny after all, the brightness he'd noticed had just been daylight reflected off the ever-present winter mist.

God, they should have moved to London years ago--at least they might have found some decent weather there, and some relief from this isolation. People to see, things to do.

The truth was, though, that Xander liked it in Back-of-beyond Cornwall. The isolation had come to suit him, even though he didn't like to admit it. Really, ever since the thing with the Hellmouth, closing the Hellmouth, city life made him want to bolt and hide. Give Giles his books, and he could be happy anywhere, city or country. It had been Xander himself who chose this town, this house by the sea, so far from anyplace that passed for civilization.

He'd never admit it, but the isolation made him feel comfortable--unlike the city where any face you saw, any person you got close to could be so different from what he or she seemed. Vampires, demons, monsters everywhere, and you couldn't always tell. After a while, you started seeing a monster in every face you encountered. The people who called him an eccentric, or a recluse, didn't know the half of it.

Xander shook his head violently and rolled out of bed. Sometime in the night he'd wound his flannel sheet into a corkscrew and knocked half his pillows to the floor. Giles wasn't the only one who suffered from bad dreams, and more than once in the past he'd woken up to a soft knock on his door and a quiet voice calling out to him, "Xander, are you all right?" Now and then, until recently, he'd even come to, soaked in sweat, to find the bedside lamp switched on and Giles sitting beside him.

Always, the older man would say, "I couldn't sleep, Xander. Thought I'd see if you were awake as well."

Xander always took that for what it was: an act of kindness.

What the hell time was it, anyway? Xander yawned violently, his jaw creaking, stretched until his spine popped and ran a hand over his stubble. Its thickness still tended to surprise him. Sometimes he swore he had to be half-werewolf.

But to think that reminded him of Oz, the last time he'd seen the man who'd been first an outsider, then his rival, and finally his best friend. The thought made him stop, frozen, trying desperately to think of something, anything, else that would push that particular image from his head.

It wouldn't go; it never did. The movie always had to run itself out, all the way to the bitter end: Oz's eyes, the only part of him, beneath the burns, that could still be recognized, fading from animal to human. Those human eyes pleading with him, Do it, man. Do it now.

That had been what Oz wanted, for him to do the deed before Will woke up. For Xander to kill him quickly before Willow could see.

Oz's ruined fingers, still clawed, had bitten into Xander's skin, and Xander still carried the scar, four puckered marks on his forearm. Those marks, and the two-inch white line on his shoulder were his only souvenirs of a night that took Anya and Oz away from them, and nearly killed everyone else. Even then, they hadn't seemed like a high enough price to pay. They never would.

Please, Oz's eyes begged him, and so Xander had done it, and told himself he'd committed the act for his friend, to save Oz from further suffering, a lingering death surrounded by strangers and machines that would keep him alive long after his body knew it was ready to go. At the time, Xander believed in his own motives, that he'd granted Oz that last request to save him pain, and to save Willow the agony of watching that pain.

Only later...

Only later, because it wasn't in him not to doubt his own motives, Xander hadn't been quite sure, not quite convinced of his own purity. It came to him, in one deadly instant, that this might be exactly the thing the priests warned against, in his Catholic boyhood all those years before: that he might, in some secret, hidden, conscienceless part of himself, have coveted his neighbor's wife, and seen Oz's death as a way of making Willow his own.

More than anything else--monsters, demons, vamps, whatever--he'd always feared loneliness, drifting alone through a world that saw only his surface geekiness and his abrasive wit, not any of the stuff that lay beneath it. Willow had always been his shield, his protector, he could live without anything, but not without her.

Except she'd left him. In the end, just like his dad always said, he hadn't mattered at all.

That moment of doubt had grown into a wave of guilt almost terrible enough to sweep everything he'd built for himself: his career, his health, his self-respect. For a fortunately brief time, it turned him into a paler shadow of his dad, not quite the violent, out-of-control drunk, but close enough that Xander would have just as soon have forgotten those times. Anyone but Buffy and Giles would have written him off, dumped him like the useless wreck he was. God knew he'd tried hard enough to make them do it.

That they hadn't was possibly the greatest wonder of his life--no matter what he'd done, it was never horrible enough to make them stop loving him. Even when he hated himself so bad it added up to loathing, they'd never stopped, and that loyalty had always been something that filled him with confusion and gratitude. He owed them, owed them big time.

"Yeah, and this is how you pay them back," Xander's inner voice sneered.

"Yup, that's me," he muttered back, aloud, stooping to retrieve the wind-up alarm clock he'd somehow managed to knock to the floor during the night. The thing ticked loud enough to wake the dead, but it wasn't ticking now. 10:30? How had it gotten to be 10:30? Or later, since the works had obviously stopped.

A spike of guilt stabbed through him. As tired as he'd been, what if Giles had had one of his bad nights? What if he'd been waiting patiently for Xander's help? He never called out, never complained or made a noise, even at his worst--and he tended to wake up early.

How many hours might he have been lying alone, in silent pain?

You sack of shit, Xander told himself, and padded stocking-footed down the narrow stairs, then along the hall to the small room that was once Giles's study. Just as he did every morning, he rapped on the dark-varnished door, hoping to hear the soft, answering, "Yes?" that greeted him on good, or even not-so-good mornings.

On the better days he'd find Giles sitting by the window, glasses on, reading from one of his moldy books. On the not-so-good days, the glasses would still be in their case on the nightstand, but Giles would still have a book in his hand, like some kind of talisman to ward away pain. Then Giles's eyes would seek Xander's and he'd give that little half-smile that said, "Let's not make any sort of fuss about this, shall we?"

That was Giles to a "t": everything done with British understatement. Sometimes it drove Xander crazy. Other times he understood perfectly.

On the worst days, Giles's gaze would be far away, his face a little too still. After he'd done what he could to make the older man comfortable, Xander would pull up a chair and sit quietly by the bed, listening to the labored rhythm of Giles's breathing, knowing in an instant if he got better or worse. Sometimes Xander found himself reaching out to take his old friend's hand, wishing he could make the coldness warm again. They'd never talk during those times, but the once-powerful fingers would tighten slightly around his, in a way Xander knew Giles meant as reassuring.

I'm still here, he meant to say. I won't leave you, son, until you're ready.

Xander didn't think he'd ever feel ready. Selfish as that was, he didn't think he ever could.

Xander shook himself, realizing that he hadn't gotten an answer to his knock. He hit the door again, harder, another spike of panic stabbing through him.

"Giles!" he yelled. "Giles!" Giles HAD been bad last night, maybe worse than he'd let on, or Xander suspected, and he'd made that joke, that dumb, big-mouthed joke about finding ...about finding him...

Xander touched the doorknob but couldn't turn it, couldn't for the life of him take the conscious action of closing his hand around the brass knob, twisting it, pushing the door open. He couldn't even really remember, at that moment, how a doorknob worked. Instead he slumped against the panel, shaking, suddenly unable to find his own breath.

Now, that would be irony--men his age died of heart-attacks every day. Funny if he...

Somehow, the door stood open, and he looked in on the small, shadowy book-lined room with the empty bed in its center. The neatly made, empty bed.

"Giles," he breathed. "Giles, don't you EVER scare me like that." But, of course, there wasn't anyone to hear him.

Which brought up the question of, where had Giles gone? It wasn't like he'd be taking a brisk walk into town, or going for a little spin in Xander's convertible--and the house just wasn't that big, it took Xander all of two minutes to search it.

He was getting ready to panic again when a flash of something dark through the front windows caught his vision. Coatless, still without shoes, Xander hurried down the front walk to the gate, where Giles stood in his heavy black coat, leaning on the gate post, his breath making only a slight cloud of steam in the air.

Xander stood behind him, totally at a loss as to what to say, his own breath coming out in huge white billows.

Giles hadn't heard him come up, and Xander waited a few seconds for his heart to slow down again, and for his voice, hopefully, to come out halfway normal.

"Waiting for the mail, Giles?" he asked.

Giles turned slowly, and Xander noted how tired he looked, how his skin looked grayer than usual--though whether that was with the bitterness of the cold or the lack of oxygen hitting his blood, Xander couldn't tell.

"I thought..." he said softly. "That is..." Giles ducked his head, looking lost and, for the first time ever, truly old. "It must have been a dream, I suppose, Xander. But I truly thought I should find her here."

"Find who?" Xander took Giles's arm, feeling the taller man lean against him slightly. "This wasn't the best idea ever, you know? You're gonna make yourself worse."

"I truly..." Giles paused, his voice faint, his breath a harsh rasp.

Xander slipped an arm around his back. "Easy now. Let's get you inside and warm you up. You'll feel better."

"Willow," Giles breathed, in a voice of pure despair, and Xander felt a flash of anger, not against the old friend who stood beside him, but against the woman he'd never really stopped loving, would never be ABLE to stop loving, in nine million complicated ways, for as long as he lived.

"She's not coming, man," he answered, almost yelling, not meaning to sound mad, not at Giles, but unable to keep the roughness out of his voice. "I told you she wouldn't. I TOLD you. Forget about her, Giles. She's forgotten us."

But, again, something caught his eye--not black this time, but red. Red hair, barely visible through the fog. A figure dressed in black, as Giles was, but so small and slight it might have been the ghost of a child in deep mourning. Her voice, when it carried to him, was a ghost's voice too, burdened with loss and fear and regret. "No!" she called. "No...please...I didn't..."

Giles heard, and must have believed long before Xander was able to make himself do so. His bowed head snapped up again, and he turned. "Willow?"

"I know you can't..." She moved closer, her tiny hands clinging to the gate. "I know you can't forgive...I know we can't be..." She was crying, choking on her tears, her body shaking with them. "But please...please...."

"Willow," Giles said, in something almost exactly like his old, familiar, comforting voice. "Willow, my dearest girl, won't you please come in?"

"Buffy," Giles asked inwardly, "What on earth do I do now? What can I possibly say to help her--actually, to help them?" He often spoke to his late wife so, and would have given every last moment that remained of his life to hear her answer, and yet the fact that she could not do so no longer tortured him as it once had.

Still, his heart hurt him--and not with the familiar, physical ache he'd become accustomed to, over the last months and, yes, even the last years. The origin of this particular pain, it struck him, must be spiritual, born of the longings of the soul--the desire for goodness, and purity, and love. The nostalgia for innocence lost.

Giles could scarcely recall the loss of his own innocence. The events that led up to that event he'd remember, no doubt, for as long as he drew breath. Certainly, he would never stop hearing the whispers of his lost sisters, their ghostly breath like a cold breeze against his cheek as they told him what would come to him, and what he must do. Neither would he ever lose the image of his father's face--which was, truly, not his father's face at all but something so alien, and so evil, that even after fifty years of battling just such monstrosities his mind could scarcely encompass the viciousness of its nature. What he could not bring back, however, was the way he'd felt before that night. Neither could he recall much of his emotions after, except for a bone-aching weight of a despair too great to be borne by a ten-year-old boy. Nearly too heavy a burden, in fact, to be carried by an old man.

Willow, in her innocence, though...ah, that was another story. The image of her as he'd first seen her also existed with perfect clarity within him, a balance to those older, darker memories. How carefully she'd made her way down the stairs of the long-destroyed library, her slender arms supporting a veritable mountain of books as the moss-green, guileless eyes he'd begun to love almost instantly gazed at him over the top. At a glance, he'd taken in her pristine white tights, her white schoolgirl blouse, the soft little mouse-grey skirt and the green Alice-band holding back her long red hair--and something else, something he'd only felt for a handful of people in his forty years on earth.

"Let me help you?" Giles had said to her, surprising himself. He'd known well enough she was not the one he'd been sent for, not his Slayer, and yet the simple offer had contained so much more than mere chivalry, as if in that moment like had called to like, and he'd known Willow for what she must be: his comrade-in-arms, his daughter, his friend--all of those together, and more, a feeling of kinship too complex to express itself in ordinary terms.

"Surely they're far too heavy for you." His large, rough hands had brushed Willow's small, smooth ones as he relieved her of the load, and she'd given a tiny gasp, her soft lips parting, her eyes momentarily startled. She'd appeared no more than twelve years of age--far too young, and too tender, to move amongst the rough-and-tumble crowd he already come to regard with something approaching horror during his few short days at Sunnydale High.

"I...umn..." Willow's face had broken into the most radiant of smiles, and Giles knew then that he must love her, that she could never be someone he allowed to slip from his life unnoticed.

"Let me help you," he said to her softly, now, struggling to see her clearly through the obscuring Cornish mist, and Willow's head jerked up, her eyes once more startled, but no longer innocent. His heart panged again to see them so shadowed, so wary, so wounded behind the temporary brightness of her tears.

Willow wore dark, heavy clothes that did not suit her: trousers and a large MacIntosh that gave her, more than anything, the appearance of a child playing dress-up, engulfed in the garments of an adult three times her size. The more he watched, the more the hard, closed-off, world-weary woman faded away, until only the old Willow looked out at him from her eyes: tender, vulnerable, a little lost.

Her expression gave him strength to walk to her, to reach over the gate and take her familiar, loved face between his hands, brushing the chill moisture from her cheeks with his thumbs. "Willow, don't weep." Giles stooped to kiss her soft brow. "You're home now, love, there's no need for tears."

She only wept the harder, pressing her slight body with almost punishing force against the wooden slats. Giles glanced back over his shoulder, seeking Xander's help, but the younger man stood stock-still, at a distance, his face grim, set, shock-white. Despite the cold, he'd worn no coat and, oddly enough, no shoes.

Giles gave his numb fingers the task of working the latch, and after three or more tries they at last deigned to obey. The gate swung inward, carrying Willow with it, straight into his arms. He held her there with a firmness he'd no longer known he possessed, sheltering her, large Mac and all, within the folds of his greatcoat, within the circle of his arms.

He would be strong for her. He would--and as her face burrowed against his chest, her uncontrolled tears soaking first his waistcoat, then his shirt, he let her feel the power of his embrace. He stroked her soft hair and murmured to her, comforting her in the way he'd longed to comfort her when she was sixteen, although he'd been far too reserved, far too stuffy, terrified to show any sign of his affection.

He'd been frightened of losing them, Giles recalled, even more frightened of being misunderstood, and so he'd kept them all at arm's length, because the alternative made him feel exposed and vulnerable. He'd feared that they would find him ridiculous, his affection for them meaningless and unsought--when all the time they had loved him, just as he loved them..

So much time wasted. So many years.

Silly man, Giles thought. Foolish man. He laughed softly, causing Willow to raise her face and regard him. Slight lines radiated from the corners of her eyes, and her face was that of a woman who'd known weariness, and almost unbearable pain--and yet, for all that, Willow seemed him remarkably unchanged.

Giles stooped again, and kissed her cheek, tenderly. "My dearest Willow," he said quietly, "I'm so very glad you've come home to us."

"I--" she began, quite as tongue-tied as she'd been on that long-ago day in the library.

"This is your home, Willow," Giles added, reading the sadness in her expression, and a reserve so deep she might have caught it from his old self, as one might catch some sort of incapacitating disease.. "You know that it is."

Willow's eyes strayed to Xander and, after a moment's pause, Giles dared to follow her look

Keeping one arm round her shoulders, he reached out to the younger man. "Come now, let's inside. No sense standing out here in all this fog, is there?"

Xander shook himself like someone coming out of a nightmare. "No," he replied, in a soft, flat voice. "No sense. No sense at all."