"I talked about her, didn't I?"

"Yes."

"What else did I do?"

"You've already asked me that."

"So answer." She was starting to sound testy.

"As I said, nothing important."

"Fine, let me rephrase the question: what did I say about Faith?"

"You asked about the motivations behind my actions, why I would sacrifice you one way or another for her sake." It wasn't the entire truth, but he hoped it would be serve as enough of an answer for her.

It wasn't. "Did you give me an answer?"

He chose his words carefully. "I owed Faith a great deal, Buffy. In part because she risked her life to save Angel, and in part because I failed her as a Watcher. She'd worked too hard for redemption for me to put her in a situation where she had to kill someone she cared for, no matter what was at stake."

Buffy got up from the table and headed towards the hall. "I'll be back in a few hours."

• **

Her chest felt tight. It was one thing to suspect something, another to have it confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt. She'd been expendable, like she should have suspected when Faith had taken her place. No, not taken. Taken she could have dealt with. Been given. Faith had been given her place; Buffy had been expendable. It shouldn't hurt. Faith was dead; she didn't have any power over her anymore.

Which wasn't completely true. There was no final reckoning, no resolution. Faith would always be the one who'd been in everyone's good graces, because that's how she died. And of course, Buffy was stuck with the unvoiced resentment of those last few weeks. Every betrayal, every sacrifice she'd been expected to make with a smile, every minute she'd spent realizing that the choice she was being asked to make--death, de-Slayering, or Armageddon--wasn't really a choice so much as going with the lesser evil, all of it had been swallowed without a word when she saw Faith fall. At least now she could get rid of the survivor's guilt.

This wasn't helping. She needed to figure out something to do to take her mind off of it. Shopping. She had enough left in her account for a little retail therapy, as long as she kept the keyword little. Maybe a haircut. Definitely a haircut. And highlights. She was starting to look like a mouse with split ends.

She spent more than she should have on her hair, but the result was probably worth it. It was pretty amazing what lopping off a couple of inches could do improve a mood. Wandering around in crowds completely unmolested also helped.

For once, being completely alone didn't feel so bad. It didn't feel as good as it would have if she hadn't gone on a bender the night before, but she'd grown used to operating at less than one hundred percent. Besides, it was better than being cooped up in the house with Wesley, torturing herself by asking him questions when she didn't really want to hear the answers.

Unfortunately, the sun and the heat made her hangover worse, so she headed back home after lunch. With any luck, she'd be able to sneak back into her room without having to attempt interaction.

As usual, luck was in short supply. She made it up to her room without a problem, but Wesley was already there.

"I wanted to be certain you made it back safely," he explained. "About this morning--"

"Can we just not? Talk about it, that is. I'm kind of thinking I'd like to stay in avoidance-land for the rest of the day."

"You are the one who brought it up, Buffy."

"Much to my eternal regret, yes. And now I'm the one dropping it."

"I would have killed you."

This wasn't dropping it. This was picking it up, noticing it was pointy and knife-shaped, sticking it in her gut, and twisting it. "I see."

"Do you? I'm not telling you this to hurt you."

"Then why?"

"Because I need you to understand how far I'm prepared to go in order to help you." He sounded tired. "You have the rest of today and tomorrow before the spell wears off. Is there anyone in Los Angeles you would like to look up?"

"You mean like Angel." It didn't seem very likely that he'd be talking about her father. Angel was another subject she'd been hoping to avoid. It was almost a miracle that he hadn't come up before today.

"He'll know you're in town soon enough, if he doesn't already. He's more than able to protect himself, even if he didn't have the full weight of the Council protecting him." Funny how young he still sounded when he was being open an earnest.

The part of her that would have leapt at the chance to see Angel had taken a long time to die. She still felt its echoes at the suggestion, but it was just phantom pain. "No."

Wesley looked startled at her refusal. It was almost comical. "No?"

"I don't want him to see me like this. It's not that I'm ashamed, I just want him to have that memory of me so that someone does. I'm not the girl he knew anymore, and I miss her. I'd like to think she's alive somewhere."

She wasn't prepared for the agonized expression that crossed his face at her words, or the halting apology that went along with it. "Buffy, I'm so very sorry."

Nor was she prepared for her reaction to it, which was to reach up and cup the side of his cheek with her palm. "Don't be," she said softly. "It's not like it's a bad thing. Besides, I'm older than he is now." She frowned, looking at her hand, still pressed against his face. It felt too familiar. "This is something else I did, isn't it?"

He reached up and covered her hand with his own. "Yes."

• **

She was too warm, and he still hadn't sorted out any of what he'd realized the night before. If he had any sense, he'd push her hand away instead of holding it there. Instead, he found himself stroking the side of her hand with his thumb, watching in fascination as her lips parted slightly, her breath catching when he slipped through a slight gap to caress her palm.

It would be so very easy to let one thing lead to another; all he had to do was keep touching her. Very easy, and also completely unethical. Not that had stopped him in the past. Not with Lilah, nor with Faith.

"Why were you in my bed?" The sound was little more than a whisper.

"You had a nightmare." If he shifted his head just slightly to the left, he thought, his mouth would touch the base of her wrist. He tried it, and felt her pulse grow faster beneath his lips.

"I have nightmares all the time."

"I'm not in your room all the time." He was there now, though he should really be going, not sliding his hand down her arm, or slipping his other hand around her waist to pull her close to him, and certainly not bending to kiss lips parted in a slow, startled 'O'. Reluctantly, he lifted his head and released her.

Her dazed expression faded into panic and confusion. "I didn't--you didn't---we didn't--"

"No, we didn't. Even if you'd wanted to, you were in no fit state to consent to anything." He ran his hand through his hair with a sigh, wondering if he should say something more. "Regardless, Buffy, I am not a good man. I haven't been a good man for some time, if indeed I ever was. I want you remember that. I've committed horrible acts with the best of all possible intentions, and I bartered whatever remained of my soul when the Council was re-formed. Were I a better man, I would promise to stay as far away from you as is possible given that we're living in the same home."

"I know," she said quietly. "I kind of noticed you didn't promise that last bit."

"I can't."

The corners of her mouth quirked up for half a second, though her eyes remained serious. "I know that, too."

"You realize this means you should make every effort to stay away from me?"

Buffy shrugged. "I can't promise that, either."

It would be better if one of them could. If anything did happen, it was unlikely to end well. At the very best, it would end uncomfortably. He nodded. "I need to gather some books from my office. Take the phone with you if you go out."

The building was blessedly quiet, its air-conditioned confines smelling as comfortably sterile as always. He navigated through the various security checkpoints, going from badge to palm scan to retinal scan before reaching the sanctity of the Council offices.

Translation and interpretation of minor tomes and prophecies served as a welcome respite. Most of it was for the investment branch; they always wanted to know where and when demon risings and other mystical disasters would be occurring. The bulk of his work revolved more around saving or raising profit margins than saving the world. Not that there were that many apocalypses left to worry about these days.

He rather missed them.

Balance was all well and good, but it lacked a certain excitement. Of course, this did pay significantly better, and with somewhat less risk to life and limb. His head cleared, he unlocked the desk and drew out his notebooks. Half an hour layer, he had crossed out three more potential options because they each were a minor risk to the stability of the Slayer line, and one because of the risk to Buffy. The list was shrinking considerably, and it it hadn't been long to start out with. Monday he'd see if any of his contacts had possible leads.

The books he had come for were a floor up. He re-filed everything, locked up desk and office, and got into the elevator, punching the code for the thirteenth floor. Four people besides the occupant knew of its existence; Wesley was the only one of them with carte blanche access.

He blinked his eyes as he adjusted to the reduced light. "Hello, Angel."

• **

The problem with haircuts was that no matter how careful the stylist, little irritating bits of hair managed to work their way under your shirt. Buffy stared at her hair with regret while she ran the bath. She'd never be able to recreate the just-styled look. Not that anyone had noticed the difference.

She brushed off as much of the hair as she could before turning on the jets and slipping into the water. At least Wesley's townhouse was pretty nice. Cushy, even. Her last apartment hadn't even had a tub. Closing her eyes, she ducked her head beneath the surface, holding her breath for a three counts of ten before surfacing.

As she dried off, her eyes caught hold of something pale and pink shoved into a corner of the room; it looked suspiciously like her bra. Undressing was another thing she didn't remember doing. She sighed and collected it, her nose wrinkling at the scent of cigarette smoke that clung to the thing; hopefully, smoking wasn't one of the various vices she'd decided to experiment with during Buffy's Night Out.

She dressed quickly, pulling on t-shirt and a pair of sweats, and tried to decide what to do for the rest of the day. A few experimental stretches told her she wasn't quite ready to work out, and she'd had her fill of crowds for the day. She called her dad's number, leaving him a short message. Buffy didn't bother to leave a number. He hadn't even called back when Dawn died.

At loose ends, she wandered into the living room. She stood for a long time looking at the stack of books and notes on the coffee table. Technically, it was snooping, but if it was about her, it couldn't be too wrong. Well, it could, but she pushed that thought aside and started reading.

The arcane spell books in languages she couldn't even identify went to the floor as she spread out the various papers and piled the readable books in order of interest. Wesley's handwriting was a cramped mess, and his papers were filled with crossed-out lines and notes about notes. They were almost as unreadable as the spell books. Her head still hurt enough that she wasn't up to deciphering them, so she re-stacked them and opened the first book in her stack. Giles's diary, Vol. #1.

It wasn't anything she didn't already know. After all, she'd lived through everything he'd documented, so it was kind of like looking through a really embarrassing baby book. Even some of the earliest pages included mention of her sister. Pretty thorough monks.

She and Giles hadn't quite healed the breach between them before his death. Another one like Faith, stuck forever in what-if. Buffy flexed a hand, watching the tendons in her wrist move as she squeezed her fingers. Her muscles still looked the same, even if they didn't have the strength to take out anything more than a mid-sized human mugger. They wouldn't even have that if she hadn't kept training like her life depended on it, which it had.

Giles would be proud of her discipline.

The books contained no answers, just memories. She learned about the summer after her death, how Giles and Anya had somehow managed to order a coffin claiming it was for the Magic Box's Halloween display, and how Xander had come up with a headstone from out of town. Willow rebuilt the 'bot while Tara watched over Dawn and Buffy's body lay hidden in Spike's crypt, wrapped in plastic and surrounded by dry ice until they were able to bury her at the edge of the cemetery. Apparently, she had looked "serenely beautiful" in death, at least according to Giles. Well, that was something at least. She would have guessed she just looked dead.

Post-resurrection, the entries grew increasingly sporadic. A few pages where he worried about her recovery, more than a few about his need to let her fight her own battles, an embarrassing entry from right before Giles took Willow back to England, focusing on the Spike situation and Giles's second thoughts about the wisdom of having left her alone and vulnerable.

The rest of the last volume was all about the potential Slayers and the First. Several months before the final battle, there was an entry about visiting something called Beljoxa's Eye and learning about the instability in the Slayer line. No wonder he hadn't looked surprised when Wesley had shown up in Sunnydale shortly after Faith, possible solution in hand. The entries where he agonized about possibly having to kill her to fix things explained both how weirdly he'd acted those last few months and his insistence that she go along with Wesley's plan.

She wondered if Wesley had read it yet. If he hadn't tried to save Faith from having to kill her, Giles would have done the deed, the mystical juju surrounding the Slayer would have mended, and Faith would have been fine. No gory death, no additional weight on her conscience. She looked at his notes. Nothing beyond the second-to-last volume, the one with all the burial and resurrection details. Good. Bad enough that she knew. Carefully, she put everything else back the way it had been, and took the last volume up to her room, stuffing it under the mattress until she could figure out what to do with it.

Oooh Plei-- I like this, a lot.

I've been going through it tonight and revising--polishing some things, moving things around.

First chance I've had to really look at it since I got back.

Now I just have to get back to where I was at and finish writing this.

and finish writing this.

Definitely a good plan.

Oh, my, that is really lovely.

Wonderful.

No, that's wrong. This story is not full of wonder, although it fills me with wonder at your logical extrapolation of a plotline these characters might take, given a certain set of circumstances and a given impetus.

So, how about, "Of course. Certainly."

And thank you.

Dayum, Plei. Was this the one you were wondering about, in terms of plotty? I don't see this is plotty. I just see it as damned fine.

Plei, I can't wait to see more.

deb, wow. And. Wow. I love you, man.