Tell Me by Rainne

It was an ordinary sort of house on an ordinary sort of street. There were three large bedrooms and one small one, three bathrooms, a living room, a spacious kitchen with a breakfast nook, and a dining room that had been converted by the occupants into a small library. There was a back yard with trees and a hammock and there was a front yard with grass and flowers. There was a three-car garage and enough space in the driveway for two more cars. There was even a dog, a nondescript Labrador mix with soulful eyes, a playful spirit and the unlikely name of Spotless.

It was a large house, undoubtedly, but a large family inhabited it. The family wasn't quite as ordinary as everything else, though, because this particular family was just chock-full of talented people. There was a small, dark-haired woman with almond-shaped eyes who held a black belt and taught an obscure branch of Okinawan karate in a dojo half a mile away. There was another dark haired woman, tall and sophisticated, who owned a small, high-priced boutique downtown that was always stocked with the absolute latest in European fashion. There was a dark-haired man who owned a lucrative construction company and ran it out of an office in a high-rise building with lots of huge plate-glass windows. There was a red-haired woman who made more money than all three of the others combined working out of that little library on her computer. And there was a child.

The child was the reason for the entire family, and any of the adults would admit it in a heartbeat if asked. They had built their family and their home around the happiness of this child. She was, in more ways than one, their raison d'etre. She wasn't an extraordinary child by anyone's estimation. She wasn't a genius, graduating from medical school at fourteen; she wasn't a prodigy who could play Mozart from memory; she wasn't a deep thinker or an exceptional athlete. She was, in fact, a very ordinary girl to all outward appearances, except for her features. She was an extremely pretty child—one of the prettiest in her school—and she got a lot of attention because of that. She was a serious child, though, and very well grounded, so she managed to avoid the cardinal sin of overdeveloped ego.

She did have rather a lot of names. She had, in fact, four. Once, upon discovering that the other children in her kindergarten for the most part only had three names, she had questioned one of her grown-ups about the seeming excess. She learned that day that each of her middle names was in honor of one of her parents. This day, when she was around six, was the first time that she really realized that none of her grown-ups was Mommy or Daddy. Curious, she asked why and was informed that this was because her parents had died when she was a tiny baby. This thought disturbed her somewhere deep inside, but at six she did not have the vocabulary to express this disturbance, so she simply filed it away and went out to play with Spotless.

The child of this unlikely family was a happy child. There was no reason for her to be unhappy. She was, truth be told, somewhat spoiled for, after all, she was the pivot of existence for four good-hearted and sensitive adults who all made a lot of money. She never wanted for anything, whether it was a toy that all the other children had at age six or the designer fashions that all her friends wore at age twelve. But somehow she always managed to maintain a sense of appreciation for what she had, never (well, rarely) becoming acquisitive or decadent. She was popular at school and never lacked for friends or acquaintances, made decent grades and rarely got into trouble. In short, she was a child that any set of parents would be proud to have.

In fact, that was rather the trouble on a certain autumn afternoon when Emily Bianca Regan Giles got off the school bus with a blank, unreadable face, and walked through the house without speaking to anyone. She walked through the house and out the back door, dropped her backpack on the deck, and walked out to the hammock that was strung between two young oak trees. Flopping into the hammock, she stared up into the trees' intertwining branches and didn't move again until she was called to supper.

The kitchen was bright and noisy as the family settled around the table to eat and this somehow offended Emily in a way that she couldn't really express clearly to herself. She tried to pretend that nothing was wrong, but the adults around her had known her for many years and they knew the expression on her face—not only from her own face, but from her mother's as well. They all shared glances with one another around the table and steeled themselves for the explosion that they were certain was coming. They pretended, for her sake, that they didn't notice, and went about the business of eating and conversing almost normally, waiting for the bomb to drop.

They were all surprised, and perhaps a bit grateful, when it came in the form of a very softly-spoken sentence that cut across the conversation going on, interrupting everyone and effectively silencing them all without ever even speaking at a normal pitch. "I want to know about my parents."

In the quiet that descended following this statement, the proverbial dropped pin would have made a sound akin to the crashing of a gong in that kitchen. None of the adults at the table quite knew what to say. Emily stared at each of them in turn. None of them could meet the piercing stare coming from those deep jade eyes. When the silence had stretched to an almost unbearable point, the red-haired woman finally broke. "You look just like your father," she said quietly. "He used to give us that same evil eye when we goofed around so much that the research wasn't getting done."

The man suddenly laughed. "Yeah, Wills, he did, didn't he? That's the same look he used to give me whenever I called him G-man. Giles's version of 'drop dead.' It's just the same."

Something deep inside Emily sprung loose at that very moment. She felt a sudden, indescribable rush of relief. She had a father. These people had known her father. And that meant they had known her mother, too. Knowing these things intellectually as she had for fourteen years was not the same as really knowing them, deep down, as she now did.

As though Willow's words had opened a floodgate, the air was abruptly thick with words. "Remember the time Ethan turned him into a demon? Remember the time we caught him singing at the Espresso Pump? Remember the time Willow accidentally blinded him? Remember the time he had to run the talentless show that Cordelia sang in, and Snyder made is be in it? Remember when he made Xander join the swim team? Remember when he first brought Kennedy and the other potentials to Sunnydale? Remember when he and Buffy blew up the school?"

At the last one, a momentary hush fell over the room. Each of the adults closed their eyes briefly, in the pain of remembered loss. Then Emily spoke. "Buffy was my mother."

They all nodded. There was a long moment of silence as the adults briefly paid respect, once again, to the memory of their missing comrade. And then Cordelia spoke. "Remember when she saved me from the psycho invisible girl?"

And the memories began pouring out once again. "Remember when she was gone all summer and nobody knew where she was? Remember when she got the Class Protector award at the prom? Remember when she got the aspect of the demon and she could hear what we were thinking? Remember when Spike made the Buffybot? Remember when we were all stuck in that kid's nightmare and she got turned into a vampire? Remember when she organized the senior class into an army the day before graduation? Remember when she jumped off Glory's tower?"

"Oh, wow." Xander sat back in his chair. "You want the long version with the footnotes, or the Cliffs Notes version?"

He nodded. "Glory was a Hellgod who'd been banished from her own dimension and was trying to get back. She needed a bit of mystical energy that was called the Key, but the Key was actually Buffy's sister, Dawn. When she found that out, she kidnapped Dawn and used her blood to open the portal. But Buffy beat the crap out of her with the Hammer of Olaf and then, because the portal had already been opened, she jumped off the tower and into the portal. She died saving the world."

"She did." Xander fielded that one. "Willow and Anya and Tara and I brought her back."

"Your grandmother Joyce died of a brain tumor," Willow said quietly. "Your grandfather Hank abandoned his family when Buffy was still in high school. Both of your father's parents were dead when we knew him."

"Spike was a vampire," Xander told her. "He had an obsession with Buffy, thought he was in love with her. He had Warren build a robot that looked just like her."

"I killed him." Willow looked down at her plate, over at Kennedy, then back at Emily. "He killed Tara. I was... I went crazy. I was off the magick at the time, because I'd gotten too heavy into black magick, and I went off the deep end. I killed Warren, I tried to kill Jonathan and Andrew, I tried to kill Buffy, I destroyed the Magic Box... I tried to end the world." She looked over at Xander. "But somebody with a big heart brought me back from the edge. Somebody else saved the world that time."

"Giles was the librarian at our school," Cordelia spoke up finally, taking the brunt of Emily's gimlet eye and giving the others a break. "And he was Buffy's Watcher."

"Obviously not," Emily spat, suddenly angry. "She couldn't have been the best if you're here and she's not." She suddenly stood, dropping her napkin next to her untouched plate. "I need to be excused," she said fiercely and ran from the room. A moment later, they heard her bedroom door slam and her stereo come on at high volume.

They looked around the table at one another. "Well," Willow finally said. "That could have gone better."

Xander sighed. "I'll get up into the attic later and pull down some of the boxes. If she's ready to start asking and knowing, I want to be ready to answer her."

"The truth," Willow said firmly. "Whatever she asks, we tell her the truth. Whether it's about Spike or Angel or Sunnydale or L.A. Tell her the truth."

"How much truth?" Kennedy asked reasonably. "I think there are some things she just doesn't need to know."

Willow swallowed, closing her eyes against the painful memory of the frantic sweep they had made through the underbelly of Cleveland, finding the remains of their friends and, nearby, the demon that had killed them, dead with Buffy's sword through its belly. "Yeah. I mean... tell her the truth... tell her about the demon... but she doesn't have to know... everything."

Kennedy moved to embrace Willow and Cordelia reached across the table to squeeze Xander's hand. And in her bedroom, surrounded by the throbbing bass of the newest dance hit, Emily grieved for the parents she'd never known.

Giles grinned across the hotel suite's sitting room. "And what will you do with your normal life?"

Buffy was sprawled across a chair, legs dangling off one arm. She kicked her feet absently. "Not sure. It's so much all at once, you know? It's a lot to think about."

They were both silent for a long time, she staring at the ceiling, he looking out the window at the relatively decent view of Cleveland. Then suddenly she spoke again. "How come you never tried anything with me? Like, you never put any moves on me or anything."

"Was." She interrupted him firmly. "I was a child. Now I'm a grown woman of twenty-one who's been dead twice and is raising her teenage sister."

"Let's see. My first boyfriend was two hundred and twenty-something years older than I was, and the one I was... shagging... was a little over a hundred and fifty years older. I'd say thank God you were at least born in the same century as me."

From the tone of her voice he could tell that she wasn't teasing. And from the look in her eyes he suddenly realized that she was quite, quite serious. "How long have you...?"

"Wanted you?" She grinned suddenly. "Giles, I had a mad crush on you from the very beginning. I think it was when you got all excited about living on the Hellmouth."

She waved a dismissive hand. "Distractions. At least, Riley was. I think Angel was teen angst mixed with a little rebellion against destiny. And toss in some make-Giles-jealous and a big heaping side of obsession, and you have Angel."

He sat back on the sofa, thinking about this. "But..." Then suddenly his eyes narrowed and his gaze focused sharply on her face. "What happened to 'you're very, very old and it's gross'?"

She threw back her head then and laughed, a deep, genuine laugh such as he hadn't heard from her in over two years. "Oh, God, Giles, I'd almost forgotten about that. Whatever happened to Olivia, anyway?"

She grimaced. "Hate it when they do that." She shook her head. "God, Giles, couldn't you recognize homicidal jealousy when you saw it? I mean, I come to you looking for help, for support, for. for you. and I walk in and here's this gorgeous woman dressed in nothing but your shirt, and here comes you down the stairs doing your Hugh Hefner impression. I wanted to slay her. And then I wanted to slay you for choosing her over me."

"But you did," she said softly. "You as much as shoved me out the door. 'Get out, Buffy; I'm having a bit of a shag. I'm much too busy to worry about your petty childish concerns about this vampire that's just kicked your ass.' That's pretty much what you said, without saying the words."

He blinked, replaying his memories of the scene that morning in his mind. He turned the scene slightly in his mind and examined it from her perspective, knowing now what she'd been through the previous couple of days. "I suppose I did, rather, didn't I?" He commented ruefully. "From your perspective, that is."

She nodded, and returned to contemplation of the ceiling tiles. "I could have cheerfully slayed you both that day."

"Can't say I blame you," he said mildly, looking out the window again. They were silent for a long while.

He paused, feeling the need to choose his words carefully. "It would have been hard not to," he began. "You did dress scandalously, you know, and you were—still are—a beautiful young woman with... er... noticeable womanly attributes. So, I suppose the brutally honest answer to that question would be yes."

She gave him a half-grin. "Relax, Giles. It's not like you're Humbert Humbert or anything."

"Feel like it," he mumbled, but grew silent when she stood and walked over to him. She stood there before him for a moment and the light of the setting sun shone in through the windows, hitting her from the left side and making her glow with an almost unearthly light. She stood there for a moment, letting him take a long look at her. Her golden hair cascaded down over her shoulders; her eyes sparked green fire over a sensuous half-smile; her Spongebob Squarepants tee shirt accentuated more than covered her luscious breasts; her shorts were possibly a half-inch too long to be "Daisy Dukes"; her lean legs were tanned and silky; and her feet were bare, the toenails painted an astonishing shade of blue. He briefly lost the ability to think.

She knelt before him then and smiled up into his face. "It may not be perfect, Giles, but what relationship is? At least... at least we care about each other. Right?"

He pulled her into his lap and held her close, trying to calm her, to stop her tears. "Shh. Shh. Everything will be all right. Hush, now." When he finally got her calmed, he stroked her hair and asked her what brought that on.

She buried her face in his neck. "You can't love me. I can't lose you. Everything I love dies or goes away. Mom, Dad, Angel, Riley."

"You did." She leaned back then and looked him dead in the eyes. Tears were still welling up in hers but the soul-deep pain was evident. "You left me. Right when I needed you the most."

"Never again," he promised. "I'll swear it in blood if I need to. Never again. I... Buffy, I'm sorry."

It was pitifully small, those two words against all the pain he'd caused her, but it seemed to be enough. She looked into his eyes for a moment longer, then buried her face in his neck again, and whispered the words he had never thought he'd hear her say. "I love you too, Giles."

He held her tightly to him, reveling in the scent of raspberries in her hair and mango on her skin. She was his. Finally, after so many years, so many trials and so much pain, she was his. And it felt right. It felt good. He pulled her back from him and looked at her face, so beautiful and so vulnerable with tear tracks running down both cheeks. He laid one hand gently on her cheek and she leaned into the warm caress, her eyes never leaving his. And then he kissed her, and the world melted away around them. He leaned against the back of the sofa and she straddled his lap, her hands on his shoulders and her hair falling in a luminous curtain of gold around their faces. Their kisses were hungry, desperate somehow, and when he grazed his tongue across her lips, she opened them eagerly, accepting his exploration of her with something like glee.

He didn't even realize she was unbuttoning his shirt until he felt her hands on his chest, running through his crisp hairs, gliding over his painfully hard nipples. He felt himself growing hard against her, his member becoming thick with his desire for her. She obviously felt it, too, because one of her delicate hands trailed its way down his body to gently trace its outlines with her finger. He moaned into her mouth and moved his hands to slide her tee shirt up. She raised her arms and he pulled the shirt off, dropping it on the sofa next to him and placing gentle hands on her breasts, cupping them softly, rubbing his thumbs over her nipples and making them pebble underneath the thin fabric of her bra.

His lips trailed down the side of her neck to nibble at her pulse point and she gasped, pressing her hips down into his urgently. "Giles," she moaned. "I need you now. We've got forever to do it slow. Please! I need you!"

"As am I," he replied, somewhat miffed that she would think he thought that. "I meant, to prevent pregnancy."

"Why?" she asked him, leaning down to nibble at one earlobe. "It's not like I'm the only Slayer any more. I could actually take maternity leave."

She bit down suddenly on the side of his neck. "Giles. If you don't take me right here and right now, I will not answer for the consequences."

So he did. He unbuttoned her shorts and she stood up long enough to slide out of them, revealing to him the incredibly arousing fact that she'd been, as they say, commando. She leaned over and unfastened his pants, unzipping them and reaching inside to pull out his cock. He made some motions to remove his pants completely, but she forestalled him by the simple expedient of clambering onto his lap and sinking down onto him, enveloping him completely in one smooth motion.

He gasped at the sensation, and she let out a slow, soft moan. "Oh, Giles..." she whispered. "You feel so good."

"As do you, my love," he replied, pulling her face down for another hungry kiss as she began to move her hips against him. It wasn't long before they both came, crying out each other's names in ecstasy.

They retained their positions, him still imbedded inside her, staring into one another's eyes as the aftershocks ran through them, and suddenly she seemed to wilt, her head sinking down to lay on his shoulder. "Oh, God, Giles... that was..." she trailed off, and then gave a half-laugh. "I am wordless."

Then they were both wordless as the door to the suite burst open and several young people came flying in, most of them brandishing weapons. "Where is it?" Xander shouted. "Where's the demon?"

Giles and Buffy, caught in the act as it were, stared with huge eyes at the phalanx of would-be heroes: Xander, Kennedy, Faith, Dawn and Willow, all bearing crossbows and stakes. Then suddenly Buffy began to giggle, and Giles joined her. Faith, the first of the interlopers to recover, began to laugh as well, while Xander and Willow grew twin expressions of horror and disbelief and Dawn simply paled and looked thunderstruck. Kennedy, shaking her head, plucked at Willow and Dawn's sleeves, herding them back out of the suite quickly while Faith pulled at Xander, whose shock had apparently also rendered him immobile.

Alone again, Buffy and Giles gave full vent to their mirth. "Well," Buffy forced out around a series of deep laughs, "at least we don't have to worry about how to tell them."

He leaned up to kiss her again, shifting inside her, and they both gasped simultaneously as his manhood reawoke. Their laughter trailed off as they stared deeply into one another's eyes for a long moment, neither moving, and then she suddenly squeezed him with her inner muscles. He groaned, wrapped his arms around her waist, and flipped them so that he was above her. "I love you, my Buffy," he whispered to her then. "Never doubt me. I love you."

"I love you, too, my Giles," she replied softly, and then he began to move inside her again and no more words were necessary.

"You sure you want me to drop you here, lady? This ain't the best neighborhood." The cabbie looked at his passenger with some concern.

The pretty brunette checked the address on her card. "Nope, this is the place. I'm sure." She climbed out of the backseat and the cabbie got out to help her with her bags.

He carried them up to the loading dock of the warehouse they'd stopped at and set them on the ground next to her, giving her a look of extreme disbelief. "You sure, lady?" he asked again.

She nodded and pressed the buzzer next to the door. A few moments later, a tinny feminine voice came through the speaker. "Who's there, please?"

The cabbie, with one last look at his passenger, shook his head and returned to his cab, turning the vehicle around and heading back in the direction he'd come from. A few seconds later, the heavy door slid open. Kennedy stepped aside from the door, allowing Cordelia entry without verbally inviting her in, then stepped outside to gather Cordy's bags and bring them in. She turned and spied Rona standing nearby. "Hey, Rona! Would you take Miss Chase to Buffy?" To Cordelia she said, "I'm gonna put your stuff in your room."

"Thank you," Cordelia said, looking around at the interior of the converted textiles warehouse. The extensive bottom floor had been converted to a training area for the Slayers, and several of them were utilizing the area at that time. The whole building was open in the center all the way to the top floor. The second and third floors had obviously been converted for public use as eating and relaxing facilities were clearly visible, but the upper floors had all been made into closed-off rooms which probably functioned as personal living areas and offices.

Her contemplation of the setup was interrupted by Rona's voice. "This way, ma'am."

She followed the young Slayer through the maze of training equipment to a boxing ring which had been set up at the far back corner of the huge open space. In this ring, Faith was currently sparring with Vi while Buffy looked on, her back to the women approaching her. Cordelia blinked at the sight of the Slayer. Wow, she's put on a lot of weight!

Then Buffy turned around, and Cordelia felt her eyes bug out. Buffy wasn't getting fat—she was incredibly pregnant. The blonde smiled when she saw Cordelia's expression. "Hey, surprise!"

Cordy closed the remaining distance between them and hugged Buffy. "Congratulations. So who's the lucky guy? I didn't know you were with anybody."

Buffy nodded. "For almost two years now," she replied. "I am officially Retired Slayer."

Buffy laughed. "You used to know more words, Cordy, what happened?" she teased gently. "But, yes. Now that there are hundreds of active Slayers in the world and more potentials becoming Slayers, I don't have to do it all any more. I'll probably go back to doing it a little bit once the baby's born, but I won't do it like I used to by any means." They had begun walking and were now waiting for the freight elevator to descend. "Giles is upstairs painting the nursery pale pink. He's absolutely positive we're going to have a girl. I told him if it turns out to be a boy, he's got to paint it over again blue, but he's just sure it's going to be a girl."

Buffy groaned. "Last week!" She rolled her eyes, laying one hand gently on her swollen belly. "The doctor says if labor doesn't start by next Tuesday, he's going to induce."

Buffy pulled the door shut and pulled the switch for the fifth floor. "He won't even talk about boys' names," she said with an eyeroll and a gentle tolerance in her voice that spoke of loving frustration. "But we've decided on Emily Anne for a girl. If it's a boy, I want to call him Robert. It means the same thing that Rupert means, you know, but without the whole stuffy-English-guy connotation."

Buffy nodded. "But for God's sake, don't call the baby 'him' in front of Giles; he'll have a conniption." She shook her head, but her expression was soft with love.

"Good," Cordelia said firmly. They stepped out of the elevator and followed the smell of fresh paint to a suite of rooms on the western side of the building. They entered the suite, walked through a sparsely but tastefully decorated living room and into the nursery. The walls were indeed a very pale pink, and the thick carpet was white. A white crib stood in one corner of the room not far from a changing table, a small clothes-dresser, and a large rocking chair. "Nice," Cordy said quietly.

"Only the best," Giles said from behind them. They both jumped, startled, and turned to find him behind them, dressed in jeans and a tee shirt, his hair still damp from the shower. He looked scrumptious, Cordelia thought, and the brunette found herself tamping down a surprising shock of jealousy when he gathered Buffy into his arms and pulled her close for a kiss. Then he raised his head again. "We're glad you decided to join us, Cordelia," he greeted her, reaching out to hug her as well.

"Yeah, it's like having the original Scoobies back together again," Buffy commented.

"Ah. He's in his apartment, I believe, just now." A shadow crossed Giles's face. "You shall find him quite changed, I believe, from the boy you knew."

"I'm not the girl I was back then, either," Cordelia replied, a hint of the former May Queen in her voice.

Just then, a bell rang somewhere in the building. Buffy jumped. "Is it dinnertime already?"

"It's six-thirty," Giles told her. He glanced at Cordelia. "Supper is served if you'd care to join us?"

At Cordy's nod, Buffy felt the need to warn her. "You should know – dinner around here is pretty crazy. There's a lot of girls living here and it's pretty much the only time we're all in the same room."

"I'll join you in a bit, dear," Giles said, giving Buffy a gentle kiss on the forehead. "There's something I need to check on that infernal machine."

"And how glad am I that Willow taught you how to check your e-mail?" Buffy said sarcastically as they parted in the hall.

Buffy's description of the communal mealtime fell far short of the truth. Cordelia thought to herself privately that she was put much in mind of the lunchroom at Sunnydale High School, except without the boys. She estimated around one hundred fifty girls were seated at tables and booths around the huge section of the second floor, conversing raucously about every subject under the sun. But when Buffy stood up at the front end of the room, every voice was instantly silenced, all eyes turned toward her.

She held a sheet of paper. "I've got a couple of announcements to make," she announced in a voice that carried to the far corners of the hall. "First of all, the cleaning staff reports that several people are keeping food in their rooms. This isn't a problem if you'll keep it in airtight containers, but we would like to remind everyone that food left out in the open draws roaches. That's all I have to say about that. Also, this week's patrol rotation is up on the main bulletin board downstairs. You can all thank Vi for that—she is now officially in charge of rotations as of today, so if you have any scheduling issues, she's the lady to talk to. The last thing is –"

She froze, stopping in mid-sentence, an expression of puzzlement and shock crossing her face. She looked down at her paper, back up at the girls, then back down again—past her paper and at her stomach. Then she laid a hand on top of her stomach and drew a deep, shuddering breath. She glanced around the hall as though looking for someone, then slowly leaned forward, placing her hands flat on the table and blowing out an explosive breath. "Could somebody please go find Giles?" She asked into the suddenly charged silence. "I think... I might need to go to the hospital."

"I never saw so many girls in one place before in my life," the doctor commented as he entered the birthing room. "There must be a hundred girls out there."

Buffy hissed through another contraction. "Are they all out there?" she asked Giles.

He nodded. "Almost everyone. Faith and Xander are standing outside the door intimidating all the medical personnel; Cordelia, Willow and Kennedy are organizing a central check-in point in the large waiting room, and the rest of the girls are wandering up and down the halls making nuisances of themselves and cooing over everything they can find under the age of six."

Buffy laughed breathlessly, stopping short as another contraction tore through her. "I'm ready for this to be over."

The doctor finished his examination and stood, his expression grave. "It's going to be a lot sooner than you think," he said quietly. "The baby's turned; it's presenting sideways and has apparently managed to get the umbilical cord wrapped around its neck. We're going to have to do a Caesarian."

Perhaps forty minutes later, a tiny green light shot through the halls of the maternity ward. It startled people who weren't used to seeing such a thing, but they all managed to convince themselves they'd imagined it. They returned to their tasks, most of them not noticing that the gaggle of girls who'd been such nuisances were suddenly all making their way toward the large waiting room, almost as though that little green light had been summoning them.

The girls came crowding into the waiting room to find Giles holding court in the center of the room, introducing everyone to his startled new daughter. Willow and Cordelia were laughing at him for crowing about being correct in his guess of the baby's gender. He wouldn't let anyone hold the child, but he formally introduced each of the young Slayers to her as if she could understand his words. He left again when young Emily began to fuss, saying that she probably needed to eat and her mother would have to be the one to take care of that.

She turned at the sound of his voice in the doorway to the weapons closet and her face betrayed her irritation. "Giles, would you please stop doing that?"

"Coddling me." She set the crossbow she'd been holding down on a shelf and walked over to him, wrapping her arms around his waist and burying her face in his chest to take the sting out of her words. "I know you're concerned and I love you for it. But it's been six months, I'm back in the same shape I was in before I got pregnant, and I'm going completely insane sitting around. It's just a Fyarl demon. Nothing Dawn and I can't handle."

Giles sighed, his arms tightening around Buffy for a moment. "Fine. I'm coming as well."

Buffy looked up at him for a moment, gauging his expression, and shrugged. "Suits me. If we don't get slimed, you can take us to Starbucks afterward."

He grinned and took the crossbow she handed him, along with a quiver of silver-tipped bolts. She hefted a sword in her hand, and he noted that its blade had been coated with silver, as had the blades of the two daggers she held in her other hand. "Are we ready, love?"

She nodded. "Let's go put Emmie down for the night. Kennedy and Willow are gonna babysit for us."

"How lovely," he commented in a bland voice. She glanced over her shoulder at him and saw that there was a roguish grin on his face and a distinctly wicked gleam in his eye.

"Ooh," she responded quietly, stepping toward him and pressing her body against his, not comforting this time but rather more provocative. "I like that idea."

He growled low in his throat and leaned down to nip at her neck. "We could always postpone patrol for half an hour or so."

She grinned up at him impishly. "Only half an hour? Going soft in your old age?"

"Not at all," he responded, pinching her butt and making her squeal. "Just thinking of warming you up for the rest of the evening."

"I should hope not," he responded with a grin. "I'll be hard put to ravish you if you're behind me."

"As long as you're hard, I don't care about the rest of it," she replied, grinning. "Let's go put the baby down and see about this half an hour business you've been talking about."

Emily was fussier tonight than usual, falling asleep to her parents' lullabies only to wake and cry for them the moment she was laid in her crib. After nearly two hours of repetition, though, she finally exhausted herself and stayed asleep when Buffy laid her down. She gave a sigh of relief and slipped very quietly out of the baby's room, followed by Giles. Kennedy and Willow were snuggled on the sofa and looked up as the haggard parents emerged from the battle scene. "Tough crowd, huh?" Kennedy said sympathetically.

Buffy rolled her eyes and nodded. "Good luck keeping her down tonight," she said softly. "She's antsy about something."

Buffy walked over to the couch and hugged Willow. "Thanks for caring," she said softly. "Mochas tomorrow?"

"Good luck," Kennedy called as Buffy and Giles slipped out the apartment door and into the corridor.

They clasped hands and headed down the hallway toward the elevator. "That was exhausting," Giles commented.

"She sure was fussy tonight," Buffy agreed. "I don't think she's ever been that fussy before."

Buffy pondered it and shook her head. "I don't think you can spoil a kid that young," she said finally. "And she needs to know she can count on us to always be there."

Giles nodded, and then his eyes flew wide open when Buffy tugged him toward a door near the elevator. "Buffy, what-?"

She dragged him into the broom closet and locked the door behind them. "C'mon, Giles. All those months of Xander and Cordy making out in the broom closets at Sunnydale High and you never thought about it?" She stepped toward him, running her hands over his chest. "I always wanted to do it in a broom closet," she whispered seductively.

The combination of her tone and words struck him as ridiculously funny, but he stifled the urge to laugh and pulled her to him. "Not much room for finesse in this little cubicle," he warned her.

"I don't care about finesse, Giles," she informed him, reaching for the zipper on his pants. "Here we are, you and me, broom closet, like a couple of horny seventeen-year-old kids... who cares about style?" Her hand slid into his pants and roughly gripped his cock. "I've got an itch to scratch," she said softly into his ear. "Wanna help?"

He pushed her hard against the door and ravished her mouth with his own, while his hands busied themselves with unfastening her pants. "I imagine I might be of some assistance." He pushed her pants down and she stepped out of them, gasping a moment later when he lifted her off her feet, pressing her against the door a full foot off the floor. Then she groaned as she felt the head of his cock pressing into her moist, aching center.

"Oh, yeah, baby," she moaned into his ear as he slowly eased her down onto his erection. "Fuck me."

He leaned over and bit her neck. He loved it when she talked dirty, and proceeded to show her just how much, slamming into her roughly, thrusting into her with all the force in him as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and continued to talk into his ear, telling him just how hot he was making her, how good he felt buried deep inside her, how his thick hardness filled her just the right way. Then suddenly her fingernails were biting into his shoulders and she was moaning hard into his ear. "Oh, God, baby, I'm gonna come, I'm gonna come, do it baby, make me come, I wanna come for you..."

He reached down between their bodies and pressed his thumb into her swollen clit. She lay her head back against the wall, gasping for breath, and suddenly she stopped breathing for a moment. Her body seemed to freeze, and he pressed into her as deeply as he could.

Her stasis broke, and she came around him with a hard convulsion, her inner muscles clamping down on his cock with iron force and her voice raised in a glad cry. He let go himself and came inside her, grunting with the effort, pouring his seed deep into her.

"You guys be careful out there," Xander said as Dawn, Buffy and Giles headed for the door.

Buffy, her face still flushed from the exertions in the broom closet, turned and grinned at Xander, who was standing near Cordelia. The two of them had been practicing with short bows, and the targets at the end of the room were peppered with arrows. "We will," she replied, glad to see the two of them so happy together. They had rekindled their high school romance shortly after Emily's birth and it looked like they might make it this time. She was glad to see her friends so happy. "Catch you guys later."

The three demon hunters left the converted warehouse and headed down the street, following the directions given to them by their contact who had brought the report of the Fyarl demon that they were now hunting. It was actually not far from the building that had become Slayer Central, so the three of them set off on foot, bantering back and forth with ease and humor in anticipation of an easy slay and then a trip to Starbucks.

Had she gotten the opportunity to think it over later, Buffy would have cursed herself for carelessness. She would have berated herself mentally for ignoring the twinge of her spidey-sense as they entered the alley, and she certainly would have kicked herself for not realizing until they were halfway down it that it was a blind alley, walled at the far end with a twenty-foot brick wall. She, Dawn and Giles all registered the wall at the same time and the three of them exchanged glances of trepidation and some concern. Then they turned to leave the alley, and found themselves confronted with a gang of some thirty vampires and two Fyarl demons.

One of the vampires snarled. "Hello, Slayer," he greeted Buffy mockingly. "I've been waiting for this opportunity."

Buffy opened her mouth to deliver one of her characteristic witty retorts, but she never had the chance because the vampires attacked, and she was too busy fighting for her life.

The knocking on the door woke Willow and Kennedy, who had fallen asleep on Buffy and Giles's sofa. They glanced at the window, which was beginning to show the silvery light of false dawn, and then at one another. "They didn't come back last night," Kennedy said softly.

Willow bolted to the door and flung it open. There stood Xander and Cordelia, identical expressions of concern on their faces. "They didn't come back last night," Xander began. Willow shoved past him, running for the elevator.

Two of the new Slayers stayed at the warehouse, one manning the phone and the other watching the baby. The rest of the hundred-fifty-odd inhabitants of Slayer Central fanned out across the city, looking for their missing leaders or some clue as to where they'd gone. It was Kennedy who turned down the blind alley to find the body of a Fyarl demon behind a dumpster, Buffy's sword buried in its chest. She put one hand over her mouth. "Oh, no... oh, God, no..."

But she had to look, because if what she feared was there, she had to prevent Willow from seeing it.

She found Dawn first, crumpled behind a stack of crates, vampire bites on both sides of her neck and several piles of dust around her body, indicating she hadn't gone down without a fight. Not much farther down the alley, she found the second Fyarl demon, a crossbow bolt sticking out of one eye. Near the brick wall, she found Buffy and Giles—or, rather, what was left of them. She turned away from the sight and was quietly sick into a garbage can. Then she gathered the shreds of her composure and headed quickly back up the alley, catching Willow just as she was coming up to the body of the first demon.

She grabbed Willow around the shoulders and forced her back out of the alley and onto the sidewalk. "No, baby, don't. Don't go back there."

Kennedy nodded, and Willow saw the green tinges to Kennedy's pale skin. Her knees buckled and she would have fallen if her lover hadn't held her until she regained her feet. "Are... are they..."

Kennedy shook her head, pulling Willow tightly to her. "It's too late, baby," she whispered.

Willow broke then, falling to her knees on the sidewalk and sobbing. Kennedy pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and called Rona, Vi, Shannon and Colleen. They had been there since almost the beginning and were more used to carnage than any of the other girls. She warned them in guarded terms what they would be facing, and told them to bring blankets to wrap the bodies in. "And hurry," she added. "We need to be out of here before the sun rises completely." She hung up then and dialed Xander's cell phone, instructing him to call off the search and have everyone reconvene at the warehouse.

She knelt down then and took Willow into her arms, letting the witch cry into her shoulder. Willow's body was wracked with great, heaving sobs. Kennedy herself had gone completely numb. She simply knelt there, holding her weeping lover and waiting on the others to arrive.

A moving van pulled up in front of a large house on a quiet, well-kept street in the Atlanta suburb of Decatur. It was followed a moment later by two cars. A dark-haired man and a brunette woman climbed out of the van, to be met in the driveway by the petite brunette who climbed out of the first car. The redheaded woman in the second car joined them later, after removing a toddler from the car seat in the back. The child, almost a year old, fussed to be let down onto the lush green grass, and the woman put the child down, letting it crawl under her watchful eye.

It had taken almost five months for the probate courts to process Buffy and Giles's wills, which had both explicitly stated that guardianship of their daughter should go jointly to Xander Harris and Willow Rosenberg. Once that had been settled, however, they had filed paperwork to change her name. Emily they had kept, because Giles had loved the name so. But Anne went away, to be replaced with two names in honor of her lost parents. "Bianca" they had chosen because it started with B and because, in Kennedy's words, it was "about as Buffy as you can get without actually being 'Buffy;'" "Regan" had been chosen because it began with R and was Shakespearean, which Xander thought Giles would have approved of. After another few weeks of settling business in Cleveland with the Slayers, the remaining Scoobies and Kennedy packed up their things and took Emily Bianca Regan Giles far away from the Hellmouth and from the painful things that reminded her family of her lost parents and aunt.

They were in Georgia now, determined to make a fresh start. Kennedy would still keep up with her Slayer duties, but on a very limited scale to lessen the likelihood of her own untimely death. It was agreed among the foursome that if anything serious came along, they would call in other Slayers to help. Slowly they began to rebuild their shattered lives, finding lucrative jobs and helping one another to heal as they watched Emily grow and delighted in this living memory of people they had all loved.

If you're reading this, it means that I'm dead. I pretty much expect it, hence this letter. As I'm writing this, you're lying in your crib, asleep. You're four months old right now, and you've just begun sleeping through the night. But tonight I can't sleep, because I've started having the dreams. Your father doesn't know, so here I sit, watching you sleep, and writing to you because I'm pretty sure that I'm not gonna get to see you grow up.

I want you to know, first off, that I love you more than I can possibly say. You've been the biggest miracle I never thought I'd get to experience. When I was fifteen and my first Watcher came to me, when I was Called as the Slayer, I pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I was gonna die young. You'll know this by now—Slayers come with expiration dates. You never know which patrol is gonna be your last, which nasty thing is gonna get what Spike once told me they all hope for: one good day. You just never know. It could have been any of them: the Master, Angelus, the Mayor, Adam, Glory, the First Evil... ask Willow or Xander for those stories. Cordelia can even tell you some of them – she was there for the first three. It could even have been some random vampire like the one that got me with my own stake when I was careless. My point being that I never thought I'd get to have children. And yet.

So there you sit, and you're reading this letter from me, and I wonder as I sit here writing it, when will you read it? Will you be thirty years old with kids of your own? Will you be eighteen and starting your own life? I don't know. I don't know if it'll just be a few days after I die, or if it'll be years because I die before you learn to read. I don't know if I'll get to watch you take your first step, if I'll ever hear your voice calling me Mommy, if I'll get to take you to kindergarten or see you graduate from high school. I don't know. But I've been having the dreams, and I don't think I'll get to see those things.

There are some things I want to tell you. First of all, and I can't say this enough, I love you. Your daddy loves you, too. He's a good man—the best of men—and he's been the thing that kept me going for years, even after I didn't want to any more.

Second, know that I'm watching out for you. Nothing can keep your mother from loving and watching out for you, no matter what. Believe that.

Third, try not to be angry. You've gotten a raw deal, I'll grant you that. It sucks. Believe me, I know. My life happens to on occasion suck beyond the telling of it. But there have been happy times, too—little miracles like your daddy, and you. Live for those times.

And lastly, I want to give you the one real piece of advice I can think of as I sit here in this dark room, watching you sleep and crying because I know I'm not going to be around much longer. You're in the best hands possible. Willow and Xander are the truest friends anyone could ever ask for. They stood behind me when I was the most selfish, self-centered bitch I could be, and they loved me anyway. Never let anyone or anything get in the way of your friendships. Badness comes and goes, but your friends are forever.

If I wrote a thousand pages I could never express the love that I feel for you. You have been, besides your mother, the greatest gift I have ever received. I deeply regret that this letter is all you shall have of me, but your mother has been having her prophetic dreams—though she thinks I don't know it – and I greatly fear that the end is near.

I haven't a lot of fatherly advice or words of wisdom to leave to you, because you've only been here for six months and I haven't had a chance to think of any yet. So I'll skip that part of the letter. You probably got an earful from your mother anyway.

My purpose in writing this letter is that you know you are loved. No matter what happens in your life, remember that you are loved, whether I am alive to watch you grow or whether I am gone. My love for you will not die with me.

If you are anything like your mother, you will rail at the universe for your undeserved pain; you will fight tooth and nail against any destiny you may be offered; you will claw your way against any obstacle toward whatever goal you set for yourself in life; and you will achieve those goals despite whatever the Fates should set against you. I see your mother in your eyes when I hold you in my arms, and I trust that you will be strong and that you will do well in whatever tasks you set for yourself. I believe in you.

I wish that I could be there for you, to watch you grow and change and become the woman that someday you will be. But I will always be watching you, and you will always be loved.

I should close, for I can hear your mother's voice as she comes up the hallway and we have duties to go to—a report of Fyarl demons in the area which she and I and your aunt Dawn are going out to destroy, in order to make this world a little bit safer for you to grow up in.

Be happy, my Emily, and be at peace, knowing that your mother and I are with you always and that I remain,

You probably hate being called that, but I bet they call you that anyway. They do the same thing to me.

This feels really weird, because I'm writing you a letter in case I get killed, because I want you to know that I love you. That's weird, isn't it? I'm a freak. It's okay. I know this.

See, I had this nightmare last night, and it felt kind of like what Buffy talks about when she has her prophecy dreams. I don't know if it was a prophecy or just a nightmare, but I got up and turned the light on and started to write this letter because I just don't think I'm gonna be around much longer.

This is a dangerous gig, you know. We go out and fight vampires and demons every night and we never know what's gonna happen. I'm not a Slayer, either, so I don't have special powers. But it's a good fight. And it makes the world safer for you, and you're my niece and that's how it is.

I wonder if you'll have a letter like this from Buffy. If so, she probably went totally Mom-like in it. So I won't. I'm gonna be the cool aunt. Screw the vegetables and the straight As in school. Have fun. Laugh and smile and enjoy life. Because it's too damn short to be miserable. Trust me.

I hope you never have to read this. But if you do, then you do. It's a thing. Nothing's guaranteed. Ever since Sunnydale became a crater, I've made it my mission to live every day as if it was my last, and I've been happier because of it. So you try to do the same thing, okay? And don't steal, because it just makes lots of people really mad. Trust me on that.

Emily glanced up as a shadow fell across her. She smiled at the sight. "Hey, Will."

Willow nodded, swallowing the lump that always rose in her throat whenever they were mentioned, even now, so many years later. She smiled. "They would be so proud of you. You know that, right?"

"Night." Emily folded the papers in her lap carefully. They were worn and creased by years of handling, but still perfectly legible. She read them over again at least once a week, for they helped her feel closer to the parents and aunt she'd never known. She stood and walked to the window, looking out at the starry sky. "I love you guys," she whispered to the stars, knowing somehow that her words would be heard by the ones she spoke them to.

She turned away from the window and walked over to the small bed. She leaned over the tiny form and kissed the forehead of the tiny blonde girl who lay snuggled up with her favorite teddy bear. "I love you, Buffy Dawn," she whispered to her daughter.

She left the room and walked out into the living room of the house she'd grown up in, glancing up at the portrait above the mantel and smiling slightly at the images there. Kennedy, who'd finally lost a battle shortly after Emily's high school graduation, and Xander, who had been killed in a car crash two months before the birth of Emily's daughter, smiled down at her. Cordelia and Willow, both of whom still lived with Emily, did as well. Emily herself was also in the portrait, a cherubic six-year-old on Willow's lap.

She felt arms encircle her waist and leaned back into the solid warmth of her husband. "Hey, lover," she whispered.

He stroked her hair gently, looking up at the portrait as well. "I miss them too," he whispered.

"I know," she said, turning in his arms and kissing him. "Come on, Jack—let's go get some sleep. Leave the ghosts to their own company."

In the silence that remained after they had gone to their bed, several misty forms took partial shape in the now-empty living room. A petite blonde woman looked up at the portrait and then turned to the tall man behind her. "It sucks," she said, not for the first time.

He simply nodded, content to rest his transparent hand on her transparent shoulder. A moment later, a younger man stood beside them. "He's a good guy, this Jack kid," he said. "You know?"

"Of course you have. We all have," said the small, brunette woman who now stood with them. "Especially when they first started dating in tenth grade. Hormones!"

The four ghosts shared a laugh, and then the blonde woman turned toward the bedroom of the little girl. The tall man looked at her quizzically. "We can't stay."

"Let her look," said another voice as a tall, willowy brunette girl joined them suddenly. "She deserves it."

The blonde stepped through the door and the tall man followed her. She moved to the side of the bed, examining the face of the sleeping child. She reached out to touch the tiny blonde head, her hand becoming almost solid for a split second.

Buffy smiled back at this beautiful little girl. "Hi, sweetie." She leaned down, brushing a ghostly kiss on the three-year-old's head. "You sleep now, okay?"

"Come, Buffy," Giles said, holding out his ghostly hand. "It's time now. The circle is complete. We can go."

She took his hand, smiling, and reached for Xander's. He took hers and reached for Kennedy, who stood behind him. She grasped his hand and Dawn's as well, and they all looked up, briefly surprised when there was a sudden, blinding light. They all squeezed each other's hands encouragingly, and then Buffy stepped forward, leading them all into the light.

It was gone soundlessly, but the little girl in the bed rolled over and looked at the place where it had been. "Bye-bye, Grandma," she said softly, clutching a tiny, slightly-battered stuffed pink pig in her arms. Then she closed her eyes and finally slept.

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Tell Me

By Rainne

Copyright © 2003

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