Part Eight

Giles put on as impassive a face as he could, and turned to face Buffy. She no longer wore the sunny smile and cheerful demeanor that had graced her beautiful face all last week, but she didn't look nearly as cold and detached as she had the day he told her he was leaving Sunnydale. Perhaps a vacation from her life had been a good thing for Buffy.

"So..." she drawled out.

Giles waited, but nothing else was forthcoming. It was up to him. "So..." he said, and then paused in confusion. He didn't find it any easier to say anything more meaningful than Buffy had. The situation was absurd. It had been so easy to talk to her before, when they didn't have their memories. So easy, so effortless, so, so addicting. Now it took everything he had not to run; conversation was quite beyond him.

Buffy's mouth opened a twice, but nothing came out. Just as he decided that it would be up to him after all, she abruptly asked, "You still leaving?"

"I missed my plane," he answered evasively.

She glared at him, and he had the grace to lower his eyes. Buffy snorted in irritation, and continued as if he hadn't spoken. "Do you still feel that leaving is the right thing to do?"

That was an interesting question, and Giles wasn't quite sure how to answer it. "I, I'm not sure," he said truthfully.

"What do you mean, you're not sure," Buffy demanded. "You're either going to split, or you're not. Which is it?"

Giles had gotten used to Buffy's gentle good humor over the past week, and their easy camaraderie. The sharp tone made him feel as if he had been slapped. He ran his hands through his hair and began pacing. "It's not that simple, Buffy. I told you before that I didn't want to go, and I still don't. But my desires don't count as much here as your needs."

"My needs," Buffy asked angrily. "What gives you the right to decide what I do and do not need?"

"The right of a friend? The right of somebody who cares about you?" Buffy glared at him, and he suddenly felt very tired. "Christ, Buffy, I don't know. All I know is that I don't want you to rely upon me so much that you stop trusting yourself. You need to know that you're strong mentally and psychically, not just physically. And I need you to know that. If I'm standing in your way, then I need to move."

Buffy growled, literally growled, and Giles fought down a thrill of fear. Perhaps it wasn't the best idea to mention strength to an angry Slayer. "So you're all about the self-sacrifice, huh Giles? And I suppose that a fun-filled trip back to Merry Olde England has nothing to do with this decision?"

Giles knew Buffy, and he knew that she only attacked when she felt threatened. So he swallowed his initial retort, and answered softly, "No trip is likely to be all that fun-filled if you're not there. Every place on earth is like purgatory, except the Hellmouth, where you are to be found." Buffy gawked at him, and Giles replayed his last speech in his head. How it sounded, and the implications it brought forth. "I, I didn't mean... What I meant to say was... um..."

The open confusion on Buffy's face suddenly disappeared, and was replaced by a carefully neutral look. "I get it. I mean, I understand what you meant. You meant you' as in you all,' as in all the Scoobies. Every place but the Hellmouth is hell because your family is here. I get it."

That actually had been what Giles meant when he spoke up, but as Buffy translated for him, he realized that it wasn't true. Not at all. It would be easy, oh so easy, to allow Buffy to continue to believe it, and for a moment he was tempted to do just that. But he couldn't. Not because he expected or even wanted to hear that he was more special to Buffy than her other friends, but because he couldn't permit that large of a falsehood to lie between them. "I love Willow and Xander. Very, very much. I am extremely fond of Dawn, Anya, and Tara. But Buffy, my life revolves around you. I stay when you need me to stay, and I go when you need me to go. But if you ask me what I want, well, I want to be with you."

Buffy was silent, and Giles wondered how big of a fool she thought him right now. "So let me get this straight. You want to stay with me; I want you to stay with me. You'll be miserable if you leave; I'll be miserable if you leave. But you'll break both of our hearts without a moment's hesitation if it's in my best interest."

"Buffy," he groaned. "You can't go on, depending upon me to run your life for you."

"Have I done that?" Giles scowled, so Buffy quickly added, "Recently? Have I asked you to make my decisions or clean up my messes all week?"

"No," Giles admitted, "but the past week was hardly indicative–"

"But it is," Buffy interrupted. "It's totally indicative. You said it yourself: spatula raisin."

"Spatula what?" Giles was used to Buffy's mangling of words, but this one had him stumped.

"Spatula raisin," she answered patiently. "Blank slate. Whatever we were like last week, is what we're really like."

"The term is tabula rasa." Giles gave her a sharp look. "Which you know perfectly well, as you were the first one to use it. I always suspected that you forgot names deliberately, just to an–"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Buffy interrupted. "And besides, you're changing the subject."

"Which is," he asked mildly.

"Tell me, Giles," Buffy began, her facial expression giving nothing away. "What were things like between us last week? What was I like?"

Giles had no desire to answer the first question, so he concentrated upon the second one instead. He took a moment to put his thoughts in order, and then said, "You were magnificent." He closed his eyes, so he wouldn't have to look at her during such a personal conversation. "You were strong, confident, dependable, witty, and wonderful. More importantly, you were happy. You were exactly like the girl I first met five years ago, but with a strong sense of responsibility and a commendable amount of maturity." He opened his eyes and stared intently into hers. "I enjoyed your company very much."

Buffy blushed. "That's nice to hear, but that isn't what I meant. Did I lean on you? Did I take you for granted?"

"No," Giles answered softly, "you didn't. You didn't need to. You were gloriously self-sufficient."

"So, now we know I can do it," Buffy declared. "I can stand on my own, and you can stay."

"Of course you can stand on your own," Giles snapped. "I never would have considered leaving if I hadn't known that to be true. The point is–"

"You don't have a point anymore!" Buffy scowled fiercely at him, and Giles prepared himself for the inevitable outcome. Buffy would yell at him, and then storm out. His resignation must have shown on his face, for Buffy's expression suddenly softened. "The point was that I didn't know that I could stand on my own. I know that now, and it makes a difference."

"How," he asked bluntly. "How does this knowledge change things?" Buffy looked thoughtful, and Giles began to hope. He could not afford to react to petulance, or pouts, or childishness, but logic and reason were different matters altogether. If she could rationally prove to him that she was strong and capable, then he could stay. And God, he longed to stay.

"I've been assuming that all I am, everything that makes me me, comes from my experiences," she began slowly. "I'm the girl who was Chosen near the end of her freshman year of high school. The girl who got expelled from her first high school and died during her sophomore year. The girl who gave her virginity to a vampire and was forced to kill her first love when she was seventeen. The girl who lost her mother and then her own life when she was twenty. The woman whose friends dragged her out of Heaven." Buffy's eyes lost some of their clarity at that last statement, and Giles felt the beginning of despair, all the more bitter for the hope that had been born moments before. Before he could say anything, however, she continued. "What I forgot, or maybe never realized, is that there is a core me, one that doesn't depend upon my experiences. Last week I met that core me, and I liked her."

"So did I," Giles admitted. "I also like you, however."

Buffy smiled. "Thanks for saying that, but I haven't deserved anybody's friendship for a while."

Giles felt a flush of anger flooding his system. "Don't say that, Buffy! It isn't true!"

"Isn't it," she asked bitterly. "I hid from you where I was; I hid it from all of you... except for Spike." Giles frowned when Buffy mentioned the blonde vampire, but held his tongue. "I hated the others for bringing me back, and I hated you and Dawn for being so damn happy about it. And I hated me most of all, for not being worthy of Heaven." This statement was too much for the Watcher, and he started to protest, but she shook her head. He fell silent, waiting for her to finish. "Spike told me that I came back wrong, and I believed him."

"That's rot," Giles grated out. "Utter bullshit, in fact."

Buffy cocked her head, and then continued on as if he hadn't said anything. "Yeah, it is, but I didn't know that until I saw what I could be like if I didn't remember Heaven." She took a deep breath, and stared at him intently. Giles knew that the next words out of her mouth would be the core of what she had been trying to say. "I totally believed that I didn't belong here, and that's why I was using you, Giles. I didn't want you to do things for me, I wanted you to live for me. I didn't think that I deserved to be alive, so I didn't want to put in the work that living entails. But that woman I was last week, she deserves to live. And she liked living. And that woman is in me, if I'm willing to look past my past and search her out." Giles had thought that Buffy had put all of her soul into her unwavering gaze, but he was mistaken. She suddenly turned up the intensity in her hazel eyes, and they trapped him. A mouse caught by a blonde cobra. "But Giles, I need help to do that."

"It's going to take time to get over your experiences," Giles said nervously. "I understand that. And if you are honestly willing to try, then I am more than willing to help you." Although he was still shaken by her passion, he gave her the sternest look he was capable of producing. "But Buffy, I can't live for you. I never should have started that habit, and I certainly can't continue it. You have got to take responsibility for yourself and for Dawn. I know that you can stand on your own, but I need to see you actually do it."

"I know that," Buffy said softly, finally dropping her gaze. "And I want to, stand on my own, I mean. Now I want to. After I died the first time, Cordy told me that I just needed to deal and move on. I thought she was a bitch for saying that, but maybe she was right. I was in Heaven, and now I'm not. But that doesn't mean that I can't find good things about my life right now. Joan, or Buffy, or whoever she was, she knew that. And now I know it too."

Giles watched her silently, wondering whether she meant what she was saying, or whether she was saying what she felt he needed to hear. She gave him a rueful grin, and in it he could see a whisper of the girl he had known that morning. And he suddenly knew, knew to the core of his soul, that everything would be all right. Buffy was never going to be her old self again, but with Giles' help, she would find a new self to be. Perhaps a better one. He smiled happily, and her grin slowly became more genuine, even as her eyes teared up. She didn't have to tell him that those were happy tears; he knew. Buffy was starting to heal, right now, right before his eyes. Unable to help himself, he opened his arms for a hug, and she dived into his embrace.

They stood that way for hours or perhaps only for a few seconds. Giles honestly didn't know, all he knew was that the sense of rightness he felt while holding Buffy seemed eternal. It was all he could do to keep from crying out when she released him and stepped back. Being British, he hid the maelstrom of his emotions behind a blush and a stammer. "Ah, yes. Quite. You're feeling better now, I take it?"

Buffy's smile was still happy, but now a trace of amusement crept in as well. "I'm fine. Better than fine, in fact. But I'm not done talking about the events of last week." Giles scrunched his forehead in confusion. What more was there to talk about? Buffy clearly read his thoughts, for she continued on, "Now that we settled the question of your leaving, we need to talk about the vibes that were going on between the two of us."

"I, I, I," Giles gulped, hoping the pause would get his stutter under control. "I, uh, don't know what you, you're talking about."

Giles thought that this denial might anger Buffy, but to his surprise, it made her smile seductively at him. "Don't you? Well, maybe it was just me then. Let me tell you what I was feeling, and what I'm still feeling now. That spell took away every memory I had of you being tweedy, and nerdy, as well as every one of me being a teenager and thinking anybody over thirty was impossibly old. And do you know what was left, once those memories were gone?" Giles shook his head mutely, unaccountably terrified of her answer. Her smirk did nothing to quell that fear. "Memory-less me thought you were the yummiest man on earth."

It was up to Giles to respond, but his mind was a complete blank. Time to try the tried and true, repeating what was said to one while searching for an appropriate response. And honestly, it wasn't that difficult to feign bewilderment. "Yum, um, did you say, yummy'?"

"Hm-mmm," Buffy purred sensuously. "Yummy. Definitely. Handsome, smart, adorable... just about perfect except for the annoying fact that you were totally taken. I would have jumped your bones days ago if it hadn't been for Anya, and as it was, I was starting to ask myself if it would really be so bad to break up somebody else's engagement." Giles gulped at her, and Buffy sidled in a little closer. "And now that I have all of memories back? I know for a fact that you are smart and adorable, but not taken at all. Plus, you're kind, loyal, and have a real talent for sarcasm. Best of all, now that the blinders are off I still think you're handsome. In fact, looking back, I can even recall a few occasions that you qualified as down-right sexy, though I didn't realize it at the time."

"Sex–sexy," he gasped out.

"A total babe," she affirmed. "So, would it be indecorous for me to ask you out?"

"Buffy, please, slow down," Giles begged.

"It's the word indecorous,' isn't it," Buffy asked with dancing eyes. "I mean, I would never go out with a guy who used that word myself, but I thought that it might be a bit of a turn-on for you."

Giles wanted to laugh with her, but he couldn't. This was too important. "Buffy," he groaned. "I--"

"I could always go with the old stand-by, I've got a thing, you've got a thing.' I didn't think that was quite your thing, but–"

"Buffy," he barked. She looked hurt, but at least she stopped babbling. Appalled that he would think that, Giles carefully modulated his voice to continue more softly, "Buffy. I am feeling quite overwhelmed at the moment. It wasn't so long ago that you compared me to your mother, and now you want us to go out on a date?"

Buffy wilted at that, and Giles felt guilty, but he couldn't back down on this. "I already apologized for that mom thing, but I can do it again if you want. I, I just thought that... It wasn't just me, was it? I mean, you were attracted to me too, when we were under Willow's spell, weren't you?"

Giles would have liked to lie to her, would have given anything to do so, in fact, but he couldn't. Heaven help him, but he couldn't. "No. It wasn't just you. I spent all week wanting you." He let out a short, humorless chuckle. "I should have enjoyed my time with Anya, she's a remarkable woman after all." Buffy scowled at that, which made him blush slightly. "But, but after we went to the police station to bail out Spike, after the first time I spent some time alone with you, you were all I could think of."

Buffy brightened at his admission. "Well, there you go then. When we weren't ourselves, I learned that I want you and you want me. What's the problem?"

What wasn't a problem? Giles sighed. "It isn't that easy, Buffy. Yes, we got along famously when we didn't know each other, but that doesn't just erase all of our past history."

"Why not," she asked simply. Giles gaped at her in confusion, and she continued, "Now that we know that we have major potential together, why shouldn't that wipe out the past?"

"It's not that easy, Buffy," Giles said gently. "I've hurt you, more than once."

"And I've hurt you," Buffy said unhappily. "Way more than once. I know. But Giles, that spell Willow did? It gave us a blank slate. A spatula raisin." Giles cocked an eyebrow at that, and she gave him a quick grin. "Why can't we keep our raisin, spatula and all? Start over, from scratch? See how we fit together."

Giles stared at her intently, trying to calculate the risks and dangers of ignoring six years of history and making a fresh start with Buffy. Was it even possible for him to forget that she was his Slayer, or for him to treat her just as an extraordinary young woman? The potential for disaster was impressively large, and the hazards were too many to count... and he found that he didn't give a flying fuck about those perils at all. He could count on his fingers the times that he had felt happiness within his grasp, but it had never been so close, so tangible before. This would be the defining moment for the rest of his life; if he didn't grab this chance, he would never stop regretting it. Giles cleared his throat, and made his decision. "Hello. I don't believe we've met. My name is Rupert Giles."

Buffy gave him a smile brighter than the sun, and he grinned back at her. "Hi. My name's Buffy Summers."

Giles held out his hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you Ms. Summers."

"Oh, please," she said. "Call me Buffy."

"If you like. In that case," Giles said, "you must call me Rupert."

Buffy wrinkled her nose in distaste. "Must I? I don't think that the name Rupert' really fits you. It's kind of a sissy name, don't you think?" She raked his body in a blatantly sexual manner. "Somehow, you just don't strike me as the sissy-type."

Giles pretended to look thoughtful at that, but the gleam in his eyes destroyed the illusion. "All of my closest friends call me Giles.' Something tells me that I would like it very much if you were to become a, uh, close friend."

Buffy grabbed his shirt, and tilted her head up to whisper in his ear. "How close of a friend are you looking for, Giles?"

He was almost overpowered by her nearness, and by his need to kiss her. But he didn't. He couldn't, not while Anya's indefinable scent still lingered somewhere on his skin. She deserved better from him, and he wanted more as well. There were only two relationships with his Slayer that he would ever consider: the one he had, or a permanent one. Since he was now in the process of destroying his old relationship, that left him with forever. Within that framework, he was in no particular hurry to taste her; he was a strong believer in taking the time to savor new experiences. So he smiled enigmatically at her and said, "Let's discuss that over dinner. Tell me, Buffy, how do you feel about Mexican?"

Buffy laughed, and grabbed his hand. Giles laughed too, as he turned out the lights in his store and opened the door. As they left the Magic Box, Buffy asked him, "So, at the police station? That was Spike?" Giles nodded, and she mused, "I wonder what happened to him."

Giles turned to her sharply, wondering whether the vampire would come between them this early in their new relationship. "Do you care?"

"Not particularly," Buffy admitted. "I mean, yeah, he's been a pretty good sounding board over the last few months, and I hope nothing bad has happened to him, but I'm not sure that I really care. If you're staying, then I think I nee--, um, I'd prefer to talk to you instead."

"I need to have you confide in me as well," Giles told her with a soft smile. She grinned, and Giles wondered what the future might hold in store for them. There were still many unresolved questions and complications remaining from the previous week, but Giles had a deep certainty in his soul that things would work out. He and Buffy had too many memories together--both good and bad--to ever have a true blank slate. But they could take the feelings that they already had for each other and take them in new directions. Not a true tabula rasa, but rather a spatula raisin. Giles grinned as he thought about Buffy's silly term and about the woman herself. Yes, a spatula raisin was just what all the Scoobies needed. For right now, however, this new start with Buffy was all he could possibly want for himself.

THE END