SUMMARY: Last time: The shock of seeing her sister kidnapped by Glory and her husband lingering near death pushed Buffy into a comatose state, where she lived her 'perfect life.' Willow entered Buffy's mind in order to bring her back, while Giles returned to the Magic Box for some last minute research. He received two unexpected surprises; 1) that Dawn was his and Buffy's biological child, and 2) that killing her was the only way to save mankind. Now: Glory plans to use Dawn in a ritual bloodletting, thus unleashing chaos on earth when the dimensional barriers separating realities are torn down. Unfortunately, the options for stopping this leaves Buffy and Giles at odds over right and wrong, destiny, and the fate of all mankind.

SPOILERS/TIMELINE: Set in and around S5's "The Gift."
RATING: FR-M [violence, language, mature themes]
WARNING: Character death
DISTRIBUTION: KoalasPlace.com, GylzGirl's HeadQuarters, DWord's theLIST. Others please ask first.
DISCLAIMER: BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER characters and concepts are copyright ©1997-2003 20th Century Fox. Incidental dialogue from "The Gift" written by Joss Whedon. No resemblance to the real CARLTON FISK is intended. My character of the same name is purely coincidental.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is an AU retelling of the episode where Buffy and Giles are married, although still following the basic "Glory" plot of Season 5. It has always been goal with this series not to rewrite the episode verbatim, but to explore new angles and new ways of telling the same events, and only touching on the original when necessary to propel things in that direction. So far, I think I have achieved a modicum of success with this technique. However, in this final part, I broke my own rules, so you will find a lot more of the original episode and dialogue herein than ever before. What is new, though, is one last shot at the angst, as Buffy and Giles discover one final heart-and-gut-wrenching obstacle to overcome. My timeframe (see Part 12 notes) allows for a good long wallow before the final battle, and so I'm hoping to go out with a bang, not a fizzle!

THANKS: To You, the person reading this. It's been a trip, thanks for taking the ride with me.
THANKS #2: To all my fabulous beta readers, without whom my fics would truly suck. To Savvy, for cracking the the whip and keeping me on track. To Luisa, who inspired the ending. And lastly, to the 'Buffy' cast and crew, who continue to inspire so much. I may be done with this series, but I'm not done with Buffy and Giles!
DEDICATION: A special shout goes out to Trish (trishv20@aol.com), who issued the original challenge on BGL that started this behemoth. This is all your fault, girl! J Thanks.

POST DATE: June 7, 2006

From the way Buffy stared at him, the utterly appalled expression on her face, Giles knew he had just become a stranger in her eyes. Because the man she loved, the man she married, her husband, lover, and best friend, would never have said what just came out of his mouth.

Only he had, because in that moment, he was none of those. The words flowed off his tongue devoid of personal attachments and emotional ties, in the cool and clinical Watcher tone the situation required. They were facing the end of the world. It was his job to say the things that shouldn't be said, and do the things that no one should ever have to face doing. His and Buffy's. Yet he should have known she would fail to act with the same level of detachment. Buffy Summers was ruled by her passion, her heart. It was both her strength and her weakness, and the reason he loved her so.

To this end, Giles had just told his Slayer--not his wife, not the woman pregnant with his unborn child--that in order to stop the ritual Glory intended to perform, to quell the rising apocalypse threatening all mankind, Buffy needed to take the life of an innocent; she needed to kill her little sister, Dawn.

And in that moment, she hated him for it.

Indeed, he hated himself. Dawn was as much a part of him as she was a part of Buffy. She was their child, conceived of their blood, and born of a powerful bonding of sentient energy and ancient magicks. Killing her would be like killing part of himself . . . a thought which led him full circle to the look on Buffy's face, and the abhorrence she now harbored for him and his solution.

"Buffy--"

"No," she cut in, turning her back. "That's unacceptable."

"I agree."

Buffy whirled on him. "Then why the hell did you say it?"

"Because you need to know," Giles said flatly, endeavoring to remain isolated from the emotions waiting to engulf him. "Should it become your last resort, you need to be prepared--"

"No." She glared at him in flat out refusal, crossed her arms, and nodded to the research materials littering the tabletop. "Read it again."

"I've read it a dozen times already," he argued, miffed by her steadfast pigheadedness and inability to listen to reason.

"Read. It. Again."

Giles reluctantly did as she asked, although not without exasperation for her complete unwillingness to accept what he'd told her the first time. Diverting his gaze from her belligerent scowl, he glanced at the ancient papyrus scroll unfurled on the tabletop. He reached, however, for the accompanying marbled, black-covered composition book, since it contained the modern day translation of 'The Ritual of The Key.'

The details were very precise, leaving no room for misinterpretation. The original ritual, as inscribed in the papyrus scroll, had been written for use with The Key in its sentient energy state. Now that it was in human form, Glory intended to bleed Dawn, quite literally, pouring her blood into a specific place at a specific time in order to achieve the same results, bringing down the walls between all the dimensions. With the barriers gone and nothing to stop her, the Hellgod could then return to her own realm to wreak havoc there, which as far as Giles was concerned was a good thing for mankind. The unfortunate side effect of her departure was that all manner of hell would be unleashed on Earth.

"'The blood flows, the gates will open,'" Giles read aloud from the updated text. "'The gates will close when it flows no more.' When Dawn is dead."

Buffy deliberately changed tack. "Okay, pretty simple math here," she said, adopting a more reasonable tone. "We stop Glory before she can start the ritual. We still have a few hours, right?"

"Midnight," Giles confirmed quietly. The loving, parental part of him understood her dilemma and empathized with it, but the Watcher in him was no stranger to making hard choices. He may seem cruel and uncaring in her eyes, but if the ritual started, then every living creature in this and every other dimension would suffer unbearable torment and death . . . including Dawn. Still hoping to make her understand this, he looked up. "But Buffy--"

"I don't wanna hear it."

"I understand that--"

"No, you don't understand," she insisted adamantly. "We are not talking about this!"

Furious, Giles leaped to his feet. "YES, WE BLOODY WELL ARE!" Rarely did his temper get the better of him, but butting heads with Buffy's stubborn streak was a surefire catalyst.

Silence rung in the Magic Box following his uncharacteristic outburst, the others shifting uncomfortably in their chairs. Buffy, now completely pissed off, glared at him anew. Belatedly remembering his injury, thanks to the agonizing stab such rash action prompted, Giles put his hand on his bandaged side, gritted his teeth, and drew a calming breath.

"If Glory begins the ritual," he insisted in a low tone, "if we can't stop her . . . "

"Come on, say it," Buffy challenged coldly when he failed to do so. "We're 'bloody well' talking about this. Tell me to kill my sister."

Giles guiltily looked away. "She's not your sister."

Buffy misunderstood. "No, she's much more than that, she's part of me. The monks made her out of me. It's not just the memories they built; it's physical. When I hold her--"

"She's your daughter," Giles interrupted. In the moment of stunned silence, his gaze found hers again. "Our daughter."

Shocked speechless, Buffy stared at him slack-jawed . . . as did everyone else sitting around the tarot-reading table.

Gratefully dropping back into his chair at its head, Giles made a vague gesture at the research materials before him, and attempted to explain. "The Council recently came across some new information and sent it to me . . . us." He hesitated. This was something he would have preferred to tell her in private, but time and circumstance simply wouldn't permit it. So he instead did his best to ignore the multiple sets of eyes focused on him, and spoke directly to his wife, as if they were the only two people in the room. "In it, I discovered that the Dagon Monks used the mystical DNA of two parent donors, female and male, in order to create Dawn. Slayer and Watcher . . . yours and mine."

"You're sure about this?" Willow asked on behalf of all present who still hadn't found their voices.

"Absolutely," Giles said, his gaze never leaving Buffy's wide-eyed expression. "Buffy and I . . . we are Dawn's biological parents."

Buffy remained quiet for a long moment as the truth, the implications, sunk in. Too quiet. Like the 'quiet before the storm' quiet. Sure enough, she scowled like a dark thundercloud about to let loose. "And just when were you going to tell me this?"

"I only received the book this afternoon," Giles began, in defense of the accusation that he was keeping secrets of such magnitude from her.

But Buffy was through listening to excuses. "After you forced me to run a sword through her chest, maybe? 'Oh and by the way, darling, the innocent life you just took was our daughter's'?"

"I told you, I only--"

"How could you even say that?" Buffy asked, horrified and aghast. "How could you even think that killing our child was a viable option?"

Giles' mouth jogged open, watching her hand instinctively move to her lower belly, as if to protect her unborn child. That action alone gave him instant insight into the appalling thoughts running through her head.

"You're not the man I married, the man I love," Buffy said, confirming his worse fears. "You're a monster." Her lower lip trembled and her eyes grew bright, as something unexpected occurred to her. "Maybe I never loved you. Maybe, just like the memories, the monks put that idea in my head too . . . made me think I was in love with you, for Dawn's sake."

Her words shattered his soul into a million jagged little bits. She couldn't mean that. Not ten minutes ago, when they'd been reunited, they'd held each other with such desperate tenderness that was anything but false. Surely, she felt it too?

Giles felt sick, crushed, and resentful. The love of his life had just wounded him far worse than the knight who speared him with the polearm. Wanting to lash back, he grated, "Perhaps that works both ways. Because, Lord knows, why else I'd put up with--"

But he stopped short at the look on Buffy's face.

Hurt and offended by the idea that his love for her was also a complete fabrication, Buffy raised her left hand and struggled to remove her wedding ring. In one final act of matrimonial murder, she threw it at him, renouncing both him and everything he thought they shared together. Giles flinched, as it bounced off the table by his elbow and went clattering away somewhere on the shop's tile floor, but made no attempt to retrieve it.

"I hate you," she said, shaking with emotion.

Turning, she stalked off toward the isolation of the training room, the wall-shaking slam of the door a final punctuation to her declaration. Pulling off his glasses, Giles tossed them haphazardly onto the ancient texts before him and leaned forward, one hand rubbing his chin. He didn't care if the others saw the unshed tears gathering in his eyes, or the raw, crippling rejection etched on his face.

Dear Lord, what just happened?

Spike broke the charged silence. "So," he wondered aloud, "now that Buffy hates you, and is a free woman again--"

"Shut up," Giles and Xander growled together.

Bending down, Xander retrieved Buffy's wedding ring from the floor. He offered it to Giles in silent commiseration.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Willow admonished. "Go after her!"

"I'm not sure that's the wisest course of action at present," Giles said, attempting a wan smile as he, nonetheless, accepted the platinum band from Xander.

"Not if he wants to keep the family jewels intact," Spike scoffed.

"Yeah," Xander agreed, squirming in his chair. "Definitely less painful to let her cool off for a few min--"

"I have places to be!" Tara yelled abruptly, reminding them all that the pending apocalypse took precedence over another ill-timed domestic tiff.

They spared her a sympathetic glance, all except Giles, who instead sat staring at the wedding ring sitting on his palm, listening to his shattered heart falling into the void inside his soul, like shards of breaking glass.

Surely, Buffy didn't mean it. She was just upset.

Really upset.

Yet the rub of this particular quarrel, the thing that cut deepest of all, was the truth behind it. Perhaps Buffy really didn't love him, and never had. Perhaps the monks truly had planted the idea in her head, along with all the memories of and feelings for Dawn. Why else would an attractive and vibrant young woman like Buffy ever have fallen for him?

For his part, Giles regretted his retort the moment it was out of his mouth. Indeed, telling her his love was also a lie was the biggest lie of all. But she'd hurt him, so much, he'd foolishly wanted to hurt her back.

And in doing so, had pushed her even further away.

He brushed his hand over his face, surreptitiously wiping the moisture from the corners of his eyes before it embarrassed him.

"You okay, G-man?" Xander asked quietly, hand on his shoulder.

He nodded mutely, pocketing Buffy's ring for a later confrontation, when her mood was not so detrimental to his assorted body parts. Rather than dwell on his misery, Giles focused on the fact that if he and Buffy stood any chance at having a shot at a future together, there was first a world to save. With effort, he forced himself to tune back into the conversation at large, finding Anya had gained the floor with inappropriately timed enthusiasm.

"Okay," she said cheerfully. "All in favor of stopping Glory before the ritual. Suggestions? Ideas? Time's a-wasting."

* * *

In the training room, Buffy tore off her black leather jacket and angrily threw it, inside out, on the khaki-green settee nestled under the window. Standing perfectly still, she raised both hands to her face, shutting the emotions back inside.

No. She wasn't going to cry.

Quickly deciding that she needed to hit something, she tore off her sweater, stripping down to a skin-tight black t-shirt and turning a deadly eye to the punching back hanging from an exposed ceiling beam. Despite her haste though, she took a moment, as she always did, to wrap a protective layer of sports tape around her knuckles, all the while stubbornly fighting off the tears that still wanted to come.

If she cried, that meant she cared . . . and if she cared, that meant she regretted her actions . . . and if she regretted her actions, that meant she still wanted to be married to Giles . . . and if she still wanted to be married to him, that meant she still loved him . . .

So . . . did she?

The knife in her heart sure made it feel as if she did, if it wasn't for the reasonable doubt now shoved into the spot where once there had been only absolute certainty. How could their love for each other be a lie? Hearing Giles confirm that his feelings for her may also be false hadn't helped. In the blink of an eye, it had been her eighteenth birthday--her Cruciamentum--all over again, when she's felt so utterly crushed and betrayed by the one person she trusted most.

Buffy paused in her preparation with an additional, smaller length of tape in her right hand. Lost in her thoughts, she'd automatically torn it off the roll, because she always used an extra bit to secure her wedding ring in place. Her bare finger was the proverbial dam buster, and the tears began to run unchecked down her cheeks.

Determined to deny them, she again focused on the punching bag, and instead recalled the perfect life she'd lived in her head, where everything was wonderful and they were so happy together . . . because she and Giles loved each other with every fiber of their beings. Returning from that little comatose detour, she'd been so relieved at finding him alive and relatively unscathed in the wake of his life threatening abdominal injury, that she'd been unprepared for his aloof comments about killing Dawn to save the world, and then shocked beyond even her self-control at his follow-up declaration that her sister was in fact her daughter.

Attacking the EVERLAST™ punching bag with gusto, Buffy mentally corrected herself. No, it wasn't the knowledge that Dawn was her daughter that so shocked her, it was the confirmation that she was their child. Theirs. While that wasn't necessarily a bad thing, considering they'd been playing Mom and Dad for a while now, when coupled with Giles' apparent willingness to forfeit Dawn's life, it had immediately led her down a dangerous path . . . because she couldn't possibly be in love with a man who was so chillingly 'okay' with the cold-blooded murder of his own child.

Maybe she was right. Maybe, just like all her pre-constructed memories of Dawn, what she felt for Giles really was one big fat made-up lie. It certainly explained why they were always at odds, butting heads, fighting with each other. It was only now, just like the mental fog that had lifted to reveal Ben and Glory's shared secret, that the truth of her and Giles' relationship had become accessible, exposed.

Worse, it made cruel and perfect sense. The monks would have wanted Dawn to know and have the love and protection of both parents, Slayer and Watcher, so they could have very easily planted the notion in their heads, totally manipulating her and Giles into each other's arms.

She felt used, violated. More than she had upon learning that her childhood memories of a kid sister were fake. Even her perfect dream world of the future was shattered beyond repair. She'd given herself to Giles, heart, body, and soul, in the honest belief that she was completely, unquestionably, irrevocably in love with him. Now, she just didn't know.

How did they pick up the pieces and go on from here, with their love revealed as a sham and her pregnant with his real child? Did he even want to?

Was that why he hadn't come in after her?

Buffy attacked the bag for several minutes, falling ever deeper into depression and remorse over the idea that Giles really didn't love her, until one last vicious punch sent it horizontal on its chain tether. As it swung back, she caught it in both hands. Anyone else would have had trouble maintaining their balance under the force of the impact, but Slayer strength instantly stilled the momentum.

Eyes closed, she rested her forehead against the cool black vinyl. Her tears had stopped; now she just felt drained, confused, and terribly incomplete.

A telltale sound alerted her to the training room door opening softly. Sucking it up, Buffy laid into the punching bag again, determined to beat the tar out of it. She knew from the sound of his leather-soled shoes on the concrete, the shuffle in his injured stride, and the tension that preceded him in a roiling wave of discontent, that it was Giles.

"You sure you're not going to tire yourself out?"

"I'm sure," she said flatly, fists still pummeling the bag in perfectly timed and deadly blows. He stopped behind her--smart to keep his distance, given her mood.

"Anya came up with some splendid ideas," he explained, annoyingly casual in the wake of their horrendous argument, "including using the Sphere you found, and Olaf the Troll's enchanted hammer. Both, surprisingly, extremely useful suggestions." When she failed to comment, he took a cautious step forward and again tried to engage her in conversation. "Xander and Anya are searching the basement for the Dagon Sphere, as we speak. It's rather a mess down there, but I'm sure they'll find it eventually."

"Good."

He hesitated at her curt tone, then again went for the small talk. "Time is short, of course, but it's best to leave it until the last moment. If we go in too early and Glory takes us out, then there's no chance of getting her to miss her window. Although the good news is, if she does, she'll have to wait another seventy-five years before she can try again. By then, I very much doubt she'll be our problem."

"Then we wait," Buffy said, failing to respond to his attempt at humor. She lashed out with a final punch, so brutal that a link in the chain tethering the bag to a ceiling beam snapped. The EVERLAST™ bag flew across the training room, landing on the concrete with a heavy, padded splat and a rattling of broken chain. Watching it roll to a stop against the far wall, she shook out her fists and rolled her shoulders, determined to keep her back to Giles, alienate him, and not let him back in her life.

"I know you hate me right now," Giles said in a low tone.

Keeping her back turned, Buffy closed her eyes against the pain welling inside her, unable to deny his words.

"I love Dawn," he declared honestly. "But I've sworn to protect this sorry world, and sometimes that means saying and doing . . . what other people can't. What they shouldn't have to."

Buffy swiveled to face him, just having one thing to say on that count. "You try to hurt her, and you know I'll stop you."

Giles nodded bleakly. "I know."

Their eyes met across the few yards that separated them, each of them lost in the ugly words that had reduced their lives--their love--to this.

Tearing her gaze away, Buffy headed for the settee. Picking up her discarded sweater, she sat tentatively in one corner, creating a comfort zone for herself should Giles choose to follow. Sure enough, he shuffled over to join her, one hand holding his side, his expression suggesting he was grateful to be off his feet. She wondered, briefly, how he'd fare in the upcoming battle in such a condition, whether he would live or die, then wondered, again, why that thought didn't upset her more. When he seated himself, unintentionally closing the space between them, she increased it marginally by sitting forward to rest her elbows on her knees.

It was for the best, she decided, this trial distance. It was a precursor to the separate lives they were hurtling towards at breakneck speed. In a flash, she caught a mental glimpse of it, of her and Dawn making it on their own, a new baby on the way, a new start in a new town . . . provided she and Dawn both survived the night.

"This is how many apocalypses for us now?" Buffy asked in a world-weary tone.

"Six, at least. Feels like a hundred."

"I've always stopped them," she said resignedly. "Always won."

"Yes."

"I sacrificed Angel to save the world. I loved him so much." Buffy chewed her lip, fighting off tears again. "But I knew . . . what was right." She looked at her taped hands, clasping her sweater. No way she was sacrificing another loved one. Not this time. Not Dawn. "But I don't have that any more, Giles, I don't understand. I don't know how to live in this world, if these are the choices . . . if everything and everyone I care about just gets stripped away."

"I still love you," he said unexpectedly.

Buffy looked at him, her heart turning over at the honesty on his face. "But you said--"

"Yes, I did. But sometimes . . . I'm an ass."

"Only sometimes?" she chided.

"And would that I could, right now," Giles continued with a nod at the blue exercise mats stacked next to the couch, "I'd lay you down on those, and make love to you until you believed what we share is real."

Although Giles had intended his statement to be a profound declaration of his unbreakable love, despite the injury that prevented him from putting words into action, Buffy took it as a typically male and completely invalid solution. She shot him a doubtful look to express this. "That's your answer? Sex?"

He tried a little smile, hoping to coax one from her, too. "Well, it's worked rather well for us in the past."

"But that's just the point!" she stormed. "Do you know how used I feel when I think about--" She broke off, deflecting her gaze to the opposite wall, desperately trying not to recall all the times they'd made sweet love together, which in hindsight now seemed dirty and cheap. Calming herself with a deep breath, she outlined the problem for him, on the off chance that he'd somehow missed it. "We were chosen to be Dawn's parents, just like we were chosen for the Watcher/Slayer gig. How can we ever be sure that what we feel for each other isn't just part of the job?"

"I'm sure."

Giles' quiet candor caused Buffy's gaze to return to him, but she found him looking his shoes rather than at her.

"For what it's worth, I want you to know that . . . " Adam's apple bobbing, Giles lifted his gaze to hers. "I fell in love with you of my own accord, long before Dawn and the monks ever entered the picture." He mustered a melancholy smile. "Somewhere around senior prom, I believe."

His frank confession touched something deep inside her, something that momentarily sparked a forgotten passion, but was just as quickly guttered by uncertainty and doubt. Looking away again, Buffy started picking at the end of the sports tape on her left hand, rather than let Giles see the tears gathering in her eyes. "I just wish that . . . I wish I could say 'I love you' and know it was true."

"It is," Giles insisted. He exhaled in defeat, and tried a different tack. "Buffy, I can't force you to love me, nor would I ever want to try. I can only tell you how deeply I still care, and pray you'll allow me the opportunity to convince you of what I know is in your heart . . . "

He shifted on the couch as he spoke. From the corner of her eye, Buffy spotted his hand delving into his jacket pocket and guessed his intent. He was going to try to give back her wedding ring, something she wasn't sure she was ready to accept. Rather than hurt him even more with her refusal, she got to her feet in an effort to deflect his attempt.

Unfortunately, her turned back sent a blunt message, and despite her wish to spare him further emotional pain, she knew, from his despondent sigh, that she'd caused just that.

After a lengthy pause, Buffy found her voice again. "When I was . . . in my head," she began, facing him, "everything was so perfect." When his forlorn gaze rose to hers, she continued. "We were hopelessly in love, you and me, and so incredibly happy together. We had a normal, safe, happy home, and a little boy we both adored."

"A son?"

"Yeah," Buffy said in fond recollection. "CJ . . . short for 'Christopher Jamison.'"

"I rather . . . like that."

"Me, too." Looking down, she placed a loving hand on her lower belly. "I think, if I have a boy, that's what I wanna name him."

It was only when Giles stood and anxiously approached her that she realized her use of personal pronouns. She had already excluded him from her baby's life, even in whimsy.

Giles stopped before her, closer than she liked given their present estrangement. They held each other's eyes, as he tentatively lifted his hand to her cheek. She noted that he still wore his wedding band, the platinum ring she'd slid on his finger with the heartfelt declaration that it made him hers forever. Despite her resolve for distance, she allowed his tender touch, and even found momentary comfort in the familiar gesture of affection.

"Christopher Jamison Giles," he said meaningfully.

It was their first moment alone together since she'd announced her pregnancy, and it wasn't going anywhere near how she'd dreamed. It should have been a tearfully joyous occasion, a celebration of kisses and smiles, and loving words. Instead, it was a moment of doubt and uncertainty, and so much pain. She looked up into his heartbroken eyes, numb to the feelings she thought would always be there.

"Buffy, I love you, beyond my ability to express in words. What we had, what we shared . . . it doesn't matter how it came to be. What matters is that it was real, and it was deep, and I know you felt it, too." His other hand found hers and brought it, taped knuckles and all, to his lips for a desperate kiss. "Please don't shut me out, love, not without a chance. If the monks truly did nudge you to fall in love with me, then I know, given time, I can, too."

Holding his gaze, she moved her hand to cover the one he held cupped to her cheek. Picking up his fingers, she backpedaled out of his near-embrace. "You don't get it, do you," she said, pulling both hands free and reestablishing the gap between them. "Whether it's you or the monks doing the nudging, I don't want to be in love with you because it's part of my domestic job description!"

"Buffy--"

"No. I already have a job. An important one. I'm the Slayer . . . although I guess now I know why I suck so badly at the 'wife and mother' one." She found his gaze again. "Spirit Guide told me that death is my gift. Guess that means a Slayer really is just a killer, after all."

"I think you're wrong about that."

"It doesn't matter. If Dawn dies, I'm done with it. I'm quitting." Head down, she turned away from him again. "Both jobs."

There was nothing left to say, so Buffy left Giles standing alone in the empty training room, and headed for the back door that led to the alley running behind the shop . . . before he saw her tears.

* * *

Night had fallen. Buffy stopped just outside the back door under a pool of weak light from a bare security bulb above the stoop, and sucked down a ragged breath. She couldn't believe what she'd just done, what she'd just given up. Looking for a distraction before the tears took hold, she donned her sweater against the night chill, keeping one wary eye out for anything that might try to take advantage of her emotionally strung state. Lit by moonlight, with angular shadows that clung to the right hand wall deep enough to conceal a host of lurking nasties, the alley behind the shop appeared deserted all the way out to the street. But her senses were tingling; a vampire was nearby.

A noise further down in the darkness sparked her attention. Interspacing the shadows were the back exits and equally weak security lights of the neighboring merchants on Maple Court, each drawing their own collection of refuse and recycle containers to within easy reach of the door, like stray cats waiting to be fed. Something scurried from shadow to light and into shadow again, something small and nimble enough to be a mouse or a rat, and therefore nothing to worry about.

Buffy surveyed her surroundings a moment longer, just to be sure, before concluding that maybe pregnancy hormones were to blame, messing up her slayer senses, too. With that, she started to unravel the protective sports tape from her hands, still struggling with the rightness of her decision to label the feelings she had for Giles as 'false,' and blot out all the memories they'd made together. He said it didn't matter how or why they fell in love, just that they were, but he was wrong.

So if leaving him was the right thing to do, why did it hurt so much?

To her immediate left sat the rusty dumpster designated for trash from the Magic Box, with its likewise group of smaller recyclable siblings clustered close. Turning, Buffy tossed her ball of used tape in the open lid, then promptly followed an unexpected but undeniable urge to throw up. Since it had been a while since her last meal, her stomach didn't have much to surrender, and the effort of dry retching left her shaking, her skin pasty. When it was over, she crumpled meekly against the side of the rusty metal and fought to regain her breath. Her hand shook as she raised it to her sweaty brow, a glimpse of her bare finger bringing a fresh wave of raw emotions to the fore.

Oh God, what had she done? Did she really just break up with Giles?

'Yes. You really did.'

But it was the voice that spoke from the other side of the dumpster that made her jump, not the accusing one in her head.

"Y'know, I've never understood why they call it 'morning sickness,' when it can hit any time."

Straightening with her defensive mask firmly in place, Buffy peered over the top of the dumpster in time to catch a puff of cigarette smoke dissipate in the crisp night air. "What are you doing out here, Spike? And where did you learn that?"

"What, you think I'm completely illiterate?" He moved around the rusty bin, revealing himself in the moonlight, holding up a hand to indicate the half-burned cigarette between his fingers. "And just out for a smoke. You?"

"None of your business."

"Right," he said knowingly. His free hand came out of the pocket of his black jeans to offer a rumpled, white handkerchief. "It's clean," he insisted, when she simply stared at it.

Snatching it, Buffy wiped the spittle of bile from the corner of her mouth, suspicious of, but grateful for, the chivalry. That was something Giles would have done.

Spike's eyes narrowed on her as he drew on his cigarette. "Didn't go so well with your old man, eh? Well, if you ask me, you're better off without that sorry sod, anyway."

"I didn't ask," she said flatly. She offered up the handkerchief, but Spike waved off ownership, as expected. She was grudgingly about to thank him, when he exhaled over her, making her wrinkle her nose and fan away the secondhand smoke. Her stomach heaved. "Do you mind?"

"Oh . . . right." Dropping the butt, he thoughtfully ground it out underfoot. "Not good for the tiny tyke."

"Not to mention, almost made me barf again."

"Sorry, pet."

Buffy stared at him, wondering where all this sudden care and concern was coming from. Then it hit. With her and Giles fighting in public and their marriage on the ropes, Spike saw his chance to gain her favor. She wouldn't even put it past him to have eavesdropped at the back door on their private conversation.

He studied her, as she studied him, until Spike broke the stalemate with a worried expression. "You okay? You don't look so hot."

Truthfully, Buffy didn't feel so hot either. Her stomach was still in a knot, her heart was heavy and cold with an ache that just wouldn't subside, and every emotion she had felt as if it had just been put through a shredder. In a few short hours' time, she would enter the fight of her life, the outcome of which, if she were to sum it up in her previous encounters with the same adversary, had a high percentage failure rate. And it wasn't just her own life on the line; it was Dawn's and her unborn baby's, it was Giles' and her friends', it was all the people of Sunnydale--the world. Add to this a vampire who didn't give a flying frig about the people she loved, or the fate of the world, with the possible exception of getting in her pants before it ended, playing Cuddly Carebear and asking if she was 'okay.'

"I'm fine," she lied, crossing her arms and defiantly pulling back her shoulders.

Spike grunted in reply, sounding doubtful. "Look, it's early. We still have a few hours before the big showdown at midnight. Whatta you say you and me go somewhere quiet and just . . . relax."

Buffy, guessing 'relax' was a euphemism for 'sex,' couldn't believe his nerve. She'd only declared her separation from Giles five minutes ago! "You're a real piece of work, Spike."

Spike donned a suitably shocked and innocent look. "What? You think I meant--? Oh please . . . I'm not that bloody desperate."

Giving him the benefit of the doubt, she backed down from the accusation. A long awkward silence settled between them.

"How long since you last ate?" he asked, again with the thoughtfulness. Her cynical look, prompted him to add, "What? A pregnant woman's gotta eat, right? You need to start taking care of yourself." The emphasis he used was a pointed reminder of her new pseudo-single status. "I just meant The Pump is open, if you wanted a coffee . . . maybe a doughnut or something. No big deal, Slayer."

It was Buffy's turn to sound doubtful. "Coffee."

"Well, it is a bleeding coffee house."

"You're asking me out for coffee."

"It's not a date!" Spike snapped. "Cripes, it's the end of the bloody world! You think I don't have better things to do than try to entertain you?" He moved away, his hands slapping the sides of his black leather duster in frustration and defeat. "Fine, whatever, I was just trying to uphold my end of the bargain--all right?--but forget it."

"Bargain?"

Her question stopped his retreat into the shadows, causing him to face her again. "Yeah. The one where I promised I'd look out for you 'til your baby is born."

In spite of herself, Buffy felt a tinge of guilt. She had formed just such an alliance with Spike, asked him to watch her back for the duration of her pregnancy, but she thought he'd understood it in the context she'd intended, namely 'watch her back in a fight.' Just when and how it had evolved into him believing it also meant he had to take care of her on a personal level was anyone's guess.

But, surprisingly, not totally unwelcome.

"Okay then," she agreed, amazing herself. Now that he'd mentioned it, with her stomach past empty she could probably handle something light, not to mention rid the sour taste from her mouth with a low-fat decaf latte. "I could go for coffee, maybe something to eat."

Watching her toss the soiled handkerchief into the rusty dumpster, Spike broke into a sly grin, which he just a quickly dismissed when her serious gaze landed on him again.

"But if anyone sees us together," Buffy insisted, "this isn't a date. This isn't even coffee between friends. This is nothing."

"Damn straight."

"Although," she added, hands patting the pockets of her tight leather pants. Sheepishly, she met his gaze. "You're gonna have to pay. No room for a wallet."

Watching, Spike pulled his gaze up to hers and nodded, easily dealing with the lack of cash problem. He began walking, Buffy falling into step beside him as they headed down the dark alley toward the street. "Giles still having his mid-life crisis over there with his guitar?"

She thought about it, and couldn't remember the last time Giles had expressed even the slightest interest in hogging the lonely spotlight at The Espresso Pump's amateur night. "Not for a long time."

"But he still probably has a tab."

"I guess."

"Then dinner's on your ex, pet."

Buffy stopped, miffed by the term. "Okay, look, Giles is not my ex. We're not divorced yet."

Spike nodded in agreement. "Yet," he repeated sincerely, making her realize exactly what she'd said. "Got it. But I'll wager not even a tightwad like him would begrudge you one last meal."

He started walking again, leaving Buffy standing alone with her mouth hanging open. Now she was talking divorce?

"You coming, Buffy?"

"Um, sure." She started after Spike in something of a daze, oblivious to his use of her first name and the relationship-altering spin he managed to put on it. She was too busy trying to comprehend what had prompted her to say the 'D' word with such casual ease.

God, if the idea of permanent dissolution of their marriage came to her this effortlessly, maybe she really didn't love Giles after all . . .

* * *

Returning to the shop floor after several long, hard minutes of indecision over whether or not he should allow Buffy to walk away from him--again--Giles carefully avoided the inquiring, hopeful look on Willow's face, as he crossed the reading area at the front of the store to the door leading to the Magic Box's basement.

The mess down there was as vast as it was varied, at least seventy-five percent of it having belonged to the previous proprietor, who had met with an abrupt and untimely end, clearly, before it had been sorted. As the current proprietor, Giles had never quite found the time nor the inclination to rummage through the clutter and determine the useful from the useless, or make headway with any sort of cataloguing system, much to the distaste of the high school librarian in him. So, finding what they needed--in this case the Dagon Sphere--was a time consuming exercise involving a carefully mapped grid of the basement floor worthy of a full scale Maritime Search and Rescue effort.

Still, they'd been at it twenty minutes or more; Xander and Anya should have unearthed their prize by now.

"Any luck?" he called down into the musty darkness. Removing his glasses, he pinched the bridge of his nose in weary resignation, too late realizing that Willow, sitting a few yards away on an oversized beanbag with Tara, was still watching him closely. He peered down into the basement, before she made eye contact and took that as an invitation to question him. "Have you found the Dagon Sphere?"

In the dim light below, Giles glimpsed a flesh-toned individual emerging from under the staircase--far too much flesh-tone to suggest anything but impropriety. Anya, top half scantily clad in just a bra, made Giles, for perhaps the first time in his life, thankful for his hereditary myopia. Regardless of the fuzziness, his sense of decorum had him diverting his gaze as she hurriedly slipped back into her blouse.

"I'm sure it's here," she called, unaware she'd been caught in flagrante delicto. "Just be a minute!"

When Xander followed her out, doing up his pants, Giles rolled his eyes in acknowledgement of precisely why their search was taking so long.

"Yeah, we're on it!" Xander assured him. To Anya he said, rather unconvincingly, "Let's look over here, where we didn't look yet."

Dear Lord, he should have known.

Donning his glasses, Giles took a step back to give them their privacy. "Time is a factor," he reminded them curtly.

"Yes, yes, not to worry."

Giles closed the basement door on Anya's rushed reassurances with a sense of aggravated impatience. He wasn't sure what frustrated him more; the knowledge that Xander and Anya had found and taken the opportunity to make love one final time before the upcoming apocalypse, or that he and Buffy hadn't.

And weren't bloody likely to, either.

They could die tonight--him, her, or both of them--and Giles wondered, with a maudlin sigh, if he would ever again know the touch of her hand, or the kiss of her lips, or the clutch of her heated embrace as he took her to the brink of heaven, and beyond.

Shoulders slumped, his right hand holding his left side in order to disguise his pain as injury related, he again avoided Willow's gaze and returned to the tarot-reading table in the research nook. He regarded his books, still scattered over the tabletop, with the futile hope of discovering something new in them that might abate Buffy's reservations, something that proved those meddling monks had nothing to do with how they felt about each other.

Giles dropped into his chair, a man of little faith. Elbows resting on the tabletop, he put his chin in his hands and rubbed tired eyes up under his glasses. He'd been at this, the research, all afternoon, so if there was anything to learn, he would have learned it by now, several times over. He would look again, though, despite his certainty that there was no reference, in any of the volumes, to disprove the Monks of Dagon had planted the seed for them to fall in love at the same time they planted their constructed memories of Dawn.

And why would there be? They hadn't known about the constructed memories until one of the monks informed Buffy. And since he was the last of the Order, the information imparted quite literally with his dying breath, odds were that they would never know the truth about the other. He just wished he could make her see how, overall, it didn't matter. So what if the monks had sped up the process, encouraged her to fall in love with him just a little sooner than nature intended? What mattered was how they felt about each other now.

What if nature had other plans, and the monks' meddling truly had been against her will?

Halting the negative direction of that thought, his gaze fell on the incense display to the left of the sales counter, in particularly, the cabinet underneath where he kept a bottle of single malt Scotch under lock and key. The chair scraped as he stood to fetch it and a glass.

A generous shot of alcohol was sloshed into a whiskey tumbler before he sat again. While plying himself with alcohol until he was falling down drunk had, in the past, proven an effective, albeit temporary, way of dealing with the pain of All Things Buffy, it was not on the cards for tonight.

Bloody destiny, wouldn't even let him be miserable in peace.

Instead, Giles sipped his Scotch, making it last. It helped on many levels. It allowed him to think about something other than Dawn, alone, scared, and facing death. It dulled the ache in his side far better than his prescription painkillers. And it warmed him from the inside out . . . like Buffy's embrace.

He could still feel her arms around him, the desperately relieved hug they'd shared upon her arrival at the shop, not an hour ago. It was real, what they shared, he had no doubt. It ran deep and true, born of commitment and love, trust and understanding. She couldn't dismiss that, even if she did dismiss the entire reasoning behind it.

Yet despite his plea for one more chance to convince her of this, Buffy had shut him out, slammed the proverbial door in his face, almost as if she didn't want to be convinced. Well, he wasn't giving up. Not yet. Not until she looked him in the eye and categorically announced that she didn't love him. She was pregnant with his child, damn it! Even separated, she couldn't keep him from seeing his son, not legally, not yet anyway. He was not giving up any of his parental rights, and he'd be damned if he was giving her a divorce.

The stray thought caused his mind to splinter in several directions at once. In the blink of an eye, he lived the rest of his life with Buffy by his side, and the rest of his life without her. There were two versions of the 'without,' one with her happy in the arms of another man, the other beginning tomorrow morning, when he carried her broken, lifeless body from the battlefield.

Closing his eyes, Giles determinedly focused on the 'with,' letting the images fade in and out of his mind, one after the other, and in exquisite detail; an intimate caress, an angel's smile, the sound of her voice as she whispered words of unbreakable love. He remembered their first kiss, in the training room, when a misstep toppled them to the floor in a telling tangle; the first time they made love, Buffy overcoming shy hesitation with the heartfelt desire to please; slow dancing together at The Bronze during its 'Grand Re-Opening' extravaganza, making her smile by crooning a love song in her ear; showering her with a mountain of satin and silk on her twentieth birthday, then sliding her real present, her wedding ring, on her finger and promising it meant 'forever' . . .

Eyes snapping open in a way that instantly aborted the trip down Memory Lane, Giles searched his pocket for it--her ring. At first, he thought he was just checking it was safe, but as soon as his fingers found it, he knew he had to look at it again, if only to torture himself just a little bit more. Sure enough, the moment he opened his fist to stare at the token of Buffy's renounced affection, the pain started anew.

"Giles?"

Fist closing, he looked up as Willow approached. With effort, he pulled himself together, surreptitiously dragging his fist off the table and returning Buffy's ring to his coat pocket.

Willow slipped into the chair beside him, hands clasped together on the lighted tabletop. "You okay?"

Giles noted the way her eyes darted toward the Scotch bottle, sitting beyond his books at the apex of his reach. They understood too much, his young friends, and too little. They'd witnessed the appalling consequences of his mid-life crisis last year, when he'd been cut adrift and left directionless, and now worried, unnecessarily, every time he had a drink.

He avoided answering with a gulp that all but drained his glass.

"I'm guessing it was a no-go with Buffy," Willow said, undeterred.

Giles' gaze flicked to her over the rim of the crystal tumbler, watching her attempt a smile.

"At least you still have all your parts intact."

He put down the glass tumbler, miserable to the core. "Not all."

She looked vaguely alarmed by that confession.

"I meant my heart, Willow. It's broken in two."

"Oh, good. Well, not 'good' good. I was just thinking about what Spike said and . . . " Without finishing that, Willow reached out to latch onto arm, a move that tactfully trapped his glass on the tabletop. "So you and the drinking are not--y'know--terminal?"

"I haven't abandoned all hope, if that's what you're thinking."

"Good, and this time I mean 'good' good. 'Cause if there were ever two people meant to be together, it's you and Buffy." She rubbed his arm in a confident gesture. "You'll work it out."

There was a long pause.

"Buffy has a valid argument," Giles confessed frankly. "About the monks."

Willow's hand stilled. "You don't really believe that, do you?"

"All I know is that I love her very much. And she--"

"--loves you."

"Perhaps," he agreed forlornly. "But even so, I very much doubt she'll ever get past the idea that she was manipulated into this relationship." Giles let his gaze dropped, his stomach turning over as his biggest fear resurfaced. "What if . . . she's right?"

"No."

"But Buffy left Riley for me--her 'old and gross' Watcher. Twelve months earlier, she didn't care enough about me to even tell me she was dating again, let alone gush about the nancy ninja farmboy, with his obscene good looks and heroic secret identity, who had stolen her heart." He sighed despondently. "And now, incredibly, Buffy is my wife, and soon-to-be mother of my child. And so I have to question . . . why? And I have to answer . . . " He looked up in sudden distress. "Because she's right. Because the monks took her away from the man she truly loved, and forced her into my arms, for Dawn's sake."

"Or," Willow countered, having none of it, "because she just figured out that Riley Finn wasn't 'The One.' You were--are."

"They were still intimate, Willow. After Buffy kissed me for the very first time, made me think I meant something to her, that I truly had a chance, she went home and slept with him. You can't tell me he meant nothing to her . . . that given the choice of free will, she would have actually chosen me over him."

"Of course she would have! She did!" Willow argued. "Her timing sucked, is all. Kissing you woke her up to the Gilesy goodness, but she still had Riley issues. Giles, you obviously don't know this, but they were fighting for months before they broke up. And he was headed off to the jungle like a big camo-clad poophead, anyway."

But it was the timeframe that hooked Giles' ear. "Months? Such as, ever since Dawn's arrival? Around the time the monks and their bloody memories came into play?"

Willow hesitated, not wanting to add fuel to the fire. "I . . . don't know for sure."

They both fell silent for a moment.

"Buffy's just dealing with a lot right now," Willow said compassionately. "You know, Dawn being her daughter, and the end of the world and all."

Giles sighed again. "I know it wasn't the right time to tell her about Dawn, but it was the best time, given the circumstances. She deserves to know precisely what her options are, should we fail to stop Glory before . . . " He looked away again. "No wonder she bloody hates me."

"She doesn't hate you." Willow's other hand joined the one still trapping his forearm, and his Scotch, on the tabletop. "I know, from seeing the future she created in her head with you, that you're the guy of her dreams . . . no pun intended."

He gave a wan smile, wanting to latch on to the precious shred of hope she offered, but unable to do so, when it was faith versus logic and cold hard fact.

"She just needs some downtime, and a nudge and a little encouragement to find you again," Willow concluded. "Like . . . after we deal with Glory, get Dawn back, and save the world." She mustered up a confident smile. "Then you two can hibernate somewhere romantic for a week, and sort it all out. I mean--hey--you're having a baby together! That's gotta be some cause for celebration."

Giles knew Willow meant well, but he could only nod mutely in reply. Because to speak was to risk revealing the other cold fear knotting his stomach and knifing through his heart, namely that there was a strong possibility, given Buffy's scorecard against Glory, there may not be an afterwards for them. Perhaps not for any of them.

"I'm supposed to work on the factors!" Tara suddenly yelled from the front of the shop. "Willow?"

Willow glanced that way with a worried frown. From the tentative inflection in the girl's voice as she spoke her name, Giles guessed that Tara had just noticed Willow's absence, and was beginning to fret.

"You should go to her," he said in quiet understanding, putting his hand over the one she still had on his forearm.

"Yeah," Willow said, getting to her feet, her gaze still anxiously fixed on the front of the shop. "I guess, at times like this, we all just wanna be with the one we love." No sooner had the words left her lips than her wide-eyed look guiltily refocused on him. "Oh Giles, I'm sorry!"

"It's all right," he lied, feeling the knife twist just a little deeper. "After all, it's a perfectly human reaction in a time of crisis."

"Willow!"

"Go," he ordered gently.

Willow left him with an ever-grateful, still apologetic, smile. The moment she turned left at the top of the mid-point steps and disappeared from his view, Giles let the charade drop.

He dragged over his whiskey bottle. 'The one we love,' he thought jadedly, pouring another neat shot into his empty glass.

* * *

They had muffins. Scrumptious, fresh baked, blueberry muffins the size of grapefruits.

Buffy had almost devoured one in record time, hungrier than she'd ever dreamed possible, when she finally, abruptly, became aware of the way Spike was watching her. In that moment, she wished she hadn't been so distracted thinking about Giles and divorce, and just blindly followed him to the seating of his choice. Because he'd picked a booth, and all the booths were located in the back of The Espresso Pump, with candles on the tables, where the intimacy level was both uncomfortable and unwanted.

"What?" she asked, squirming self-consciously.

Spike, sitting across from her, snapped out of the fantasy he was enjoying. "What 'what'?"

She rolled her eyes. "What are you doing?"

He seemed surprised by her rather obvious question and half raised his white 'The Pump' logo mug in answer. "Enjoying my drink?"

But he was doing far more than that, she realized with a hot flush. Every move she made, every crumb she put in her mouth, his wolfish gaze devotedly followed her. Like he was imagining pushing her up against the nearest wall and--

"Stop it," Buffy ordered brusquely.

"Stop what?"

"Looking at me like . . . that."

Spike looked utterly confused. "Like what?"

She pushed her plate away, losing her appetite. "You know, this really isn't a good idea. You, me, the candles on the table." Buffy gave a furtive glance right then left. "What if someone saw us together? What if Giles came in right now and saw us together?"

Frustration rolled across Spike's face. "I thought we already covered this." He sipped his drink, unbothered. "And why do you care what Giles thinks anymore, anyway?"

Pausing, Buffy asked herself the same question, and found she didn't have an easy answer. She lifted her mug and downed the remainder of her decaf latte in a few gulps, suddenly eager to be anywhere but in the situation she found herself, and free of present company.

"Do you remember?" Spike asked, annoyingly conversational and blind to her hasty desire to be elsewhere. "That night at The Bronze's 'Grand Re-Opening'? You shocked the hell outta me, letting me know you were actually married. And I asked you, what a girl like you could possibly see in a broken down old git like him."

Buffy looked across the table at Spike, remembering. She'd described Giles as her 'other half,' the part missing from her life that completed her. Now there was just a big old empty hole where he'd been, in her heart.

Spike grinned lewdly. "You told me it was the sex."

"I did not!" Buffy denied, mortified.

"Yes, you did," Spike insisted, still grinning. "You even used the word, 'stevedore.'"

Flashes of memories, of tireless nights and tender passion, brought a new tinge of color to Buffy's cheeks. She couldn't deny it; Giles was a better lover than all her previous partners combined. "Okay, well, maybe I did. So what."

"So that's not exactly a solid foundation to build a lasting relationship on."

"Thank you, Dr. Ruth," she said flatly.

"I'm just saying that if that's all it was, and now that you know the truth of 'why' you got involved in the first place, then there's really nothing left, Buffy, except to put the whole experience behind you and move on."

Easy to say, less easy to do. The trouble was, if a mental nudge by the Dagon Monks truly had been the thing to make her take a bold initiative and kiss Giles that first time in the training room, then who was to say that she hadn't really fallen in love with him after that? Did she first need to fall in love with someone else, and then comparison shop?

Her gaze flicked to Spike as he upended his mug. Without warning, she flashed back to last year, before Giles had even been a blip on her emotional radar, when Willow's bungled spell made her think she was in love with the vampire she still despised on so many levels. That felt like the real thing, too. They'd even planned a wedding. She had no doubt that if the spell hadn't been broken, then she'd happily be Mrs. William the Bloody right now and none the wiser. But it wasn't real, the feelings, the love she thought she'd shared with Spike. It was just someone messing with her head, pulling her heartstrings like a puppeteer.

Now that the same thing had happened again with Giles, how was she ever going to determine truth from fiction?

* * *

The bottom of his second glass was his limit. Putting it down and twirling the base on the tabletop as he swallowed the last of it, Giles looked expectantly at the closed training room door, for about the hundredth time since Willow had returned to Tara's side. A muscle in his jaw rippled. It was time to face the Buffy music again. There was no way he could not. Tackling the end of the world while they were so estranged, emotions running high, did not bode well for either of them . . . or the bloody world.

Bolstered by alcohol, the double shot of liquid courage he'd downed in quick succession, Giles crossed to open the training room door.

"Buffy, love?"

He expected to find her there, newly returned from her breath of fresh air in the back alley, perhaps sitting on the couch crying over the foolishness of what she'd done. Ideally, that was the scenario he hoped to find, for it would have presented him with the perfect opportunity to try to comfort her, and work things out.

But the training room was silent and empty.

Determination dominating his steps, he went through to the back exit, stepping over the large padded roll of the downed punching bag to push open the door.

"Buffy?" Giles called into the dark alley. But it, too, was deserted. He shut the door and turned with a frown on his face. Where the devil was she?

The idea that she'd left him and the others to deal with the apocalypse on their own never even entered his head. Instead, he feared she may have shucked the plan to wait, and gone looking for Dawn without the meager backup he and her friends offered, in some vaguely heroic gesture of keeping them safe.

Concern growing, Giles shuffled back to the shop floor as fast as he could, ready to muster the troops to action, even if that meant forcibly prying Xander and Anya from a compromising position. On the way, his gaze flicked to Olaf the Troll's enchanted hammer, still sitting in the special reinforced display case Xander had constructed. If Buffy had indeed gone off to confront Glory on her own, then she hadn't taken a suitable weapon, which simply added another layer of worry to her impulsive disappearance.

"Yo! G-man!"

Reaching the mid-point steps, he spotted Xander and Anya, newly returned from their not-so-unnoticeable tryst in the basement. He limped across to them, ignorant of the fact that Anya's blouse had a button missing and Xander's hair was in need of a good comb, eager to enlist their help in tracking down Buffy before fate caught up with her, and destiny took her the way of all the slayers who had come before her.

But before he had a chance to speak, Anya dumped the golden, glowing Dagon Sphere into his hand. "See? Told you we'd find it."

"We found something else, too," Xander added. "Spike's sexbot."

"And we were thinking that if Willow could get it going again," Anya continued, "we could use it as a decoy while our Buffy rescues Dawn."

Lost in different agendas, they looked at him with triumphantly pleased grins for their newly hatched plot, while he looked at them with undisguised fear on his face.

Buffy's robotic twin had been disabled and covered with a drop sheet some months back, stored in the basement with the rest of the clutter, forgotten. While it may, indeed, prove a useful tool in the upcoming fight, Giles was far too absorbed in his wife's disappearance, and the death she most assuredly faced by going off half-cocked in an emotionally distressed state, to readily acknowledge the true brilliance of the plan.

Anya and Xander, noting his decided lack of interest in their ingenuity, were in the process of letting their pleased smiles fade to questioning frowns, when the tinkling of the bell above the shop's front door had all three wheeling around to see who had unexpectedly come in off the street.

Buffy strode inside with Spike a close step behind her, the pair looking far too chummy for Giles' jealous nature to handle with any sort of finesse. When Buffy gave Spike a thankful smile, and Spike returned it with an affectionate little grin, Giles' blood pressure went through the roof. They parted without words, their body language speaking loudly enough, Buffy heading to where Willow still sat with Tara in an oversized beanbag, and Spike to take a cursory examination of the weapons laid out for the upcoming battle.

Unceremoniously dumping the Dagon Sphere back in Anya's hands, Giles zeroed in on Buffy. Reaching her as she squatted to talk with Willow, he roughly grabbed her arm and dragged her back up to face him.

His very virulent green-eyed monster trampled all over his genuine concern for her wellbeing, and left him seething in jealousy. "Where the hell have you been?" A distasteful flick of his head went in Spike's direction. "With him?"

Straightening, Buffy returned his confrontational expression with one of her own. "Let go," she said evenly, referring to the hand he still had clamped, possessively, around her upper arm.

Although quietly spoken, her barely disguised fury was testament to her riled temper. She didn't appreciate the insinuation in his tone, or being asked to explain her questionable whereabouts, which only made Giles even more incensed. This was not the first time she had snuck off for a secret rendezvous with the vampire, and although she always insisted, and he always believed, nothing happened between them, the very thought of her with Spike, in any sense of the word, was becoming increasingly intolerable.

"Answer the bloody question!"

"You have five seconds before you lose all feeling in your arm," Buffy threatened in a low and dangerous tone.

They glared at each other for a full three seconds, despite the audience, their friends wisely choosing not to intervene. Buffy meant what she said, her sincerity identical to when she declared she would stop him if he tried to hurt Dawn. Unsure which scenario disturbed him most, Giles let her go.

"We were at The Espresso Pump," Buffy confessed. "Having coffee, if you must know."

"Coffee."

"Yes."

"He's a vampire," Giles fumed with healthy dose sarcasm. "Caffeine and cream is not part of his dietary intake."

"Which is probably why he ordered hot chocolate."

Giles nostrils flared with each breath. He couldn't think straight. Buffy had been out with Spike behind his back, when in a few short hours the fate of all mankind would be determined. Death was as close at hand as it had ever been, for him, for her, for them all. That she could conceivably choose to spend her--perhaps--final hours with that monster rather than with him was absolutely unforgivable. Worst of all was the blatant reassurance that, if he died tonight, if fate and destiny separated him and Buffy forever, then he knew precisely whose arms would comfort her in grief.

Provided, of course, Buffy still cared enough to mourn his passing. Perhaps he'd already been delegated to the rubbish heap with the rest of her past lovers, used and discarded, and no looking back.

Turning suddenly, Giles let three angry strides carry him to Spike. Blind to the sword in the vampire's hand, as he was to the pain in his side caused by his impulsiveness, Giles pulled back his fist and let loose with a punch to Spike's unsuspecting face. The vampire reeled a step or two under the surprise blow.

"What the bloody hell was that for?" Regaining his balance, he clutched his nose with one hand and glared daggers at Giles' departing back.

"Perhaps you should go off for a quick shag with him," Giles grated at Buffy, "and get it out of your system."

She bristled visibly. "Maybe I should. Then you'd really have something to act moronic about."

Hearing her agree was the last thing Giles expected. Watching her step past him to go to that bastard was the last proverbial straw. "Over my dead bloody body!"

"Can be arranged," Spike promised.

Giles reached for Buffy, intent on stopping her, when she suddenly thrust out her flattened palm in an offensive move. Not at him, but behind him. He wheeled at the sound of metal meeting wood, only then realizing how narrowly he'd avoided Spike's sword, driven downwards like a dagger and aimed between his shoulder blades. Deflected by Slayer strength, the tip of the blade instead chewed into the display case beside him, the length of it still shimmying under the force of the impact.

Spike let out a yowl of pain, clutching his head with both hands, the mere intent to harm a human enough to set of his implant chip.

Bloody vampire had just tried to kill him--again! Giles hadn't forgotten the last time, the beating Spike's hired cronies had given him in the alley behind the shop with a length of two-by-four, or the resulting concussion and fractured ribs that landed him in the hospital. Well, abdominal injury or not, this time the bastard wasn't getting away with it. No bloody way was he having Buffy!

As the pain in Spike's head subsided and he straightened, ready to pick up the fight, Giles took a menacing step forward. "Come on, Spike, you and me."

Regardless of the agonizing consequences involved, Spike eagerly stepped up to the challenge. "You wanna piece of me, Watcher?"

"Not just a piece--"

"Stop it!" Buffy ordered, running interference. "Both of you!"

"On the contrary," Giles suggested coldly, eyes on his nemesis, "it's past time we finished this, once and for all."

"You're on, Gramps."

Stepping between them, Buffy grabbed hold of both, fisting her hands in the front of their respective t-shirts and forcing them into a standoff.

"I guess I didn't make myself clear. Tomorrow, you can try to kill each other all you want, and I won't stop you. But tonight, I'm not putting up with this crap!" Fuming, she pushed them apart, releasing her hold at arm's length and causing both to falter. She glared at each in turn. "My sister . . . " She shot a pointed glance at Giles. "My daughter is out there somewhere, waiting to be sacrificed, and I'm not gonna let that happen. I'm gonna rescue Dawn, kill Glory, and save the world. To do this, I need you both . . . so if either of you are not with me on this a-hundred-and-ten-percent, and/or willing to work together, then you can leave the party now." Tugging the sword from the display case, she up-ended it with a meaningful flourish. "Any questions?"

Not wanting to tick off an already furious Slayer, Anya cautiously raised her hand. Noting the gesture, Buffy nodded for her to speak.

"Xander and I found something that may help in the rescuing Dawn part. In the basement."

Buffy moved across to them to hear the robot idea, although first with a final scowl that clearly stated the consequences of violating her terms. Regardless, Giles continued to glare at Spike, while the vampire sneered back, neither willing to be the first to back down. Their mutual animosity reached an almost tangible stage, like a living, breathing coil of cold hatred manifesting between them . . . when Spike unexpectedly relented.

With a confident smirk, he transferred his weight onto his back foot, leaned a casual hip against the weapons counter, and reached into his jacket for a cigarette and his lighter.

"Giles," Buffy called from across the shop.

Lighting his smoke, Spike raised an amused eyebrow at Giles, indicating he should be a good boy and answer the summons.

Giles turned away in seething silence. Before he allowed himself the satisfaction of removing Spike from the world in a permanent fashion, he had another job to do, so he endeavored to concentrate on performing his part in the pending apocalypse to the best of his ability, for Dawn's sake, if for no one else's.

This in mind, he pushed all the unpleasantness from his mind, all the heartache and doubt and murderous intent, and moved to Buffy's side like a dutiful Watcher . . . just as Xander and Anya finished explaining their idea to use the Buffybot as a decoy.

"No. No, that's good," she told them earnestly. "That could be pivotal. Thank you, guys."

Reaching her, Giles focused on the logistics of the proposed plan. For starters, assuming Willow could get the thing's computer up and running in time, the robot currently stood in the basement in its underwear, its clothes removed by Buffy when she posed as the automaton in order to extract information from a badly beaten Spike. "Well, you're going to need some--"

"Way ahead of you," Buffy said curtly, attuned to the same wavelength. Even estranged, they still thought as a team. "We have time?"

"Yes, if you hurry."

Buffy nodded determinedly. "Okay, get Willow working on it while I'm gone. I'll grab some weapons, too."

"I'm looking for something in a broadsword," Xander mused, attempting to defuse some of the obvious tension between Watcher and Slayer, husband and wife.

"Don't be swinging that thing near me," Spike warned in all seriousness.

Giles shot Spike look of exasperated annoyance for the fact that although he had not been invited to partake in the present conversation, he obviously thought himself important enough to be included.

Xander bristled at the insinuation aimed at his weapon prowess. "Hey, I happen to be--"

"A glorified bricklayer?" Spike asked with an insulting smirk.

Holding his tongue, Giles glanced at Buffy, but she avoided his gaze by assuming an interest in the Dagon Sphere, which she'd taken from Anya. Dear Lord, if she didn't put Spike in his place soon, then he would, and to hell with the consequences.

"I'm also a swell bowler," Xander said, quietly offended.

"He has his own shoes," Anya added in his defense.

Spike made a show of mock fear. "The gods themselves do tremble."

Buffy finally spoke up. "Spike, shut your mouth, and come with me."

Handing off the Dagon Sphere to Giles for safekeeping, Buffy stalked towards the front door of the Magic Box without looking at anyone.

Lingering, Spike traded a final victorious sneer with Giles, before he turned and obediently followed.

* * *

Home was just the way Buffy left it--or rather, the way Giles left it, in a rush, in the wake of her frantic phone call to let him know that Glory had crashed the dorm room picnic with Willow and Tara and discovered Dawn's secret. His half-emptied tea mug sat on the writing desk in the living room, undisturbed since his departure, the various research he'd been working on at the time strewn haphazardly over the desktop. It all seemed surreal, knowing those events--the Winnebago, their flight from Sunnydale, the crash, the Knights, Ben's mercy mission, Dawn's abduction--had all transpired in the preceding thirty-six hours. She'd even managed to fit in a little vacation in her head during that time.

Returning the spare key under the flowerpot beside the swing-bench on the porch, Buffy strode into her house, already dismissing those past events and concentrating on the battle ahead. Most of her weapons were in the locker in the living room, but there were a few she kept upstairs in the bedroom, that may be of use.

"The weapons are in the chest by the TV," she told Spike, unaware he had stopped outside on the stoop. "I'll grab the stuff upstairs."

"Um, Buffy . . . "

Foot on the bottom step and hand on the banister rail, she turned to him, initially annoyed by his apparent hesitation.

Spike met her frown with an apologetic look. He raised his hand, doing a bizarre interpretation of a mime trapped in a glass box.

Then she realized what he was getting at. It wasn't that Spike was unwilling to retrieve the weapons from the chest in the living room, nor given to impersonating mimes, it was simply that he couldn't enter the house. He'd been de-invited, months ago, after the discovery of his warped little crush on her sent Giles, and her marriage, into an uproar. She'd asked Willow to work the mojo and disbar the vampire for good. Until Spike's faltering just now, she'd completely forgotten the ward was still up.

"If you wanna just hand them over the threshold . . . " he suggested in defeat.

She took a few steps back towards him, making her decision. "Come in, Spike."

Surprised by the invitation, especially in the wake of why it had been revoked, he took a tentative step inside. He stopped in front of her with a thankful smile. "Presto. No barrier."

But Buffy's mind was already several pages ahead. She hadn't re-invited him for his sake, but for Dawn's. Despite the emotional upheavals she'd faced on a personal level in the past two days, Buffy understood and accepted her role in the upcoming battle. She was The Slayer, the girl standing between a seemingly invincible Hellgod and the end of the world. She was not blind to the possibility that she may die doing her job, or that with Giles and her so estranged over Dawn's destiny, that her little sister--her child--may need a new protector.

They shared a look, Spike's head tilting slightly at the telling change in her demeanor, the surrendering to fate, and the future she knew she would most likely never live to see.

"Won't bother with the small stuff," Spike said, attempting to refocus. "A couple of good axes should hold off Glory's mates while you take on the lady herself."

"We're not all going to make it," Buffy professed softly. "You know that."

"Yeah." He traded a melancholic look for a flippant shrug. "Hey, always knew I'd go down fighting. Sure as hell never thought it would be on this side, for this reason."

"I'm counting on you to protect her."

"'Till the end of the world," Spike vowed sincerely. "Even if that happens to be tonight."

Their eyes met. Buffy didn't know what possessed her to do what she did next. Maybe it was because she thought it would reflect her gratitude for the reassurance of Dawn's safety more genuinely than a simple word of thanks, or maybe because her heart was still in such turmoil, still struggling to sort out her feelings for Giles. Regardless of reason, she took a step forward, closed her eyes, and reached up to kiss Spike.

It was pure and unrequited, the simple touch of her lips against his, a gesture of thanks.

Stepping back, she met his surprised and confused eyes, hoping he understood her intent, how much it truly meant to her to know he'd look out for Dawn in the event that she should perish.

The moment lengthened, focused to a pinpoint, until something unexpected passed between them. Buffy felt it, the sudden empathy and awareness, and from the single step Spike took to close the gap between them, she knew he felt it, too. Holding her gaze until the very last moment, he lowered his head to claim her lips in a far less chaste fashion. That she let him do it, surprised them both.

It had been a long time since Buffy had known the icy kiss of a vampire, and the comparisons to a human lover were instantaneous and unstoppable. As Spike's cold lips aggressively sought to part hers, his mouth tasting of stale tobacco and bitter chocolate, she thought of Giles, his warmth and tenderness, and how with a single caress he could ignite a wildfire in her. She felt none of that in Spike's arms, or while under his roving hands, as dead to his wintry touch as his heart was inside the body he now wore. When he unleashed his passion on her full blast, it washed over her like a suffocating wave, threatening to drown her with all the lust and hatred he had for her, as the monster within warred with the man he once was.

And for a moment, she found herself helplessly caught in the crossfire.

As his chilled embrace tightened around her, possessively holding her captive against his stone cold body and demanding more than she was willing to give, Buffy finally came to her senses. She tried to step out of his arms, to end it, but when that didn't work, she resorted to using Slayer strength to achieve the same goal.

Backing up to the staircase, Buffy put a hand over her mouth in an effort to wipe away the lingering impression of something that should never have happened. Ever. And yet, as appalled as she was that it had, she couldn't lay all the blame on Spike.

She had started it. She had kissed him first.

Her thoughts immediately turned to Giles, and the guilty fact that she had committed an act of betrayal. There was no doubting she felt ashamed of herself for that, but the real question was . . . had she just proven that she really was in love with Giles? Or was she simply having another triggered response?

The only thing of which she was absolutely certain was that Spike still disgusted her. Her eyes flitted back to him as he took a step towards her, looking as if he might try to pursue things further.

When she took a reflexive step back, which put her on top of the first stair, he stopped.

"I know you'll never love me," Spike said, his expression turning desperate in the wake of her obvious rejection. "I know that I'm a monster. But if you treat me like a man . . . " He stopped, as the look on her face turned to revulsion.

"I made a mistake," Buffy said by way of apology.

"No, pet, I did. Should've bloody known that kissing you would just wake you up to . . . " Forlorn, Spike shook his head, and moved into the living room. "Get your stuff. I'll be here."

Buffy continued to watch him move amongst the shadows, until he had found the weapon chest and bent over the opened lid. 'Wake her up' to what? That she loved Giles, or that she hated Spike?

God, she had to stop thinking about this!

Turning decisively, Buffy started up the stairs to collect what she needed. She had a job to do--an enemy to slay and a loved one to save--and she couldn't afford any more of the bigtime emotional distraction.

Besides, none of it was going to matter squat, if tonight she took the Big Dirt Nap.

* * *

One reason Giles liked and had purchased the dark Peruvian walnut desk for the Magic Box was that it had numerous pigeonholes for keeping assorted office items in their places--the same pigeonholes that he currently detested. He was in search of something called a 'jumper,' which, as a computer dictionary had enlightened him, was 'a small metal bridge, consisting of a plastic plug that fit over a pair of protruding pins, used to close an electrical circuit.' Willow had removed one from each of the two robots residing in the shops basement, stating that without the crucial components, neither automaton could return to life regardless of the state of their power cells.

The trouble was, these jumper things were half the size of a fingernail, and it had been months since he'd put them in one of the pigeonholes for safekeeping. Naturally, now that they needed one, he couldn't find either of them.

Growing frustrated as his methodical search turned up nothing, Giles banged his fist on the desktop. Gaze narrowing, his eyes impatiently traveled to the shop's front door. In truth, it wasn't the elusive jumper that had him wound so tight.

Where the devil was she? And what, precisely, had she in mind when she elected to take Spike home? He wished he hadn't put the idea in her head, that shagging Spike was a solution to anything.

It wasn't that he didn't trust her--he did. Even in her emotionally strung state, he trusted her implicitly. Spike, however, was another story. He would not need much of an opening to try to take advantage of Buffy's vulnerable heart, twisting circumstance for his own benefit.

"Yo! Big-G!"

His gaze flicked left at the familiar--and still appalling--moniker, as Xander came up out of the basement.

"Willow wants to know if you found the do-dad yet."

Cursing under his breath, Giles restarted his pigeonhole search.

"I'll take that as a 'no'," Xander said, stopping beside the desk.

He hovered briefly, as if expecting conversation, but when Giles remained silent and surly in his systematic opening and closing of the pigeonhole drawers, from left to right, top to bottom, the younger man shrugged to himself and moved off towards the research nook. He returned to Giles' line of sight just seconds later with Willow's laptop computer cradled against his chest.

At precisely that moment, Giles stopped stirring the contents of pigeonhole number six with his index finger, and let out a triumphant pronouncement. "Ah!" He plucked the tiny black plastic square from beneath the pile of multi-colored map tacks in the two-inch square drawer, wondering how he could have missed it the first time.

He looked at Xander, who simply shrugged.

Giles followed him back down to the basement, where Willow was already working to bring Buffy's mechanical doppelganger back to life. The air smelled faintly of solder and burn flux, byproducts of the repair job she insisted was 'an easy fix.' From what he could tell, peering over Willow's shoulder, several wires connecting the circuit boards to the power cells had been burned out in an overload, sustained when the Buffybot took a direct hit from the butt of a crossbow in the scuffle with Glory's minions. That it--she--had saved his life in the process was something Giles would never forget.

Now that they were working on a deadline, Giles almost wished he'd asked Willow to repair the thing months back, if it wasn't for the mixed bag of feelings that stirred within him whenever he looked at it. The robot was so lifelike, the image of Buffy physically, yet at the same time so utterly unlike its human counterpart in its lack of compassion, and social graces. It couldn't even pronounce his name right.

Although anxious, Giles forced himself to watch and wait, one hand on his injury as he took a seat on the unfinished wooden steps. He glanced at his wristwatch, worried about the time factor and the battle ahead, but the cracked face reminded him that it had stopped working yesterday, after the RV crash. Still, he could feel it in his gut--the steady, unrelenting approach of impending doom, ticking off the seconds of his internal clock like a countdown to destiny. He was about to remind his young friends of the need for some degree of haste, when Willow finally set aside her soldering iron and spool of rosin. Using a pair of needle-nose pliers--all tools newly purchased from the hardware store across the street, which was, luckily, still open for business--she fit the jumper in place on the main circuit board exposed by an access panel in the robot's back. She tilted the robot upright, until it was standing clad only in a frilly lace bra and panties, its vacant stare fixed, unseeing, on a point somewhere across the basement. After a little searching, Willow found and opened another panel in its midriff, where she connected a cable between it and her laptop, and booted both systems.

"Okay, I haven't exactly had a chance to try this," Willow explained hesitantly as she waited for her computer to load, "on account that I tweaked the program code after the Buffybot was damaged and brought here. But if this works, the robot should talk and act a lot more like our Slayer Buffy, than like Spike's please-all, bubble-headed sexbot. No offense Giles."

"None taken." The memory of his Buffy posing as the dim-witted automaton and acting subservient to the likes of Spike still played havoc with him sometimes. Although undoubtedly, reprogramming the thing to mimic the real Buffy was sure to come with its own new set of reservations. He added a sarcastic smile. "Provided it can say my name right, we'll all be happy."

"Just . . . need . . . . to . . . upload . . . " she said slowly, fingers dancing across her laptop keyboard. Finished, she sat back and threw him a grin. "There, all done."

Eager to see the result, Giles used the handrail to pull himself to his feet. He moved closer, with an equally eager Xander.

"Oh, I haven't brought her online yet," Willow explained, noting their collective male gazes, glued to the still motionless visage of a half-naked Buffy. "Thought maybe Buffy would wanna--y'know--put some clothes on her first."

Realizing his curiosity was bordering on ogling, Giles cleared his throat. "Quite right."

Anya, upstairs and assigned to watching Tara for the duration of the repair, called down to them from the top of the stairs, the sound of her voice snapping Xander from a similar appreciative trance. "Buffy's back."

Giles turned as she jogged down the basement steps, greeting her with a smile, and a look that asked if everything went to plan while at home. Ignoring him completely, she pulled the strap of a shoulder bag over her head, and focused on her immobilized doppelganger.

"Is she fixed?"

"Ready and willing to do battle with the big brewing evil," Willow reported. "Well, she will be when I activate her new programming."

"Did you get what you needed?" Giles asked Buffy, resorting to a verbal segue in order to establish his present in her world.

Buffy finally acknowledged him. "Change of clothes for me," she said of the contents of her shoulder bag. "Spike has the bag of weapons upstairs." She smiled at Xander. "'Though no broadsword, Xan, sorry."

Willow, ever the matchmaker, saw an opportunity, and began manhandling Xander towards the foot of the basement steps before the creative comment forming on his lips could be spoken. "We'll leave you to change clothes and whatever, then. When you're ready to activate her, just press the ENTER key on my laptop."

With that, she pushed Xander up the stairs ahead of her, exited into the shop, and closed the door at the top.

Alone in the basement, Buffy turned her back on Giles and began laying out clean clothes from her bag. The idea was to dress the robot in her current attire, which would hopefully add to the effectiveness of the charade and convince Glory that the decoy was, in fact, The Slayer. With a little luck, and if the robot could successfully occupy Glory's attention for a short duration, Buffy would be able to sneak by her defenses and rescue Dawn before the ritual began.

At least that was the plan. At present, there were numerous holes in the strategy, including that they had no real clue where Glory--and therefore Dawn--was presently located, or what multitude of unknown obstacles they may face when they eventually got there.

As Buffy began to strip, Giles holstered a hand in his jean's pocket and withdrew to the stairs, leaning an arm on the banister and feeling oddly awkward in the presence of his own wife.

"Giles?"

He turned hopefully, finding her standing in just her bra and bikini briefs, both undergarments functional rather than frilly, like those of her counterpart. She was looking down at herself, in particular the area below her navel, which gave him clear insight into the topic she was about to address even before she lifted her head to meet his gaze.

"Have there ever been any other pregnant slayers?"

"Yes, actually, there have." He chanced to move back to her, longing to just sweep her into his arms and heal the rift between them by kissing her senseless. But Buffy needed the counsel of her Watcher right now, not her estranged husband leading her into another avoidable argument in his desperation to make things right.

In hindsight, he supposed he should be grateful he'd done a little research on this, when he and Buffy had first become 'a couple.' When they'd become intimate, Giles had turned to the journals of his predecessors as a refresher course in written Council edict and the likely punishment for breaking protocol, and had, in a few cases, read some rather detailed accounts of active slayers with child. Only a handful had been fathered by Watchers, even less had concluded with a proverbial happy ending.

"Did they, like, survive long enough to give birth?"

Refusing to reveal the dismal percentages, he tried to sound upbeat as he answered. "Some. Although all retired from active duty by their second trimester. Temporarily, of course."

"So it is possible for me to still fight right now without risking . . . "

He recognized her concern, the worry that she may lose her baby--their baby--in the upcoming battle to save the world. The idea saddened him, perhaps even more than the thought of losing Dawn. Of all the sacrifices he'd envisioned them facing together, this was not one of them.

"I don't wanna lose this baby," Buffy announced with conviction.

Standing close, Giles resisted the urge to give comfort and reassurance in a touch. "I don't want you to, either. And from what I've read, your slayer constitution is the biggest asset you have in that regard."

Looking up into his eyes, she held his gaze for an extended moment, giving him hope that reconciliation was not an impossible feat. She moved away before he could pursue it, having heard what she needed to bolster her courage, and began to don her armor of choice--a white, rib-knit sweater and a pair of soft gray slacks.

"Spike told me--" she began, but then thought better of it.

Giles scowled, not only at the mention of the vampire's name, but at the notion he considered himself worthy enough to give advice. "Oh, yes? What words of wisdom did he offer you this time?"

"Never mind."

"No, do tell," Giles encouraged dryly. "Lord knows, I'm in need of a momentary chuckle."

"He knew I was pregnant, okay?" Fully dressed, Buffy turned to face him, pulling out her ponytail and letting her hair cascade around her shoulders like liquid gold. "As disgusting as it sounds, Spike said he could smell the changes in me. Giles, if that's true, then the entire vampire population of Sunnydale is gonna smell me soon, too."

Sarcasm flew out the window, replaced by genuine raw fear.

"He said that once that happens, every vamp and other evil nasty in town will come after me, knowing I can't fight back. Is that true?"

Swallowing the lump in this throat, Giles nodded morbidly. He recalled reading one particularly gruesome account in a predecessor's journal, by a Watcher whose allegiances lay with the Council and their rules, rather than with his charge. In 1746, the eighteen-year-old Slayer in question had been killed by an organized mob of undead, after her Watcher shunned her for her improprieties and outcast her to the wolves. Unable to adequately defend herself, and unable to find anywhere safe for the duration of her pregnancy due her olfactory signature, the hunter soon became the hunted. She'd been almost full term when they'd held her down and cut her baby from her womb. The mutilated bodies of both mother and child were delivered to her Watcher's doorstep in victory, where he discovered them the following morning and then promptly wrote a dispassionate report to the Council requesting reassignment.

"I don't wanna be the Dish of the Day," Buffy said, drawing Giles' horrified gaze back to her. "Especially when I get so big that I become a liability to myself."

Truly appalled, Giles closed the small gap between them, his hand outstretched. But he let it drop before he reached her, knowing she would only shun his touch. "Buffy, I swear to you, no matter the state of our personal lives, I will do everything within my power to keep you safe until you deliver this baby. You have my word, as your Watcher."

Buffy read the concern in his eyes and nodded slowly. "You've always been real good at that, the taking care of me, even before we were . . . " She pursed her lips. "Thank you."

Giles held his breath. In that moment, he knew that he could not--would not--send her out to battle knowing this may well be their last moment on earth together, not with the truth of their feelings for one another still unresolved. Slowly, he leaned down to her, letting actions speak louder than words, watching her gaze dipped to regard his descending lips.

But the kiss never happened. Balking at the proposal, Buffy deliberately turned her cheek. Her doppelganger became her excuse, as she turned and started to dress the robot in her discarded clothes.

Crushed and empty, Giles broke the ensuing silence. "Buffy--"

"No, Giles, please don't. I can't do this right now."

"And I can't stand here pretending my heart's not broken in two!"

They looked at each other, fraught with the emotions both struggled to keep from showing.

"I know," Buffy admitted frankly. "Mine, too."

Hope welled in him again. "Then why can't we--?"

"Because Dawn's life is on the line." Standing tall, Buffy donned a mask of grim determination. "You have to understand. Right now, I can't be your wife, or your lover, or the mother of your unborn child. I can't waste any more emotion trying to figure out what the monks did or didn't do, and I can't take time to argue this out with you. Right now, I can only be one thing, Giles--The Slayer." Her expression turned beseeching. "Please . . . let me be The Slayer."

Giles just looked at her. She'd just begged him for the same thing that she had, earlier, lashed out at him for attempting. She wanted to be 'The Slayer,' closed off and cold to his feelings, when all he'd been trying to do when he'd dispassionately told her only Dawn's death could stop the ritual, was to be 'A Watcher.'

And yet she failed to see the parallel, because this time it was about her.

God only knew, it was always about her.

It should have made him angry, and he should have called her on it. But he didn't. Because the thought of this tenuous moment alone together being their final 'goodbye' had overshadowed everything and squeezed his heart into a tiny ball of fear.

Despite the blind selfishness of her request, Buffy was right. The fate of all mankind far outweighed their present personal estrangement. Even if she couldn't see fit to let him live up to his birthright, he had no choice but to step aside and let her play the role she was born to fulfill, without sentiment or emotion getting in the way.

"Um, guys?" Willow's voice called down from the top of the basement stairs, interrupting the moment.

Holding Giles' despondent gaze, Buffy called out an answer. "What's up, Will?"

"Um, sorry to interrupt, but I thought you'd wanna know. Tara's getting real anxious to be elsewhere."

"It's time," Buffy quietly told Giles.

"Yes," was all he could say. The plan was to allow Tara, under Glory's influence, to lead them to the location where the Hellgod planned to do her ritual with Dawn, and stop her before she could.

Finally diverting her gaze from his, Buffy resumed dressing her robot twin. "Stay close to Tara, but don't crowd her," she instructed over her shoulder, now in full Slayer mode. "We'll follow in a minute."

With a heavy heart, Giles watched her move to Willow's laptop, and tap the appropriate key. As the robot hummed into life, he somehow found the strength to turn away.

The moment had arrived for them to play the roles fate had chosen for them, to face the destiny neither Watcher nor Slayer could avoid.

* * *

They must have looked a sight, armed to the teeth and following a girl wearing 'moon and stars' pajamas through the nighttime residential streets of Sunnydale. It was a small wonder they weren't arrested. Then again, when it came to trouble, the town populace tended to turn a collective blind eye. Perhaps, if anyone had looked out their living room curtains and spied them, they had been perceived as vigilantes, keeping the streets safe.

Which was, in a roundabout way, precisely what they were doing.

From his position in the rear of the group, Giles regarded his ragtag band of would-be warriors with respect and admiration, as they willingly marched toward their possible doom. Xander, Anya, Willow, and even Spike . . . any one of them could have fled from the front lines of the apocalypse, and yet they had all elected to stay, to meet their fates together. He was terribly proud of them all . . . with the exception of Spike. Spike was working to his own agenda, his loyalty to Buffy only for personal gain.

Without breaking stride, Giles glanced at the Buffybot, obediently walking at his side, her pace slowed slightly to match his injured gait. Apparently Willow's new programming was working, because the robot of old would have returned his look with a bright and carefree smile. Now she--it--simply ignored him in favor of the seriousness of the task at hand. Her protocols allowed for him, as 'her Watcher,' to issue basic commands, which was primarily why she stuck with him rather than led the pack, as the real Buffy would have done.

Turning his attention wider afield, Giles scanned his dark surrounds for the real Buffy. Although he knew she was close, she remained hidden from sight so as not to blow the robot's cover prematurely.

They continued to follow Tara, who, under the Hellgod's influence unwittingly led them to the final confrontation, through the twist and turn of streets, until the houses gradually thinned and gave way to warehouses and vacant industrial lots. When they finally reached their destination, it was in an unpopulated part of town.

Showers of sparks from arc-welders rained out from behind hastily built walls of corrugated sheet metal, which did a reasonable job of fencing off the area from any curious passers by. The sound of hammered steel still echoed in the night, the construction not yet complete. Stopping as one, the group's attention was simultaneously drawn to the object that dominated the center of the industrial lot.

"Shpadoinkle!" Xander said, gazing up in awe with the rest of them.

The tower rose forebodingly into the night sky, a creaking hulk of iron and steel. Built by Glory's minions with little care for safety, it loomed ten or more stories high, consisting of metal beams and pipes crisscrossed to support a rough network of rickety ladders and treacherous gantries. But the thing that held Giles' attention was a long platform at its pinnacle, reaching out into the Sunnydale night towards the eastern horizon, like a diving board into hell.

"What is that?" Anya asked.

"The portal must open up there," Giles guessed. At least, now, he knew precisely where to find Dawn. And, at the appointed hour, Glory.

Reaching Dawn, however, just became a whole new challenge, in that it required one to ascend the ramshackle spire while fighting off the opposition. To this end, it was imperative for Giles and the others to invade the construction site, repel any and all opposition they found, and hold a strategic position at the tower base. If Glory couldn't get up there, then she couldn't begin her ritual.

Provided, of course, she wasn't already aloft.

"Hey!" Xander said, looking off to the left. "Check that out. I think I can work with that."

Giles spared a quick glance at the piece of machinery that had captivated his young friend's enthusiasm. Parked just beyond the crudely erected steel fence with an assortment of other heavy equipment was a demolition wrecking ball on a mobile crane.

"See you guys in there." With a quick kiss to Anya for luck, Xander left the group.

"Will, you're up," the Buffybot said, although no one was taking orders from the automaton. Still, it was reassuring to know that her reprogramming was sufficient to fool the casual acquaintance, such as Glory.

"Need anything?" Giles asked Willow, carefully scanning the various stages of the tower for signs of life. Despite the obvious work still taking place at ground level, the terraces above were devoid of Glory's brown-robed minions and her mentally impaired workers, not to mention the Hellgod herself.

"Could use a little courage," Willow admitted. In a last minute conference before leaving the Magic Box, as they chose their weapons and finalized their strategy, Willow revealed her plan to try to restore Tara's mind using magic, a physical link with Glory, and a whole lot of luck.

It was a bold move, Giles thought, as well as an utterly desperate one that could leave both Willow and Tara dead. Not that he wouldn't have tried the same if the shoe were on the other foot, risked life and limb for the woman he loved. Instinct made him glance right in search of her, just as Spike gallantly offered his flask to Willow.

"The real kind. But thanks anyway."

Giles squinted into the darkness, and in the flash from an arc-welder, thought he caught a glimpse of Buffy's silhouette moving into position about thirty yards away.

Time to move.

He turned to the robot, still at his shoulder awaiting orders. Giles extracted the gold, glowing Dagon Sphere from his weapons bag and carefully placed it in her hands. "You know what to do," he told her.

Face fixed, eyes locked with his, the Buffybot nodded, the gesture so like the resolve of his Buffy that he almost believed they'd traded places. He caught himself responding to her, and hastily dropped the hand he had half-raised to her cheek. As striking as the similarly was physically, her eyes were what ultimately gave her away--the decided lack of a spark in the glass and plastic irises. The robot had no zest for life, none of the passion he saw whenever he looked into Buffy's eyes.

Moving past her, he drew his sword from his weapon bag before dumping it on the sidewalk. Returning to the group, he caught sight of Tara slip between a break in the sheet metal fencing and disappear into the compound. Willow, already on the move, was only a few yards behind her.

"Go," he ordered the Buffybot, who again nodded determinedly and proceeded after Willow. Willow would confront Glory first, and--hopefully--restore Tara's mind, with the robot backing her up. If all went according to plan, the Buffybot would then engage Glory's attention long enough for the real Buffy to slip in unchallenged, and rescue Dawn.

"Right," Spike said without turning around. "Showtime." Hefting his crossbow, he was off at a run, darting to the right in search of a counter-entry point into the construction zone.

Noting Anya's edgy stance and the two-handed death grip she had on her baseball bat, Giles sided up to her. "Stay close to me," he said protectively, removing his glasses and tucking them into his jacket pocket for safekeeping.

"Good idea." She drew a deep breath and exhaled it just as quickly. "That way you can distract them and die first."

"Not planning on dying just yet, thank you very much," Giles said, moving quickly after Spike and leaving Anya to follow. Which she did, post haste.

They caught up with the vampire on the northwest side of the area, waiting anxiously as he tore the last piece of sheet metal from the crude fencing, and created a hole large enough for them to gain access. Spike went in first, followed by Giles, and then Anya. Squeezing around a stack of fifty-gallon drums, they found themselves amidst a beehive of activity, as Glory's insane victims crossed back and forth like worker drones in their relentless desire to complete their mistress's ziggurat.

The sound of fighting pricked Giles' ears. Over the pallets of bricks, cement bags, and various other materials stacked in the center of the zone, he caught sight of the Buffybot engaging Glory in a one-on-one fist battle on the southeastern side of the tower, but no sign of Willow or Tara, and no time to look for them. Between him and the robot were the steps leading up to Dawn . . . and about thirty escapees from the Sunnydale General mental ward, many of whom were still wearing bathrobes and hospital gowns. Scattered amongst them like cowardly overseers were a dozen or more telltale brown robes of Glory's decrepit minions--the overgrown leprotic hobbits, as Buffy's Aunt Arlene had dubbed them--all armed with medieval weaponry. Wherever the real Buffy was, positioned and waiting for her opportunity, there was clearly no easy way up to Dawn with the current mob assembled at the base of the stairs.

In the midst of the commotion, two of the 'hobbits' spotted them, and swiftly mounted the first few steps to address all present.

"Stand fast!" one yelled, momentarily halting the persistent wanderings of the zombie-like workers. "Kill anyone who dares approach! This will be our day of 'Glory!'"

Spike, never one for overblown speeches--or terrible puns--raised his crossbow and shot. The arrow found its mark, and Giles mentally crossed one brown-robed minion off his hit list.

However, with success came attention, and suddenly the focus shifted to the three of them. The minion remaining on the stairs pointed and yelled, "Kill them!"

All hell broke loose.

Spike charged into the fray with a battle roar; Anya, caught up in the adrenaline of the moment, following before Giles could tell her to wait.

As the mob attacked en masse, Giles raised his sword and braced his feet. A man in a blue-and-white striped bathrobe came at him first, wielding a length of lead pipe that was clearly aimed to crack open his skull. Deflecting the downward swoop with the flat edge of his sword, Giles easily disarmed the man, and then, despite his opponent's obvious goal to kill, elbowed him in the temple and knocked him unconscious. These men were, after all, victims of Glory, innocent lives he would not take if at all avoidable, despite their homicidal intent.

As his opponent crumpled, another was waiting behind to take his place. This time, it was a brown-robed, scraggly-faced minion swinging a poleaxe, and Giles' compassion for the innocent went right out the window. He blocked first, then changed the line of attack by bringing the crossed blades down, back, and then up high. Following through with a horizontal crosscut, his attacker was quickly and neatly disemboweled.

Grim-faced, Giles stepped over the quivering body, avoiding the pooling blood and seeping entrails, and raised his sword for the next in line. Adrenaline and the alcohol still in his system was doing a good job keeping his own pain at bay, although he'd felt something rip in his side with the last exertion--no doubt more popped stitches. He wasn't game to take his eyes off the battle to look to see if he was bleeding again, he only knew that a spot on the left side of his borrowed t-shirt had begun to feel warm and wet.

Another crazy man attacked him, this time armed with nothing but a brick, and was as quickly subdued as his fellow mental patient. The extent of the chap's injuries would be a Godzilla-sized headache courtesy the pommel of Giles' sword, and a possible broken toe from the dropped brick.

Still in his battle stance, Giles paused. With no immediate threat forthcoming, he allowed himself a brief respite in which to draw breath and tally their progress. The group guarding the base of the tower had thinned, as they spread out to attack him, Spike, and Anya in smaller groups. Spike left a trail of brown robes laying dead in his wake, as he systematically worked his way towards clearing a path to the steps. The humans he encountered were simply tossed aside or punched into oblivion, the latter technique causing an unavoidable moment of weakness as his implant chip fired. Anya fared better than expected with her baseball bat, although no doubt cracking a few unfortunate heads and ribs as she defended herself from all comers.

Stepping up on a pallet of cement bags, Giles looked over to see how the Buffybot was coping with Glory . . . just in time to see the robot's head leave its shoulders due to a well-timed kick from the Hellgod. He almost cried out in response, a reflexive reaction to seeing the image of his love decapitated in battle, when he was hit from behind and sent sprawling to the ground.

Despite the pinpoint pain focused between his shoulder blades, Giles somehow managed to twist his body to land on his back. Instinctively, he threw the blade of his sword horizontal across his chest and caught the tip with his other hand, in anticipation of his attacker's next move. It came not in the form of a medieval sword or axe cleaving down towards him, but that of a huge, long-handled wrench hammering into the fine edge of his sword, as a crazed worker in a red plaid shirt and a yellow hardhat attempted to turn his brain to mush. The man had obviously been trying to coldcock him from behind, but had, in his addled state of mind, completely misjudged his aim.

Still, that didn't stop him from trying again. And again. The reverberation of multiple impacts caused the tip of Giles' sword to cut into his palm. Rousing his strength as his adversary's waned from the exertion of repeated blows, Giles thrust up sharply with both hands, knocking the wrench upwards and smashing it into the looming face. The man staggered blindly backwards, losing his hardhat on the way. He clutched ineffectually at his bloody and broken nose with large work-gloved hands, until he tripped backwards over a cement mixer and went down in a tangle of limbs and hoses and mixing bucket, and stayed there.

In his peripheral vision, Giles caught sight of an axe blade swooping down towards him, and rolled safely to his feet as it chipped the concrete beside his head. Without a beat, he squared off against the newest brown-robed minion to challenge him, holding his sword with both hands. The blood from his cut palm made the hilt slippery, so he locked his index finger through the ring on the crossguard, lest he be easily disarmed.

He was aware of the way his breathing had changed from simply exerted to labored, and how the ache in his side had similarly escalated from merely painful to borderline agony. He tried to pull his shoulders back, to appear imposing, but was just as aware that he was favoring his injury again, listing to the left. Noting this, the clear advantage it had, the minion showed a malevolent smile of crooked brown teeth. It raised its axe for a quick kill, only to be clubbed into next week by Anya and her baseball bat.

"Thank you," Giles said, relaxing slightly. He spared a moment to put a hand to his abdominal injury. As expected, his palm came away slick with fresh blood.

"Not a problem," Anya returned, on an adrenaline high. "Wanna live." Off his questioning look, she added, "You're doing a very good job at distracting them."

They stood together for a brief moment, before Anya charged off to aid Spike.

"BUFFY!"

The unexpected sound of Dawn's voice, faint on the breeze but carrying a frantic timbre, had Giles looking upwards in heart-in-throat alarm.

"I'M UP HERE! BUFFY!"

Giles automatically turned his attention to where he'd seen the Buffybot go down, and was amazed to find the tables turned. With awe and relief, Giles watched his Buffy shoulder the enchanted troll hammer, her weapon of choice for this encounter, while standing over the Hellgod sprawled at her feet. Buffy also looked skyward at her sister's hysterical summons, a scant second before she made her move.

Although the tower steps were still guarded by several armed minions, Buffy jumped onto a pile of cinderblocks and vaulted onto the steps behind the sentry group. The one that tried to confront her received a Slayer punch in the gut before being tossed unceremoniously over the handrail to the concrete some twelve feet below.

Rallying himself, Giles started after her, just as determined to reach Dawn at the top of the tower.

Unfortunately, so did Glory. Picking herself up, the Hellgod charged up the tower steps after Buffy, parting her brown-robed minions and insane followers like Moses parted the Red Sea. The gap closed again before Giles was even halfway there, meaning he was going to have to do things the old-fashioned way and fight his way through them, tooth and nail.

With little effort, he dispatched a fellow in a hospital gown wielding nothing more threatening than a broom handle, then another equally unarmed mental patient, and another, as he slowly, methodically, worked his way towards the steps.

The sound of Dawn's panic-stricken cries drove him forward. Although desperate in his parental attempt to reach her, after a few minutes he reluctantly concluded that there were simply too many bodies standing in his way. Giles stopped, breathing hard and forced into a frustrated standoff. Sword raised and ready, he looked at them while they looked at him. Still clumped around the base of the tower, as a solid wall of flesh and blood guarding the steps, the remaining mental patients now appeared reluctant to leave their post and attack him. Instead, by standing fast as one, they stubbornly denied him access.

"Giles!"

He swiveled, finding one desperate plea for help that he could answer.

Anya's luck as resident slugger had apparently run out. With two hospital escapees beset on her, she was slowly losing the fight. Each wrestled hold of an arm, stringing her between them, which rendered her baseball bat useless. As one of Glory's minions rushed in to deliver a killing blow with a short sword, Giles counter-charged the group with a roar fueled by determination. He skewered the oncoming minion just below the ribcage, the strength of his drive causing the thing to drop the short sword, while forcing it backwards, until he had impaled it on an upended wooden pallet. The pallet splintered beneath its weight. Crumpling, the demon looked at him with a pitiful expression, mouthing a wordless plea for mercy. Face set, Giles twisted his sword upwards and ended its pain.

His gaze lingered on the broken pallet for a moment, in particular, a rough, tapered length of wood. Straightening, Giles tugged his sword free and turned back to Anya, but Spike had come to her aid in the interim, and her attackers now lay dead at her feet. He couldn't be sure what made him do it, whether it was Spike's callous disregard for the innocent or his own simmering hatred for the vampire on his internal backburner, but Giles turned back to the pallet and picked up the makeshift stake. With a cold glance at Spike's turned back, he stuffed it into his jacket pocket.

Anya looked dazed from her near-death encounter. As the rabble at the steps started hurling bricks at them, Giles grabbed her arm and dragged her back to cover. He crouched with her, taking refuge behind a large, horizontal tank of propane--fuel for the cutting torch sitting beside it. Spike joined them, thankful for the brief respite. Even with his vampire strength and endurance, the unending throng was starting to take its toll. As Giles had found out for himself, for every one enemy dispatched, three more were ready and waiting to take its place.

"What kind of bloody plan is that?" Spike asked, nodding at the group now doggedly guarding the steps with nothing more than the odd tossed brick and some threatening glares. He raised his head above cover, and yelled, "Cowards!"

"A rather effective one actually," Giles disagreed between labored pants for breath. "Since we're still bloody down here and not . . . " He nodded upwards to finish his sentence. Craning his neck, he searched the tower for Buffy, finally spotting her engaged in a lively fight with Glory about a third of the way up.

Suddenly, there was an almighty crash of metal as a ladder was knocked free, then, to Giles' horror, Buffy lost her balance and toppled backwards off the gantry.

He shot to his feet, a knot of fear threatening to strangle him. "BUFFY!"

He couldn't see where she landed, the precise spot obscured from his line of sight by the various construction materials and equipment piled between them, only the plume of dust rising over the barrier from the point of impact.

'Oh, dear Lord . . . '

His head was a jumble of statistics and logic--the height of the fall versus Buffy's Slayer constitution; if she was alive, dead, or severely injured; if said constitution could indeed protect against a miscarriage. His only comfort was the knowledge that Glory, whom Buffy had pulled off the tower with her, had not emerged from ground zero to begin another treacherous ascent, ether. Hopefully, that meant Buffy was alive, and had already re-engaged Glory in combat.

"Giles, get down!" Anya ordered, annoyed, tugging on his hand.

A brick hurtled past his head, forcing reluctant compliance.

"Has anyone noticed we're going backward?" Anya asked, nodding at the familiar nearby hole in the sheet metal fence. Indeed, they were back to where they started.

Spike peeked over the top of the propane tank. A brick hit him square in the forehead. Irritated rather than injured, he ducked back down again. "It's crossed my mind."

"As long as Buffy can keep Glory down long enough, it doesn't matter. There's only a few minutes left to start the ritual," Giles said, torn between staying put in relative safety and wanting to go to her.

If not for assistance, then for the simple reassurance that she had survived the horrendous fall. The thought of her lying broken on the concrete, alive but defenseless, as her adversary moved in for the coupe de grace, edged him ever closer in his decision. He was done with letting her be 'The Slayer,' and to hell with the consequences.

The sound of crashing concrete from behind had the three of them instinctively ducking for cover.

"What the hell was that?" Spike asked with a frown.

Giles shook his head. He had no idea what the sound represented, nor did he care. His attention was still focused on the spot where he had seen Buffy fall, desperately praying for some visual indication that she was all right. In a heartbeat, he knew what he had to do. As grim as the prospect was, he knew that if Buffy had failed, if she was incapacitated due to the fall, or dead, then it was up to him to finish the job she started.

Tearing his gaze away, he looked up the tower, to the platform at the top. To Dawn.

There was a scuffle behind them, the scrape of sheet metal, and Xander crawled through the hole in the fence.

He joined them, crouched behind the propane tank. "How're we doing?"

"So far, it's a tie," Anya said wearily.

"We haven't gotten up to Dawn," Giles reported, "but then, neither has anyone else."

Spike, however, contradicted that. "Someone's up there."

Giles scowled in silent disagreement. He couldn't see anyone up there, and he was quite certain no one had slipped by the mob on the steps in the wake of Buffy and Glory's failed attempt at a summit.

He peered up again, squinting, satisfying himself that the vampire was wrong.

Anya slapped Xander on the arm. She looked annoyed by the fact that her boyfriend hardly seemed rumpled, when the rest of them were bruised, bleeding, and out of breath. "Where've you been?"

Xander grinned, and planted a quick kiss on the side of her head. "Bowling."

Dismissing the obscure remark, Giles' attention perked up at the faint sound of a fight drawing closer, namely the resonance of a heavy weapon meeting the dull thud of flesh. He dared raise his head above the propane tank to get a better look at what was happening, and was rewarded with the triumphant sight of Glory staggering backwards into view after Buffy hit her in the face with the enchanted troll hammer.

In an instant, he was both elated and anxious. He watched Buffy swing the hammer again and again, like a Louisville slugger, each vicious blow echoing in the night, and driving Glory one step closer toward defeat. Glory didn't even have a chance to fight back or defend herself, such was the Slayer's wrath and determination. The Hellgod merely reeled back one faltering step after another, every time Buffy mercilessly struck her. Glory's troops held fast too, watching the fight, torn between aiding their mistress and obeying her first order to guard the tower.

When the two combatants crossed out of the open and disappeared from his line of sight again, Giles knew it was time to make his move. Not to Dawn, but to Buffy. Still confident in his belief that no one had been able to reach Dawn, he assumed that she was, for the moment, safer in her present location than down here with the battle still in progress. As Xander suggested they try charging the ragtag, and now uncertain-looking, pajama-clad group still tenaciously defending the tower steps, Giles tightened his grip on his sword, bent double, and took off in the opposite direction.

He heard Anya call his name, followed by the inevitable rain of bricks that stopped his young friends from attempting to follow. Reaching the cover of one of a dozen concrete pillars in the center of the work area, Giles straightened behind it and took his bearings. Buffy was still driving Glory backwards across the southwestern quadrant of the construction zone, which, by his calculations, he was running parallel to behind a protective, head-high stack of building supplies. Holding his sword close to his chest, he assessed his route. The majority of Glory's followers, minions and victims alike, still remained congregated at the base of the tower guarding the stairs. A few strays patrolled a small area to the west, where someone still obediently operated an arc-welder without the knowledge of a job well over and done with.

Ahead of him was a concrete wall, which, clearly, had been part of the original foundation before Glory had marched in and taken over the construction site. It barred his forward progress . . . or would have done, had it not been for the bloody great hole it now sported in its center. The chunks of concrete and twisted bits of rebar strewn around him suddenly accounted for the massive crash he'd heard moments ago, not to mention Xander's rather ambiguous 'bowling' quip. For the hole made in the center of the concrete wall was the size and shape of a demolition wrecking ball.

With a thankful grin, Giles stepped through the hole and onto the other side of the wall that, if left intact, would have meant a time-consuming detour.

He caught movement from his left, out of the corner of his eye, as a brown-robed minion came at him from eight o'clock. Giles ducked as an axe blade sliced the air above his head. Dropping his sword, he spun, and came to his feet while making a dominant grab for the axe handle. Gripping it with both hands, he and the demon grunted at each other as they fought for possession.

The pain in his side escalated tenfold with the exertion. Giles gritted his teeth and glared, lest he show any sign of weakness that would give the demon an edge. One quick punch to his abdominal injury would drop him to his knees faster than he could blink. Fortunately, his opponent remained clueless, although it did start to look a tad fearful that its 'surprise attack' hadn't quite gone as planned. Using the same element of surprise, Giles head-butted the demon in the face. The satisfying crunch of shattered cartilage came to him, seconds before he found himself in sole possession of the axe. He swung without hesitation, decapitating the astonished minion in one easy swipe.

Giles staggered a little, and groaned as the agony stabbed at him. He pressed his hand to his wound, but this was no time to give in to the pain. Dropping the axe, he bent stiffly to retrieve his favorite sword, and then stumbled on his way, this time holding his side and biting back a cry.

The safe verge created by the north-south line of unused building materials and equipment stacked in the middle of the compound suddenly came to an end. Re-gripping his sword with two hands, Giles leaned a shoulder on the bags of concrete mix and rolled around the corner, this time ready for any surprise attacks. Instead, he came upon a fight already in progress, namely Buffy relentlessly pounding Glory with her troll hammer, whipping the Hellgod's head from side to side with each successive blow.

Stopping several yards behind her, his presence undetected, Giles quickly assessed the combatants and determined that Buffy clearly had the upper hand. Lowering his sword slightly, he watched as Glory fell to her knees in near-defeat. Blood seeped from the Hellgod's nose and m