This is still slightly rough, and will probably be padded in and polished in places, but reactions would be welcome.

Plei, this is *totally your fault*.

__________________

Re-education

Wesley raised his hand to knock on the door, but paused and sniffed. The faint smell of smoke alarmed him slightly, and he considered the merits of breaking down the door. On one hand, he was dealing with Buffy Summers, a Slayer who had managed to not only survive, but also avert several apocalypses. On the other, dying in a house fire would be a fairly ignominious way for her to go. He compromised and tried the door handle. It opened at his touch.

One quick glance reassured him that the house was not in immediate danger of burning to its foundation. The smoke seemed to originate from the kitchen.

"Buffy?"

"In here!"

He took a cautious step into the kitchen. No visible fire. The only symptoms seemed to be a bowl filled with some treacly mixture and…a charred batch of cookies.

Buffy rose into sight from her crouch by the oven. "Martha Stewart? A way bigger liar than her mild-mannered appearance would suggest."

"Yes, well, that would explain her recent troubles with the government."

"Oh, yeah," Buffy said. "I forgot about that. But this parchment paper stuff is supposed to be all magical and non-sticky and give me perfect cookies." She looked at the sad mess sitting on the counter. "These are not perfect cookies. These are totally imperfect cookies."

"Were you on a quest for the perfect cookies?"

She shrugged. "Spend a year in a house full of young girls, someone's got to learn how to cook. We got really tired of pizza, and it was eating up the food budget. I can make pretty decent spaghetti now. Turkey casserole. Tacos. So yeah, I was aiming for something in the dessert genre."

"The potential Slayers still live here, then?"

It seemed as if Buffy flinched, and he wondered belatedly whether he should have treated the subject with more care. "Most of the ones that survived. We had one local girl who went back to her parents, and a couple others took off right after the battle."

"And they intend to stay? Or, rather, you intend to let them?"

"That's actually why I called you. But you could have just called me back. You didn't have to drive up here. Phones do work two ways."

"To be honest, I wasn't sorry for an excuse to leave Los Angeles for a while." Too many bad memories, too many places fraught with some sort of significance.

By the looks of her, Buffy didn't need any further explanation. "Let's go sit in the living room. It's kind of toxic in here, with the smoke." She reached into a cupboard and pulled out a blue bag. "Chips Ahoy. A time-honored Summers tradition from before the Days of Cooking."

He surprised himself by pointing out, "We'll need milk, of course."

She raised an eyebrow at him, but merely said, "Of course." Milk was poured into two large tumblers, and they moved into the living room, Buffy pausing along the way to open a window.

He set his milk down on the coffee table and sat on the couch. Buffy curled up on the opposite ends, her legs tucked under her. She'd changed in so many ways since he'd last seen her, but she still looked like the eighteen year-old who'd given him hell. Not that he could blame her for her truculence in those days. He'd changed quite a lot himself, in ways both physical and emotional.

"How's Angel?" she said, fingers pulling apart a cookie and extracting the chips.

"He's well, all things considered."

"His son?"

"They'll probably never be close, but neither one of them's trying to kill the other at the moment, which is a vast improvement over the status quo."

She looked up at him. "I'm sorry about Cordy. I know you guys were friends."

There were several possible responses, most of which involved blood and regrets, but he simply said, "Yes, we were," and left it at that. He broke a cookie in half and dunked it in his milk, marveling at the way that the two went so well together. A simple pleasure, but he'd learned that simple pleasures were really all one could depend on.

Buffy's laugh surprised him. "What?" he mumbled, mouth still full of cookie.

"I never thought I'd see you sitting on my couch, shoveling cookies into your mouth."

He swallowed. "I beg your pardon, I am not shoveling. Besides, the cookies were your idea."

"Cookies make everything better. We've gone through about a million chips this year."

"I wish I'd known that. We could have used some cookies ourselves."

"Dueling apocalypses. Not much fun."

"No," he agreed, and closed off that avenue of conversation. Soon enough they'd run out of things to discuss, but he thought he'd prefer sitting in silence to discussing how he'd spent the past year any further.

He looked around the living room. It bore no signs of the recent battle he knew had taken place, no indication that a man, a vampire, and five young girls had died within its walls.

He realized that he didn't particularly want to discuss that topic either. "Why did you call?" He'd gotten a message on his answering machine with no warning and few details.

"It's about the girls. The potentials. I want to set up a school."

He blinked, opened his mouth, thought better of it, and considered the idea for a moment. Buffy sat silently while he thought, still playing with her cookie and exuding a quiet confidence. She certainly had changed.

"Because the Council is gone?" he asked.

She nodded. "We hear that someone's trying to rebuild it, but that'll take years, and the potentials still need to be trained and protected."

"And how do you plan to fund this school?"

"I got a call from a lawyer a few weeks ago. Except he called himself a 'solicitor'. Giles left everything he had to me." She tried to smile, and he remembered the days when he might have reached out to comfort her, however ineffectually.

"Anyway, the house next door is for sale. I guess my neighbors finally decided that living next to me wasn't such a good idea. If I buy it, we should have enough space to house and train everyone."

It was an audacious idea. "Who else would participate?"

"Willow can teach some basic magic -- nothing big, but some protection spells, stuff like that. Maybe more for the girls who don't get chosen and decide they want to become Watchers."

"Combat?"

"You're pretty much looking at her. Xander wants to help, but he's still adjusting to the whole one-eyed thing. It's been five months, and he hasn't stopped making Borg jokes." At his puzzled look, she added, "Don't ask."

"You realize that this is a vast undertaking. Can you really manage this school along with your slaying duties?"

"I've thought about it," she said. "This isn't just some whim. The more experienced girls can help with patrolling and general evil-fighting. You and Willow can work with the coven in Devon to identify new potentials old enough to bring here. And with what Giles left us, we've got enough to pay you a salary…for a while, at least."

"And to bring in new money?"

"Yeah, okay, I'm still working on that part. But I have ideas. The girls can work part-time and contribute to their room and board. We can give some martial arts classes -- there ought to be plenty of people in Sunnydale who could do with some self-defense lessons."

"And you think the state of California will allow you to run this institution?"

She shrugged. "We'll have to make sure the girls get their GED on, since I've got zero interest in running an actual high school. Other than that, Xander's all over the building permits and stuff, since he knows all about that."

He looked at her, at the animation and enthusiasm on her face. "You really want to do this."

"I really do."

He tried to picture himself in this role she'd assigned him. Being a Watcher again. Passing on the tenets he'd been taught by the Council, but with the freedom to temper them with compassion and common sense.

He rather thought Giles would have approved. And after all, what reason did he really have to go back to L.A.?

"Okay," he said.

"Really?" She seemed much more pleased than he'd expected, and he wondered if he'd underestimated her opinion of him or her need for help.

"Really," he replied, and reached for a celebratory cookie.

She smiled and grabbed a cookie for herself, crunching exuberantly into it and washing it down with the rest of her milk. When she set her glass down, he noticed a few stray cookie crumbs at the side of her mouth, and it was his turn to chuckle.

"You have cookie all over you."

She flushed. "God, I must look like a two year-old who can't feed herself." She lifted her hand to brush them away, and he found himself catching her wrist in the circle of his fingers.

"Not exactly," he said, placing his own glass on the table. Her skin was smooth and warm underneath the crumbs, and he regarded the sight of his thumb stroking her cheek with something that wasn't quite surprise.

Her eyes widened, but they met his without hesitation, and her smile didn't fade.

His stint in Sunnydale might prove more interesting than he'd first thought.

--End--

Dana, I'm ignoring your premise re: Giles as unproven speculation, and if it isn't don't you dare correct me.

Wesley with a milk mustache, mmmm.

Xander making Borg jokes. That's our heart-breaking boy.

Oh, yeah, forgot to mention that this is absolutely totally unspoiled. The only thing I know is what's aired.

Aww! Dana had me at

Buffy rose into sight from her crouch by the oven. "Martha Stewart? A way bigger liar than her mild-mannered appearance would suggest."

"Yes, well, that would explain her recent troubles with the government."

Plei, I just wrote Buffy/Wes. Did I mention how this is your fault?

Lalala.

Fault? There's fault here?

I see no fault.

Dana is a stone killer.

Fault and glorious fault. Whee! They really are a OTP, both dark and light, aren't they?