Be nice this is my first attempt at fic:

“I don’t have anything to offer them that you and the others can’t provide.”

“You’re a slayer. You can teach them things that the rest of us couldn’t begin to understand.”

“Faith’s a slayer.”

“That’s different. She doesn’t have the experiences you have. You have more to offer them.”

“I don’t think the girls would agree. They still don’t trust me.”

“Buffy, you were under tremendous pressure this past year. You weren’t really yourself, but now, without the First breathing down our necks...”

“It will be back.”

“I know.”

“We didn’t really defeat it. We never can. We may have destroyed its army of Ubervamps, and closed off the power of the Hellmouth, but the First will be back. A bit of the fear that had been so common in Buffy’s eyes over the past year crept back in.

“That is why we need to prepare these new slayers. That is why we need you here. I understand if you just don’t want to. If you would rather just settle in somewhere quiet with Dawn. Get a job or go back to school. You have given up your life twice in the fight against evil. I understand if you need some time off, but if you backing down from this because you are scared or unsure about what you have to offer...”

“I can’t walk away from the fight. Everything I have given, even my life, it has never been enough. I can’t just turn my back, not after everything I’ve seen. There will always be evil to fight, and I know I will always be fighting it, but I am not sure this is my part of the fight. I can’t lead. What kind of teacher would I make?”

“You can learn. I did.”

Buffy laughed quietly as she thought of the awkward man she first met in Sunnydale High School’s library. She would have never been able to know at that moment the mentor the father that he would become for her.

“I love you Giles. You know that, don’t you?

“I know.” Giles answered this awkwardly. He wasn’t expecting that, and he got up to make a pot of tea for them.

Buffy remembered how he made them tea when she returned to Sunnydale five years before. He didn’t need to tell her that he loved her.

“You forgot to turn the stove on.”

“It’s an Aga. The burners are always on.”

“Oh.” She watched Giles fix the tea, and enjoyed the silence between them. Buffy had found a great deal of comforting silence since she arrived in England. There was plenty of room for the slayers who chose to come here. They had a choice. Buffy had a choice now too.

“You know I can feel them in my sleep.”

“The other slayers?”

Buffy nodded. “Faith can feel them too. Nothing like the prophetic dreams I have had in the past. No blood. At least not yet, but I can feel them. It’s nice. It feels like I never have to be alone. Not ever again.”

Giles poured milk into two teacups and then poured the tea into them. He said it tasted better when done that way. Buffy humored him.

“I have been running this past year over and over in my head. I have been trying to make sense of all of this. What I could have done differently, and also what made the First choose that moment in time to try to destroy the slayer line. What? What do you know?”

“Do you remember when Anya and I tried to use her demon connections to try to find out information about the First?”

“You mean when you went to see the Eye of Botox?”

“The Eye of Beljoxa.”

“See why I wouldn’t make a good teacher? You told me you didn’t get any information.”

“I said we didn’t learn anything useful in fighting the first. I was afraid to tell you what I learned.”

“It was me, wasn’t it? I gave the First its power?”

“The Eye of Beljoxa told us that it was your second death and subsequently being brought back to life that allowed the First to attack the slayer line and try to destroy it...I was afraid that by telling you that it would renew your feeling that you shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be alive again. We needed you. I couldn’t risk it.”

“I understand. My second death? Why the second and not the first? And why appear to Angel four years before?”

“I have been doing some research. Trying to find a correlation between the events of the past year and what happened to Angel. It is possible that there was some sort of mystical power surge that was caused when you were brought back from Heaven and when Angel was brought back from Hell.”

“But?”

“But, I have another theory. It’s a bit more complicated.”

“Well, what is this theory of yours?”

Giles paused and poured more tea for the both of them as he tried to collect his thoughts. When you sent Angel to Hell it devastated you. You had already been suffering a year of so much pain, and then you felt so guilty and alone that you had to leave Sunnydale. We didn’t know where you were, and it sent us all into a similar state despair. Not knowing where you were...I’m not trying to hurt you by saying this Buffy, it’s important to my theory. When you returned to Sunnydale things got better. You were part of the fight again, and then Angel came back from Hell. The pain from the previous year slowly began to heal.

Giles took off his glasses, cleaned them, and put them back on. “When you died it was so much worse for all of us than when you were missing, and then you came back but you came back in so much pain. Being pulled out of heaven the way you were. You spent a year wallowing in that pain before it began to heal, before you really got back into the fight.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Pain and despair. The First gets its power from the evil inherent in the world, but I think it can also become more powerful from pain and despair.”

“But there is always pain and despair in the world. What made these instances different?”

“I think it was the pain and despair of heroes that made the difference to the First. Those that usually fight against evil, suddenly being in too much pain to be effective. You and Angel, and to a much lesser extent, Willow, Xander, and I.”

“So it really was my fault?”

“No. Buffy, you couldn’t help how you were feeling under those circumstances. The point is that you came back both times. When you are back in the fight the First begins to lose some of its power. It had to act on Angel when it did. It had to try to create greater despair so that it could continue its surge in power, but it wasn’t strong enough. It wasn’t ready. With your death it became so much more powerful, and it continued to increase its power, even after it began to try to destroy the slayer line.”

“By convincing us that there was no point in fighting it? That it was too powerful to defeat?”

“Yes, exactly. The minute you decided we were going to win, we were already halfway there.”

“So we can really never know when it might come back. With all these new slayers we created, any one of them could unintentionally help the first.”

“I hadn’t really thought of that. I suppose you are right. We need you here Buffy. We need you to help prepare these girls. We need you to help prepare them for what they are going to have to face.”

“I’ll think about it.” Buffy smiled and took another sip of tea.

Giles smiled and took another sip of tea, confident his slayer would come through for him.

A nice solid flow of dialogue, sj.

A couple of things:

“It’s and Aga

an Aga. (Damn, I love those stoves; my grandmother had one.)

“When you died it was so much worse for all of us then when you were missing,

'than' when, not 'then when'.

and, a structural question:

If you would rather just settle in somewhere quiet with Dawn. Get a job or go back to school. You have given up your life twice in the fight against evil. I understand if you need a, but if you backing down from this because you are scared or unsure about what you have to offer...”

The first half of this is done in partial sentences, rather than entire sentences, structurally. It happens in a few places - was this deliberate?

In the second half, I think there's a word missing: "I understand if you need a, but"

Other than those, well done!

Damn, nearly forgot: erika, the Evil Hand's not separate from his body. Angel cut it off and the Evil Doctors at WOlfram and Hart replaced with a Satanic Hand, that has a mind of its own.

A nice solid flow of dialogue, sj.

Thank you. I usually think I am so bad at dialogue. Typos fixed.

(Damn, I love those stoves; my grandmother had one.)

I love them too. Some friends of mine sell them, and I was able to go to a cooking demonstration for one in England.

The first half of this is done in partial sentences, rather than entire sentences, structurally. It happens in a few places - was this deliberate?

Yes, it was deliberate.

Other than those, well done!

Thank you!

He has an evil, seperated from his body...hand.?!Unlike my left one, that does impressions thereof. So yes, I pretty much type one handed...hope I don't go blind, too.

Damn, nearly forgot: erika, the Evil Hand's not separate from his body. Angel cut it off and the Evil Doctors at WOlfram and Hart replaced with a Satanic Hand, that has a mind of its own.

deb, lovely, fun drabble. I think I know gave erika the impression you were writing about a detached hand. This section:

He rolls it, flexes it, kneels carefully. The guitar case has three snap-latches; the first two are fine, the third the hand skitters across the top. Fucking tease.

The "the first two are fine, the third the hand" is a little confusing. I think I missed reading the "the" prior to "hand" there on my first read, and so had to read it twice to get what you meant. I figured it out, because I have a guitar, and its case has 3 latches. At first, I did read it as if you meant 3 hands. Drabbles are so tight word-wise, I'm not sure what to suggest to clarify.

cereal--because I'm an idiot and submitted too soon...

sj, that's your first? That's a good story. Oh, if our show had only made so much sense. I love the despair premise. I like the details of the tea, the continuity shout-out, and Giles cleaning his glasses. Very good. More, please.

The "the first two are fine, the third the hand" is a little confusing. I think I missed reading the "the" prior to "hand" there on my first read, and so had to read it twice to get what you meant. I figured it out, because I have a guitar, and its case has 3 latches. At first, I did read it as if you meant 3 hands. Drabbles are so tight word-wise, I'm not sure what to suggest to clarify.

I thought that too. Maybe a comma after "third", deb.

It's a nice drabble.

Thankee.

Fixed, to read:

He rolls it, flexes it, kneels carefully. The guitar case has three snap-latches; the first two are fine, third latch, the hand skitters across the top. Fucking tease.

I wanted to keep the staccato rhythm of it, since despite the third person, the hand is really being viewed through a filter of Lindsey's exasperation with it.

Ok, then...Lindsey's hand works like...my whole body. Because, essentially the wiring is only indifferently connected. My brain sends messages that only parts of me can pick up. Which freaks out the muscles(don't you love my mastery of all these technical concepts?) Sj, most excellent rendition of the Buffy & Giles relationship. Good voices, too.