destructo-girl.com

"Lost"

Author: Gail Christison
Email: chriscln@ozemail.com.au

The afternoon sky suddenly seemed to split open, pouring undulations of red and purple through the jagged orifice, and streaking the sky with the weirdest lightning she'd ever seen.

Buffy slashed at one of three angry demons with one of Giles' best swords. "What the hell is that?"

"Ask them," Giles shot back peevishly, parrying another of the demons with his own favourite blade.

"Yeah, right," she snorted, finally getting an opening to swing the sword above waist height and decapitating her opponent in one swift, powerful swipe, carrying the stroke through to block the downward motion of the weapon of the last demon, which was looking incredibly pissed off and animatedly shouting at its erstwhile companion in grunts and whistles.

"I think perhaps they're considering a withdrawal," he offered as the giant 'rip' behind them roiled and throbbed in a horrible, almost living 'splot' in mid-air. Neither of them voiced the fact that the anomaly was making their skin crawl...literally.

Buffy, who'd been enjoying the outing with her Watcher after patrolling alone for so long, well, except for the new thrill sensation from the anomaly...much like ants crawling all over her, she decided...looked up at an opportune moment and watched Giles in action. Her eyes widened. She automatically blocked another heavy blow from her opponent without really looking away from him. He looked good. He looked really...different...or had she just not noticed before?

The demon Giles was fighting lunged forward and crashed its blade down onto his, throwing him off balance and causing him to stumble backwards into the anomaly, before disappearing completely.

"No!!!" She turned and swiftly beheaded her opponent before racing to the rip and trying to see into it. "Giles!"

Buffy woke to a blinding headache and glaring sunlight. She squinted. There was someone looking down at her.

"Where am I?" she croaked, instinctively reaching for her sword and finding it lying next to his on the ground.

Buffy opened her eyes wider. "Giles!" She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him hard.

Giles returned the surprise embrace, chuckling. "As bad as it looked, I'm quite all right. The question is: are you?"

Buffy pulled back slowly and looked up at him sheepishly, her eyes suspiciously bright.

"I thought I'd lost you again. And I'm okay, except for the bump on the back of my head. Where are we?"

"No idea," He offered a hand when she started to rise, and helped her to her feet.

Giles scanned the area around them once again, taking in the open expanse of grassy savannah in front of them, heavy forest behind, and the smell of sea on the wind.

"More or less. Although, I suspect we're a lot farther from home than Robinson Crusoe."

The blonde head shot around to look at his face. "Giles, I have a parent-teacher interview on Thursday night. Willow asked me to go and see the Two Towers with her again on Saturday. And I had plans for...I mean...I have work tomorrow! I can't be stuck anywhere...and you're telling me I've been sucked into another dimension or something?"

"Something." Giles nodded, aware that she hadn't yet reached the conclusions he had about the longer-term implications of their situation.

Buffy was watching his face. Normally when she was worried or frightened, watching Giles' strong face while he talked to her, or to the gang, was reassuring and comforting. Very little fazed the time-weathered Watcher. He'd seen it all before, and if he hadn't, he'd probably seen something worse. This time, though, all she saw in the sea-green eyes was an ominously large measure of apprehension, even maybe a little fear.

He finally looked down at her again, and actually tried to smile. "I haven't the faintest idea, actually, except that I'm almost certain we're not in Kansas any more..."

For a moment Buffy simply stared at him. "Okay, that's it. How do I know you're my Giles and not some Doppler-thingy?"

Buffy's hands went to her hips. "You made a joke. We're trapped in another dimension and you made an actual funny. So, Dorothy, what have you done with my Giles?"

"Could'a fooled me," she teased, watching a very strange-looking bird wheel overhead. Just then it gave a long, keening shriek. "Any idea who our spooky-wannabe visitor is?"

Giles followed her gaze and frowned. "Grammar still not your strong point, is it? It's some type of raptor, I believe, but not one I've ever seen before."

She squinted. "So what gives it away...the shiny talons, or the fact that it's the size of a small pony? Oh, and...bite me."

Giles chuckled. "I rather think it's time we moved away from here. It's losing altitude with every pass, and I don't think it's an accident, nor do I want to wait to find out if it wants to invite us to lunch..."

"More like invite us to *be* lunch," Buffy shot back as they headed for the edge of the forest.

Their avian companion let out another bone shuddering screech of frustration just as they slipped beyond the low scrub and into the forest proper.

"Nice welcome," Buffy grumbled. "Any idea where we are yet? There must be something in that library of yours about other dimensions."

Giles shrugged. "You heard Anya the last time this came up. There are an infinite number of dimensions, all with their own peculiarities. At least this one bears some resemblance to our own."

Buffy, who was dawdling, swiftly came up alongside him and stayed close to his right arm. "It's creepy in here and it smells weird."

"There's nothing wrong with the way it smells. This is how a forest is supposed to smell. Decomposing leaf-litter, damp earth, tree bark, faint perfume on the breeze from forest blooms."

Giles turned his head and sniffed. "An animal, probably a predator, has marked its territory recently."

"Who knew you were the Daniel Boone type?" she teased, jumping when something skittered, unseen, through the undergrowth.

"Just stay alert," he told her. "If there are larger animals about, it follows that there are going to be predators...and try not to let any insects sting or bite you. There is no way to know what will or won't be toxic."

At that moment a bright blue dragonfly-like insect the size of a stogie zipped by.

She dived even closer, almost knocking him off balance. In self-defence, he threw an arm around her shoulders and steadied himself, before carrying on.

"I am now," she told him, peering up at the canopy as though demon spiders might come careening down at any minute. "I hate bugs."

He grinned to himself above her head. This was new. "I rather thought you might be the one protecting me from things with large teeth and claws."

Buffy leaned into him even more and felt his arm tighten gratifyingly. "If one says hello, you got it. Until then you deal with the bugs."

"Done." He suppressed a chuckle. "I wish I knew where we were going, though. As a matter of fact..."

He brought them to a halt. The canopy had completely closed and it was more like twilight than daytime in the filtered light beneath it.

"...I think perhaps we should make our way back out of here for now. We don't know how far this forest extends or exactly how dangerous it might be. At least in the open we can see an enemy coming."

Once they got back to open space again and made absolutely certain that the mega-raptor had left, they followed the edge of the forest, walking into the breeze. Giles was hoping it would lead them to the ocean, the scent of which had grown even stronger since their re-emergence from the undergrowth.

After an hour and a half of walking, the scenery was little changed. "Giles, I'm hungry and my feet ache."

Giles looked down at her slender, sneaker shod feet. "One must be grateful for small mercies. You could have been wearing those monstrosities you came to training in the other day..." He frowned. "You've never complained about your feet hurting before, even when you've patrolled half the night."

Buffy looked sheepish. "You used to be easier to slide one by. Okay, you've got me. No impending lameness. It's just...I really am hungry, and thirsty, and it's hot and if one more bug tries to bite me..." she huffed, swatting again at a forearm.

Giles took the slender arm in a large hand. "Buffy you're covered in bites. Why didn't you tell me?"

"I am?" Buffy peered at her limb. "How was I supposed to know? They're not itching...yet. What? Am I going to swell up and die...again? Or turn purple or bleed out of my eyeballs or something?"

Giles rolled his eyes, still studying the small but innocuous-looking lumps. "Heaven knows, but I suspect that something would have happened by now if your body was going to react anywhere near as colourfully as all that."

"I think not. If your feet are up to the journey, we should at least try for the coast. There may be a settlement there, perhaps evidence of some kind of sentient presence, or at the very least more opportunity to find something to eat that hopefully won't result in a prolonged need for a latrine...or bleeding from one's eyeballs," he added dryly.

Giles trailed around a large, ugly yellow and green striped bush. "Of anything that might be able to help us get home." He looked down at her dishevelled appearance. "Something with a bathroom, perhaps?"

She looked up at him. "Look who's a laugh-riot today." Her face fell. "Oh, God. Going to the bathroom...I have to go to the bathroom out here...I'm going to end up with as many bites on my ass as my arms!"

Giles couldn't help chuckling, even as the knowledge that they might well be talking about their new, permanent home was making his heart sink.

By the time they'd finally climbed over what Giles suspected were scrub-covered sand dunes a couple of hours later, both of them were scratched, tired, irritable and exhausted.

Buffy emptied her shoe for the fifth time. "Now I remember why I skipped girl scouts."

Giles, however, was scanning the horizon through better than one hundred and eighty degrees. Not a silhouette of a building, a boat, or even a hut or a broken-down pier... nothing. He sighed heavily.

Buffy looked up and frowned, running her finger around the back of the sneaker to pull it onto her foot again.

His voice was tired and flat as he repeated himself and waved a hand in an arc across the horizon from left to right. "Literally nothing..."

"Oh." Buffy stared at the blood red fingers of the late afternoon sun splayed across the pale emerald sea before them. "It is kinda pretty though."

Giles snorted quietly. "I daresay. However, 'pretty' will not assuage hunger, nor will it house you tonight. We're going to have to find a way to build a shelter. There's nothing else for it. And since we've not found any fresh water yet, we can't even do that until we do find some."

Several hundred yards up the beach there appeared to be a stream mouth. It was too small to be a river.

Buffy was already heading up the beach. "Whatever. All I know is, I'm thirsty enough to drink pig's blood which...gross...so if that estu...ester...*creek* could lead to drinkies, I'm so there."

As they approached, it became obvious that it was the mouth of a decent-sized stream. One large enough to have carved out one side of the mouth into a deep trough, while the side closest to them was relatively shallow, spreading out as tidal flats, allowing them to see the bottom a few feet down, and the activity of the creatures that dwelt there. The deep side seemed to flow into a mangrove-style swamp that appeared to run for miles.

Giles smirked. "Now who's the frontier woman? In case you haven't noticed we don't actually have a boat..."

"We're going to have to follow it upstream, though, aren't we? To see if there's fresh water up higher?"

Giles stepped carefully from rock to rock to reach something a few feet out into the water.

Buffy watched him bend and scoop it out, then turn again as he rose, before stepping back across to her. For some reason his grace surprised her and made her feel a little small. It was such a little thing, and yet it made a mockery of much of the gang's, and her own, attitude to Giles...the sure knowledge that they'd all have made bets on him falling in. Worse was the realisation that, back in Sunnydale, he probably would have, not because he was really any kind of a klutz...*obviously*, but because the weight of their expectations would have toppled him in the end...

She shook herself and took the wet object he handed her. She was getting entirely too introspective... Her nose twitched. * Introspective, with big words, no less...*

Giles nodded. "It's a seedpod and small branch from a large tree. Do you see any large trees here?"

Buffy looked up and down the coast and upstream. "That would be a nope. Are we going somewhere with this?"

He nodded. "It must have come from upstream, and it isn't the type of plant known to grow in genuine salt water or estuarine conditions. The seeds from that pod would have to fall, not on seawater-saturated sand, but good earth to germinate. We must hope that farther upstream the water is fresh enough to sustain this tree and others like it."

Her nose wrinkled up. "Can I throw it away now? You don't actually want to eat it or anything, right? It smells kinda bad..."

Buffy hurled the branch back into the water and wiped her hands on her jeans as she followed him.

Ten minutes later they flushed their third snake, only this time it was a vivid red, black and yellow striped creature and not very happy about being disturbed.

Buffy watched it vanish into the undergrowth, adrenaline still pricking in her fingertips. "That was exciting."

Giles, ignoring his own accelerated heart rate, was negotiating his way around a giant spider web, and watching its plate-sized occupant carefully.

"What on earth are you talking about? How do you know that particular arachnid is a...what did you call it...a pulakoo?"

"Years of brain-numbing TV watching with Xander Harris. He was watching Major Kira's goodies. Will and I were watching her eat giant spiders."

He shook his head but didn't comment. It seemed pointless to tell her he had in fact been referring to the snake.

They took another hour to finally reach a place far enough upstream to actually be able to drink the water. Buffy almost smacked Giles one when he told her she couldn't have any right away but drank deeply himself.

"How is that fair?" she whined, dehydrated, headachy and wanting nothing more than a nice hot bath and the casserole she'd pre-prepared the night before for their, and Dawn's, dinner.

Giles looked down his impressive nose at her. "We'll push upstream a little further and see if we can find a clearing to set up camp. If I haven't dropped dead or fallen somewhere in a convulsive heap by the time we've made camp, you may drink the water. I just wish I had something in which to boil some for you."

She grew very still. "You're taste-testing to see if it's poisoned? We didn't even discuss it...How could you...!"

His raised hand silenced her, but Giles could see the rage in her eyes. "One of us had to, and since I had the advantage of knowing that, I chose to be...'it', as it were."

Which only made Buffy angrier. "I'm the one! I'm the one who takes the risks. I'm the one who does any necessary dying!" She was crying as she yelled. "You...you can't leave me again, Giles. You...you can't do stuff that might take you away from me again!"

He stepped towards her, shocked by her outburst. "I'm all right, Buffy. Truly I am. It's normal procedure in an unknown environment...one of us must remain healthy, but we have to know if the food and water are edible or potable. I'm sorry I didn't talk to you about it first."

Nonplussed, he followed her until she reached a spot where they could see a clearing on the other side of the stream. It was strewn with rocks and dead branches, but it was mostly grass and lichen, where once must have stood one of the great forest trees, long gone and leaving a gaping hole in the high canopy for sunlight to filter through all the way to the ground.

Giles drew alongside her on the bank. "It's a good spot. I'd much prefer to be on the beach, but until we find a way to carry water, this is the next best thing."

"Great. So how do we get across there? I don't see any bridges or stepping stones for nimble Watchers to skip across on and there's no way to know if it's infested with piranha or anacondas or something equally fun-tastic."

*So she was still talking to him*. He sighed gratefully. "It's not deep here. I'll wade across first and if nothing..."

Buffy turned very quickly, caught his arm and searched his eyes, his face for any signs of distress. "No queasies? No urge to head for the bushes yet?"

He shook his head, only to watch her turn and wade into the stream. By the time he'd opened his mouth to yell she was across it and climbing out on the mossy bank that sloped gently down to the water. A few moments later he was alongside her.

"My turn," she told him. "It's what I do, Giles. You Watch, I risk. That's how it works."

"No it bloody well doesn't!" he yelled at her. "Not on my watch. Not ever again!"

She blinked, the tears returning as she absorbed the pain in his eyes, aware that it was about a lot more than just the stream, the blaze in them mirroring her own, earlier. After several interminable moments of stand off, she lifted an ineffectual hand.

He stared at it for another long moment, then took it almost roughly and drew her into his arms, her instinctive, almost desperate, embrace as fierce as his own.

Buffy felt his breath on her ear as he spoke the gentle words, and shivered. "I...I'm sorry about before. Just...please don't leave me again," she whispered back and buried her face in his shirt.

"Anyone would think I have a modicum of decency and a civilized sense of modesty."

Buffy rose from the fire they'd made after getting cleaned up, using tree branches and dry leaf litter...and the lighter Giles carried everywhere with him, and turned her jeans over on their makeshift drying rack.

Giles averted his eyes. Watching Buffy walk around in little more than a tank top and very brief, flimsy knickers was bad enough, but twice now she'd turned around, revealing quite innocently that there was even less in the back of them than the front. He wondered if it even occurred to her that he was a man, and not just a rather weathered British bookend or some such.

She turned around when she was done and shook her head at his obvious discomfiture.

"Oh, for God's sake, Giles. If this were Rio, you'd be seeing a lot more than this. We're going to be here, at least for a while, if not longer and there's no doctor, no emergency room...not even a jar of chaffing cream, so haul off those jeans and get them over here by the fire. You know if you were in charge of you, you'd make you take them off."

They stared at each other for a moment, dazed by her creative logic and grammar... then Giles started to laugh. "You do know you're quite mad?"

"I'm warm and dry," she shot back, her mouth threatening mutiny with every syllable. She managed to keep it to one giggle before her next statement. "And you're going to get jungle rot or something." Then they were both laughing. "Oh, c'mon Giles. You have to take them off. I mean, I'm not getting dinner here, so we might as well have the show," she suggested mischievously.

Giles, who had actually started to move, sat down again. "There will be no 'show'."

Buffy sighed exasperatedly. "Anyone would think you didn't wear any underwear or something," she growled, her eyes growing wide at the realization of what she'd just said. The grey saucers rose to look questioningly into his green ones.

He rolled them yet again and then cleared his throat expressively. "Of course I wear them. I just don't particularly want to model them for you."

"Giles, I'm the Slayer, remember? If I want to see them, it won't take more than a couple of shakes of a Watcher's tail..."

His eyes narrowed. "You wouldn't dare?" He realized too late that the word 'dare' should never, ever be used in conversation with Buffy.

Within seconds he was flat on his back, and his belt buckle was undone, the top button of his pants open. A flat black, satiny band of elastic across his abdomen confirmed the presence of some kind of underwear.

Buffy took a deep breath and drew the zipper down just as Giles got his second wind and tried to sit up. In a split second she'd shifted to grab the legs of the jeans, tipping him back on his back, and used her slayer strength to pull them clean off. In belayed deference to Giles, she resisted the temptation to do more than glance, or gloat, and instead turned immediately and went to arrange his pants on her improvised drying rack over the dwindling fire.

"I have to go get some more firewood," she said without turning back to him. "Nice boxers, Giles."

Red faced, Giles looked down at his small black boxer shorts. They were one of several pairs Anya had given him for Christmas over the last few years and his favourites: comfortable and well fitting, and they never rode up. By the time he looked up, Buffy was out of sight.

Well, now he was in the jungle alone, in his underwear, with Buffy. *Wonderful*. He wondered in passing if the others were looking for them yet. It was going to take the group a lot of work just to find those two demons again...provided they were able to actually ascertain what kind of demons they were. And those demons then had to actually know what the anomaly was...unless of course it was still there. His head started to hurt. There was no way the others were going to find them. He was almost certain the anomaly was unrelated to the Kymarath demons in any way other than dumb luck, and really, there was no way for Willow and Xander to ascertain the species of a random pair of demons he and Buffy happened to encounter whilst patrolling.

"Buffy? Is everything all right?" he called, unable to hear even her footfalls now, but reluctant to go striding around in his underwear.

"Buffy? Where are you?" With Slayer hearing she should have heard him that time.

With a muttered oath, he got up and retrieved his damp boots from by the fire. One thing he was not going to do was go stomping around an alien forest in his bare feet. He stopped and turned slowly back to the fire. Buffy's sneakers were still there. Another, more strident, oath followed.

He found her, and her large bundle of firewood, sitting by a small tree examining her left foot.

Buffy looked up and Giles could see pain in her eyes. He went straight to her side and examined the foot himself, squinting in the failing light. The very large thorn was embedded deeply in the fleshy pad behind her big toe. He had nothing to extract it with. "Hang on to me, and expect this to hurt," he told her, aware that in their situation they couldn't afford any infections.

"What? You're not going to amputate or something?" she demanded, clutching at his shoulder as he obscured the foot from her view.

"No I'm..." but the rest of his sentence was obscured by the shriek Buffy let out as he squeezed the area around the thorn quite mercilessly, until the sliver popped out like a cherry pit from a small rosy mouth, which then allowed him to carefully draw it right out of her foot. He heaved a sigh of relief. "Thank God."

Silence answered him. He turned, still cradling the now-bleeding foot. She was staring at him with ill concealed temper and distress.

"I am sorry, Buffy, but we can't afford to leave it in there to get infected. I did manage to get the whole thing out."

"Just what?" he asked, still checking the wound. "Just taking advantage of you? Extracting your thorn without your permission...?"

Buffy's gaze fell, riveting itself on a small, weird insect making its way laboriously through the leaf litter on the forest floor. The emphasis on the word 'permission' was not lost on her.

"I didn't really think you were that kind of shy, Giles. I seriously doubt that Ripper would mind if he walked down the street naked, let alone in those cute little boxers..."

"Yes, well, I never said I was shy," he growled. "It's simply a matter of personal space. I don't happen to be comfortable cavorting around in my underwear while you're likewise unclothed. It's not...it isn't..."

Buffy finally looked up. "It's not us," she said fondly. "But it is us. It's like everything else. Whatever comes up, we deal. You got the thorn out because we can't afford an infection. What do you think sleeping in wet pants all night was going to get you?"

She looked down. He was kneeling, sitting on his calves. He had great thighs, pale as they were against the silky black of his underwear. And as hard as it was getting in this light to see anything now, she was well aware that his shorts were amply filled. She squashed the thought.

"Okay, so now I've seen yours, and you've seen mine. We're even. Let's get this stuff back to camp."

Giles helped her to her feet then picked up her bundle of sticks, pausing when he straightened, to look at the bush she was sitting next to.

"You haven't eaten any of this fruit?" he demanded, picking several pieces of purple, vaguely plum-like fruit.

She shook her head. "If I'd known, I would have in a minute, if only to stop you from doing any more poison tests. Giles!" she shrieked, almost sounding like Dawn when temper met fear.

"I hope you get the runs...no, I hope you get it coming out of both ends," she huffed. "Not only have you done it again...you got to eat first!"

Without further comment, Giles tied several more pieces of fruit in his shirtfront, handed her the sticks and then picked her up, so that she was forced to adjust her load swiftly and shift the bundle of fruit as she settled against his chest.

"Why are you carrying me? It was just a thorn," she asked, ignoring the fact that her foot was still throbbing excruciatingly.

"It was a bloody big thorn and it left an open hole. Walking back through the filth on the forest floor is a lovely invitation to infection."

Buffy enjoyed the trip back more than she was ever going to let on to Giles. The warmth of his body, the sense of security and connection, was overwhelming. She'd been alone for far too long...ever since her mother's death, in fact. She closed her eyes against that revelation. Spike's face danced in her thoughts.

She'd been planning to see him for Valentine's Day. Just once more...just to... She didn't know how she felt about anything...much less an ensouled Spike. She knew that the vampire had made her care for him, whether she wanted to or not. She wanted...needed...to go out with him to find out if she was in denial again...if she really was in love with him and not willing to admit it. It scared her that she'd plunged so low during the last horrible year for want of him, and worse, that there was any possibility that she could still have feelings for him after...

Once, with Angel, was bad enough, but falling for another vampire...another dead guy...

She closed her eyes against the thought and burrowed her face into Giles' shirt again, letting the warmth and the soothing smell of him obliterate all other thoughts...

Above her, Giles looked down at the golden head. They weren't far from their fire now, and he was almost disappointed that he'd soon have to relinquish his load...though the sticks they'd been losing all the way back would not be missed, and he rather suspected that he was going to have to rinse his shirt and t-shirt at some point. There was a distinct stickiness in the area where he'd tied the fruit.

When they got back, the fire was little more than coals. Giles allowed Buffy to find her feet, or foot, before releasing her...very slowly...nearly as slowly as she let go of him.

She nodded silently as he took the remainder of the sticks and went to stir the fire back to life, and sat down.

It was getting darker. Buffy could see just enough to know that even though they'd cleared an area to sleep, they were still vulnerable to everything that walked or crawled in their little jungle and it was creeping her out. Demons and Vamps you could kill and they were gone...poisonous bugs or snakes and crawly things in the night...you had to see them before you could kill them...or before they killed you. Not that they were exactly equipped for any kind of defence against wild animals. All they had were the swords, the stakes and the bottle of Holy Water she was carrying when they came through the rift.

When Giles finally turned she could see that he'd prodded the fire into a decent burn again. He brought her pants.

Buffy took them and smiled. "Cool. At least I won't be getting bit on my...um...are my sneakers dry?"

Giles waited until he turned to smile to himself. That she thought her lovely bottom was safe was probably a good thing. He'd get more sleep that way. He hadn't the heart to tell her that if something wanted to bite her enough it would simply crawl down or up as the case warranted, into her clothing to find its mark.

He examined the shoes. "Quite dry, except for the thickest part of the tongues." When he turned to hand them to her, she was dressed again. He was chagrined to realize a part of him regretted that.

"Shoes with tongues," she muttered, easing the sore foot into the second one. "Next there'll be socks with lips." When it was done, she grinned. "Cool. My toes are no longer bite-y food."

She held them up for his inspection. He slid a finger over the skin of her forearm, tracing bites, and scratches from the sticks. Her body's responding shiver startled her. He seemed to hesitate for a microsecond when it happened, then continued his examination.

"There...there doesn't appear to have been any reaction beyond what you'd expect for the average mosquito bite. No burning, or nausea, or feverishness to speak of?"

Buffy shook her head. "None," she attempted to say, but her voice had gone hoarse all of a sudden. "Nothing," she repeated. "Y-you?"

He swallowed and dropped his arm to his side. "A few lumps and bumps here and there. I'm fine." After a beat his brows drew together. "Starving, actually...and still thirsty. Dying for a good cup of tea, really...and absolutely not looking forward to sleeping on the ground tonight, but other than that...splendid."

It worked. She was smiling again. That smile that said he was being a twit but that she loved it. She'd been doing that since she was sixteen...

"So, here it is, probably not much past six in the evening and all we can do is sleep?"

Or there's the wacky notion that Buffy might not want to die of dehydration," she added as the evening zephyr blew across the creek, making it smell like a hint of rain.

"Oh, good Lord, I-I'd forgotten. I'm sorry, Buffy, but form dictates that we wait until morning...a-although, one would think that if there was anything particularly nasty I should have been feeling some discomfort by now..."

When it became apparent she was going anyway, he helped her limp down to the bank and scooped his two hands, locked together, into the crystal clear water, raising them so that she could drink from them. It took several scoops for her to get enough, her lips moving over his cupped palms and drawing the water into her mouth. Giles vainly tried to ignore the sensation.

"Right, yes. Good. Hopefully we won't be fighting over the same bush in the morning," he added, altogether too briskly. "Come on, we shouldn't hang about the bank at this time of night. Never know what might come down here to drink...or to hunt things that come down here to drink..."

He helped her back to the camp in silence, Buffy extremely aware of the strength of his arm around her and the warmth of his body. She was turning around in her mind the image of his long, hard legs and the way they disappeared into those shorts. There was also the image of him bending to pick up her shoes earlier, which she'd locked away for later consideration lest her reaction show on her face when he was talking to her. He was supposed to be old and...well...old. Old guys didn't have legs Xander would kill for, or a butt that wouldn't quit...

Okay, that's it. Giles' butt was...Giles' butt. Spike's ass was the one that wouldn't quit...quite the hard little...at least that's what she'd told herself back then, while trying to shut out the memory of Angel's cute, but considerably less...hard...one, or Riley's entirely too cherubic, pink one.

When Giles eased her down next to the fire and straightened again, she studied him properly. He'd taken his glasses off and stored them with his wallet and keys, in some rocks under one of the trees that bordered their copse.

*A Giles word, that: 'Copse'*. She sighed, letting her eyes wander up his long body, from his strong, narrow male feet up to his now slightly sunburned face. He really didn't look much like her Giles. He looked like a man...one put together pretty damned well...put together in a way that was making her have other than Slayer-y thoughts about her Watcher...extremely other. She mentally slapped herself, sure there was something really wrong with that, but not sure what it was. He was checking his jeans, and bending again to check his shoes.

A little groan left her lips, making her jump like a scared cat, but Giles didn't seem to have heard. It was ridiculous. He was Giles. Of the tea, the very old books and the even older tweed...well, sweaters and jeans these days...but still really old. Her brows came together.

He half-turned, pulling on his almost-dry jeans. "I haven't bought any new clothes in years. What are you talking about?"

"Well that explains a lot," she drawled. "You have the worst taste. Those old sweaters do nothing for you...and you so need to get some decent jeans for that b...for um...so you don't look so shabby all the time."

He picked up his shoes and came towards her. "I'm shabby? Do I need to dress now to be of use to you?"

They looked at each other, Buffy wavering helplessly as the green eyes bore into hers. There was a lot more to that question than just a fashion discussion.

Then her expression hardened. "Does a reference to clothes have to mean something other than 'you need to do something to show off your goods a little more'?"

"You heard me. I happened to notice for the first time that you've got something decent to hang great clothes on, but all you ever wear are hand-me-downs."

"I'll have you know those are all my own clothes...a-admittedly accumulated over many years a-and none of them new—"

"None of them are even from this century. You look..." She took a deep breath and plunged. "You look great, Giles. So why is it all I can ever remember is the shabby old professor look, or the 'look, I'm a business man, now' look? If it wasn't Watcher-tweed it was old sweaters or coats out of the ark."

Giles' righteous indignation over what he thought the discussion was going to be about dissolved into utter bewilderment.

"Why on earth are you worrying about how I look when we're stuck in the middle of nowhere in a bloody demon dimension?"

Buffy blinked. There was no answer to that question. At least not one she wanted to think too much about.

"Well you were shaking it all about, there, Giles. It just started me thinking and I thought about those clunky sweaters." No need to tell him that she was also picturing that butt bending over in tight designer jeans and that back flexing in a righteously sexy black t-shirt. She shook herself visibly. She was definitely seriously disturbed. This was Giles. Old Giles: the guy with the serious corduroy fixation.

Giles huffed. "I was not shaking anything about. I don't even have a bloody gourd. Anyway it was your idea to dry my damned jeans. I suppose they're too shabby for words as well."

Buffy's eyes flicked down his front, over his slim hips, and down to the long legs. "Not really. You just have to start shopping somewhere other than Wal-Mart for clothes."

He huffed again. "Bloody women. You're as bad as Olivia. Always wanting to change a man..."

She stopped thinking about how hard the ground was to sit on. Olivia? How did she get into this discussion, and why were her fingers curling and her stomach tightening at the thought of her first meeting with the other woman? Buffy looked up at Giles again. He was still muttering about 'bloody women' as he sat down. She could see him as though it were yesterday...all got up in his Hugh Hefner robe and looking, if she'd been willing to admit it, kinda great. She shuddered again and looked at the man sitting a few feet from her with one leg stretched out and the other bent at the knee so that his foot rested on the ground. Okay, so at the time there was serious wigging going on. There was Olivia wearing nothing but one of his shirts, and Giles, looking all...male...instead of all...

Her eyes suddenly widened. Had she really been that mean? Or was it blind? She'd been wigged out less by the fact that he was doing it with Olivia than by the fact that for once she was seeing him as he really was and not the illusion she'd built up for herself. *Way to go, Summers. Why didn't you just buy him a T-shirt with 'Make Way For the Elderly' written on it*?

Buffy closed her eyes. The truth was making her head hurt, and her stomach was rumbling. She had to stop thinking.

She ignored the peevishness. "Starving. Some of us haven't eaten since breakfast. If you aren't going to puke in the next five minutes, I'm going to have some of that fruit."

"Buffy, I really wouldn't...I mean, even I've only had one piece. It's quite possible that it has to be fully digested for any symptoms to—Buffy!"

She'd chomped through an entire piece before he got there and was starting on another one.

"That was incredibly foolish. You want to risk upsetting your stomach, or far worse, fine. But don't come crying to me for toilet paper in the morning," he growled.

Buffy stopped chomping, another reality etching itself in her features. No bathroom. No...nothing. She finished the fruit slowly and wiped her face on her arm, before wiping her arm on her pants.

He sighed a long, tired sigh. "I know you're hungry. So am I. But it was a very silly thing to do." He looked up at her and fixed her with a gentle green gaze. "And I really didn't want to spend the night worrying about whether you're going to survive your last meal or not."

Buffy's expression softened. "But it was okay for me to worry myself sick about you?"

"But you weren't...I mean you don't usually...um..." He quit while he was behind.

"I don't usually worry about you? You mean I don't care enough to worry about you unless it affects me?" It hurt, and she should have been shocked, but she wasn't. Given her earlier revelations it didn't really surprise her.

Giles was shaking his head, but she knew it was more out of embarrassment than denial.

"That was what you meant. It's okay. It's not true, but I can see how it would have looked that way sometimes." His head came up and he stared at her. Buffy shrugged uncomfortably. "I didn't mean to not care—I mean I cared, but I didn't...you know what I mean...I just...there were always so many things." She looked away. "I really did suck more than the telling of it, didn't I? You know, if we'd had this discussion even a year ago, I'd have been all yelling and defensive and 'I have to put my ass on the line every day and it's so hard and I'm so alone, boohoo, poor me.' Not that it wasn't true," she added with some asperity. "But it was also true that things were just as shitty for you...didn't you ever want to go home? Didn't you ever want a family of your own? A dog? Sex, occasionally?"

"Of course I wanted all those things...well most of them," he said quietly, surprisingly unfazed by her attempt at humour. "I'm human. But I'm also aware that it is not my destiny to have those particular things. One does as one can. I don't regret coming here...well, to California, that is...nor do I regret meeting you or the time we've spent together." A hint of a smile softened his lips and Buffy reciprocated. "Home is where I'm happiest...wherever that may be. I have enough family in Sunnydale, and having Spike in the flat for that period has probably put me off pets for life..."

"So you've accepted a life without any of those things in it, but with a Slayer who never seems to give a crap about whether you're okay or not, never actually saw you as a guy...a man...until you took your pants off...?" She stopped. "Okay that came out really, really wrong...but you know what I'm saying. Why, Giles? Why do you just accept all that? Why do you even give a damn about me? Even I can see now how as a person, I might actually have not been worth your valuable time..."

He was staring at her again. "Are you sure you're not feeling any ill-effects from today's activities? You seem remarkably...animated," he observed, completely deadpan.

Buffy made a face in the firelight. "Very funny. I am *not* babbling. Don't think you can wriggle out of this one, Mister. How many times in one lifetime do we get to deal with stuff? Any other time, and you'd have been somewhere, and I'd have been somewhere else, either dealing with Dawn, or the bills, or the house...or patrolling or trying to deal with my lame love life...or for something really different, trying to figure out how to deal with friends whose lives were falling to pieces, stop the world from ending or my sister from dying."

She stopped and reviewed the conversation. "Okay, stopping with the rationalizations now," she conceded. "Nobody likes being wrong. I was just trying to be a little less...wrong."

It took a little doing, but she managed to get up without putting too much pressure on her very sore foot, and hobbled over to sit alongside her Watcher.

"Yeah. The wrongest." She laid her head against his arm. "You've got to know you've always been the most important person in my life. I know I've got Dawn now, but she's still kind of a new deal in our lives, no matter what the monks made up. Before she...well, before she came to us...there was never anyone who was as important to me as you."

"I wish. I mean, I loved my mom...and I guess maybe even my dad...at least I did once, well still, maybe, if I try really hard, and I love Will and Xand, and okay, there was the whole Angel thing and the mistake that was Riley...but nobody...not any of them, could make as big of a hole in me as you did when you left. It hurt...it hurt like hell when mom died...I didn't think I was going to make it and it wasn't much better when Angel left me, but that pain was nothing compared to the day you said you were leaving."

"You only wanted me there to pay bills and to raise Dawn for you," he said softly. "You had the group for everything else. Since I'd never been permitted to assist with your emotional needs in the past, I didn't see any reason to believe that you'd allow me to start then. Presumably, after I left, you made sure Spike got that job anyway..." There was a remarkable amount of bitterness in the words...and not one giggle this time.

For a moment Buffy didn't speak. This truth stuff was worse than getting the snot beaten out of you by demons or vamps. At least Slayer healing would take care of those kinds of bruises.

"I-I wanted you there because you made things all right. It's true...I wanted you to take care of things. I know that was wrong, but my God, Giles. I wasn't recovering from a broken leg, or a bad relationship. You have no idea exactly how much of a mess I was. I've had to sleep with the door to my room open for nearly a year. I still have nightmares about that damn box...only in the nightmares I don't have Slayer strength to get me out...and nobody comes. And it's not just that. I still...I still feel wrong...like I came back wrong. Spike said I was meant to be in the dark with him...that I was bad...that I liked the darkness and I just didn't know it yet. The truth is I didn't have enough feeling left to care, one way or the other, and a part of me kind of thought he might be right. I was dead inside. The only time I felt alive was when you came back to me. For a few minutes I believed everything was going to be all right. I believed you'd take care of things and we'd be like we were before."

"What do you know?" he asked, again with a touch of bitterness in his voice. "I tried to connect with you...tried to be there for you then...but you didn't want me. You just wanted everything done, taken care of...problems solved, no waiting. Giles will do it..."

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "When I came back I couldn't connect with anyone...not even Dawn. I had nothing to give. I know I was horrible. Spike told me often enough. Why do you think I went to him? It didn't matter how horrible I was with him. It-it didn't matter if he got hurt...then. At least if he treated me bad enough I could almost feel something...anger, pain. It was better than nothing."

There was silence for a long time. "I don't know what love is," she said finally, resolutely. "I thought I did...but I don't. The spirit guide said I was full of love. Well, I must have bought it at Sears or something, because I sure as hell didn't come by it honestly."

"Of course you do," he chided. "I know you love Dawn very much...you know you do. You died for her, for God's sake. And you loved your mother dearly. You said as much a few moments ago"

Buffy was shaking her head. "They were more important to me than anything. You were more important to me than anything...but me...and love...?" She shook her head again. "I think that bauble got broken a long time ago."

"You don't talk enough. There was a reason the spirit guide said what she did." He trailed his fingers tenderly down her cheek. "You may not recognise it, but you have an enormous capacity for love. I'm well aware that your ability to express that love has been compromised both by the unfortunate events of your childhood and by your calling, but never, ever, think that Buffy Summers cannot love."

His tone was vehement, but for all its power, Buffy felt embraced by his tenderness.

"I don't know how, Giles. I couldn't love Riley. I don't know what I felt for Spike...I thought I loved Angel..." she listed. Then her voice went very flat. "But in the end I knew it was over that morning I woke up and he was gone. I might have wanted things to go back to the way they were...but God, we never had anything before I slept with him...stolen moments, but nothing real, nothing permanent to remember except for major amounts of kissage and enough sexual tension to ignite Mount St. Helens. I was sixteen, for God's sake. Hello to the Harlequin Romance version of love...with my breast beating for him and him with his dark, swarthy good looks...the dashing, brooding hero...yadda-yadda...yawn. So where's the love? I'm not seeing too much love in my life...not of the 'me giving it out' variety, anyway. And it's pretty much my own fault mostly. I mean look how much Riley loved me, but—"

She did, meeting his gaze only to be almost undone by the tenderness in his eyes.

"They're all passing fancies...all of them. If you weren't in love with them, you weren't in love with them. It doesn't mean you can't love, only that they weren't right for you...and that, miracle of miracles, some part of that infuriating mind of yours actually knew that before you did."

In the midst of the tension, she giggled. *Nice to be told that it's a miracle that you actually noticed something...not...*

Giles smiled at her. "That's better. Now, let me ask you again. Did you love your mother?" She nodded silently. "And do you love your sister?" She nodded again. "And do you believe that anything can ever change that?" She was still for a moment then shook her head slowly, before meeting his smiling eyes again.

She reached out slowly and touched his cheek as he'd done hers earlier. "You need a shave."

He was very still for beat, then his smile widened. "Ah, well, that's going to be something of a problem, since I don't fancy shaving with my sword."

Amusement showed in her eyes, but her expression remained intense as she searched his face.

He grew still again as he contemplated the question. "I think that's something which is still evolving," he said carefully. "We've been many things to each other: librarian and recalcitrant pupil, Watcher and recalcitrant Slayer, comrades in arms, friends— good friends..."

"Friends," she repeated softly then smiled. "And there's my rakish uncle..." Even before Giles had finished opening his mouth to object, she shook her head. "Nope. You were never the 'uncle' type. At least not mine." Something else occurred to her. "And I was never 'recalcitrant'."

"Is that a fact? I seem to remember numerous occasions where you either disobeyed or ignored my express wishes and frequent occasions where a rendezvous at the library to train resulted in my getting several days ahead with the cross-referencing simply because you chose not to make an appearance, and I was loathe to waste the time spent waiting for you to arrive."

Buffy's smile vanished. *Full circle*. "I was a kid. Thinking, especially about consequences, is not a strongpoint of kid-ness. I know this, because I have one of my own now. And I can say with totally certainty that our Dawn has never been on speaking terms with actual thinking, let alone the meaning of the word 'consequences' ...of any kind, hence our happy Halloween last year. I never meant to cause you pain. Kids never do. They just...they don't really get it...that there's anything going on at all outside of their little world...all they know is that they need someone to be there when they screw-up...it's selfish and stupid, but it's true."

"And yet..." she intoned meaningfully then took another tack. "If I was...if I am...so horrible, why do you keep coming back? Why do you stay?"

It was getting really dark now, but she heard him sigh. "Do I really need to answer that?"

Buffy didn't know what exactly she should already know. She knew they were friends and that he had a responsibility for her, as her Watcher, and that he cared for Dawn. She knew that it mattered to him that the world kept, well...being, just as she knew it mattered to him that she continued to exist. But she still didn't really get why he left, or why he'd stayed for so long...or what kept bringing him back when it was fairly obvious that he'd neither been happy nor had any kind of real life in her world.

"Yes, of course. It was the sodding donuts. I'm going to sleep. I suggest you do the same."

*Obviously picked a bad time to try and lighten things up*, she decided as he got to his feet and went to build up the fire for the night. The temperature had dropped considerably, but it was far from cold now that they were dry. She got up slowly and gingerly tried her foot. It wasn't too bad. It would probably be all healed by morning.

"You startled me. That's all." He tossed several branches and a large chunk of tree root onto the pyre he was making.

She shrugged, though there was no one to see. "I didn't mean to. I just wanted...I was kidding about the donuts."

"I hope one day you'll tell me," he said softly, still without turning. "Go to sleep, Buffy. I daresay the forest won't let us sleep much after sunup anyway. Hopefully the fire will keep the worst the place has to offer away for a few hours, at least."

"What numbers? There are two of us, one of whom is the Slayer. We can hardly circle the wagons. I'm perfectly satisfied with the notion of you and a sword just a few yards away."

Her voice dropped into a pout. "How are you going to protect me from the bugs if I'm going to sleep all the way over there? She pointed to where her sword, spare stakes and holy water had been dropped.

"Giles, we're alone, stuck in a demon dimension. Last year I was so inappropriate I will probably never be 'appropriate' ever again. Just for once, can you not be so damned 'appropriate'? You've gotta give me points for asking first. No taking for granted, no 'riding roughshod' over your feelings," she mimicked an expression she'd heard him use a hundred times...*Well, ten or twelve anyway...*

He sighed a long, drawn out sigh. "All right. I cannot believe the Chosen One could be such a damned sook about a few insects."

"Excuse me? A *few* insects? I'm getting eaten alive by mosquitoes the size of blowflies, there are beetles on most of these trees that make Fyarl demons look pretty. Even the dragonflies are as big as breadsticks and you wanted to eat a spider the size of your head." Buffy could almost hear Giles rolling his eyes. " I think I've been perfectly reasonable up to now, so you should be 'understanding guy' about a little wigging...especially after the day we've had. And we didn't even build a shelter. It could rain. A demon tiger could eat us in our sleep..."

Buffy woke at dawn, as she had almost every day since she was called. It took her several moments to put it all together and remember where she was and why she was asleep on someone's shoulder...and why the air smelled like a mixture of charcoal, rain and leaves just after you rake them in the fall.

She closed her eyes again and explored the feeling of being against someone warm. It had been a very, very long time. They'd gone to sleep back to back, but somehow, in their sleep, she'd found her way to the one spot in the universe at the moment in which she could feel truly safe. Giles would probably be either royally pissed or extremely embarrassed when he woke up, but for now it was nice to just feel him breathing and feel how, well, *warm* he was, while the brisk morning air chilled her back.

He smelled vaguely of his familiar cologne and his own personal body scent, which was male, yet understated, even if it probably wouldn't be so understated in a couple of days without soap, showers or clean clothes. And neither would hers, she realized with dismay. His breathing was deep and regular, a small sound emanating from his parted lips that couldn't quite be described as a snore. Buffy described it to herself as cute. And those whiskers would be longer. She wasn't at all sure she was going to like bearded Giles. Unshaven, maybe...that way often lay actual sexiness, but not...

Her eyes popped open. She was doing it again. Now her mind's eye had Giles dressed in the black shirt, the designer jeans, contacts, and a couple of day's growth of beard to go with it. Next she'd be redesigning his hairstyle and choosing an earring or something. It was time to try and get up without disturbing him. Morning Buffy was entirely too attuned to morning Giles for her own good. Much longer and she was going to need a cold dunk in the stream.

She extracted herself gingerly from the comfortable hollow of his arm and lifted the leg that was resting on his right one, off, so that she could turn and sit up. That done, she sat for a moment, pleased with her success and wondering what to do next.

She jumped what felt like a foot in the air. "I thought you were still asleep?" Her tone was edgier than it should have been, made worse by his quiet chuckle.

Giles drew himself to a sitting position. "I've been in and out of a light doze for the last hour or so. It was rather difficult to go back to sleep with a beautiful woman on my arm."

His head tilted to one side. "Fishing for more compliments? You are not a beauty in the classical mould, but you already knew that. You are, however, a very lovely young woman. Satisfied?"

Her nose wrinkled. "I'll have to think about it for a while. The trouble with you is half the time a person doesn't know whether they've been complimented or insulted."

He barked out a laugh that was spontaneous and natural. Buffy watched him in amazement. It changed his whole face. It was open and strong and not anything like when he was trying to hide an embarrassed giggle.

"I think its time we both had a wash, and found something to store water in besides that farting little Holy Water bottle of yours. Besides, we don't know if we're going to need it later, or not," he said when he sobered.

"I vote for 'not'. This place is more likely to have vampire bats than vampires. So who gets the first bath and the first drink?"

By the time Buffy had weathered the cool spring and put her clothes back on over her damp person, Giles had restarted the fire. She was glad of it for a few minutes, while her body shook off the chill of the water and her clothes aired, but the day was rapidly warming up and looking pretty non-fire needing.

"So what's the fire for? We don't have anything to cook...or cook in, and I don't see any beastie things to frighten off."

"It's substituting for towels, mostly. Also I was rather hoping to guddle something from the stream for breakfast."

He rolled his eyes as a matter of form. "It means catching fish with one's hands."

"Oh. Well, I didn't see anything that looked like fish. I saw lots of bugs...none of which I'm going to eat, by the way, *ever*, and some birds that kind of looked like big white ducks with shaggy red hair...or ostrichy stuff, or something, on their heads. Oh, and there were a couple of lizards sitting on rocks in the sun, and one snake came out of the grass on the bank and swam downstream. It looked like the pretty one from yesterday. I'm not sure I want to eat any of those, either. The ducks were kinda cute."

Giles processed all this information. The 'ducks' possibly meant meat and quite probably nests with eggs. The snake wasn't a terribly comforting thought and if it came down to survival, Buffy bloody well would find herself eating bugs, but he thought better of telling her so, or that they were frequently very nutritious, if not terribly palatable, until it was absolutely necessary.

"Fine. Watch the fire and I'll see what I can do about breakfast. I don't suppose you noticed anything we might make into a bowl or any kind of utensil to hold water?"

Giles washed himself slowly, enjoying the briskness and the feeling of being clean again...or at least as clean as one could get without soap or hot water. None of Buffy's creatures were to be seen when he reached the water. She'd made a good job of flushing everything out and frightening them away for the time being.

He was finishing up and reaching for his boxers when it broke cover for the first time.

*Wonderful*, he thought. Not a stitch on, no sword...and even if Buffy arrived on the scene she'd be too busy falling about laughing to fight the bloody thing.

The coal black feline, as big as a healthy lioness and as heavily muscled as a leopard, sniffed the wind, which thankfully was blowing the other way, then padded down to the bank on the other side of the stream. Giles stood as still as a statue while it put its head down. Unfortunately it must have been some time between drinks, because it took so long to finish that he was starting to get a cramp in his right thigh. Not to mention a sudden need to find a bush. Bloody fruit...

When the cat finally lifted its head again its large yellow eyes looked straight at him. Adrenaline coursed through every pore in his body, the flight reflex making every muscle scream to run, but he held his ground and stared back, even as the shoulder muscles on the silky black back seemed to bunch.

At the sound of Buffy's voice at ear-splitting decibels, the cat's pointed ones flicked back and flattened against its head.

The creature made a sound halfway between a leopard's scream of rage and a housecat's mutter of discontent, wheeled and sauntered off into the scrub once again. Giles sank to his haunches in the water, his leg muscles still trembling. He didn't have the wherewithal to shout a reply for a moment. Nothing like facing one's mortality to start the day...

"Giles?" Buffy appeared at the top of the slope down to the water. "Giles, are you okay? Did something bite you?"

He finally lifted his head. "I'm fine. Now. Give me a few moments to get dressed."

"Oh. Yeah. Sorry about that. Didn't mean to interrupt your nakedn...um...bath. You've been gone a long time and I was worried."

"Well there is that. I ate my share of the left over fruit, but my stomach wants food, not frutcose."

He sighed. "If I might be allowed to get out of the rather cold water...?" He started to stand, cramping up now, and tired of waiting.

"Giles, you're naked!" she squeaked, turned on her heel and hared off back to the campsite.

"So I am," he said, with weary patience then managed a small, self-satisfied smile as he climbed out and dried himself with his t-shirt, before dressing swiftly. He had an urgent date with a bush...

There was no breakfast to be had. They spent the better part of the next several hours going back to the stream-mouth and the beach and fossicking for food and useful items to make a shelter, weapons or anything that might hold food or water.

Buffy didn't ask what happened at the stream and Giles didn't feel inclined to re-live the experience just yet.

He turned another rock in the hopes of flushing a crustacean or shellfish they could eat.

"Well, does that mean you know about primitive people and how to find food and make like, fish traps and spears and lean-tos and all that stuff? Or were you just like... the museum librarian?"

Giles grimaced. "Yes, Buffy, I spent all my time cross-referencing bloody bones. Well done."

Buffy looked up from her job of scanning the shallow water for anything that moved. "There's no call to get snippy. I didn't even get to go to college, remember...at least not for very long. Besides, how unfair is that, anyway? You've never, ever told me...I mean us, anything about yourself except that you wanted to be a fighter pilot or a grocer when you were ten, and that you really wished you'd never got into raising demons," she abridged carefully. " I don't even know if you had parents, or a dog...or if you played a sport, or even a bunny in your school play. Most of Rupert Giles is all big empty spaces...no details. You should be happy I even knew there *was* a museum. It's not like you ever told me about it."

Giles blinked. He hated it when she was right...and righteous with it. "All right, fine. I was a curator at the British Museum. I have a degree...a doctorate...in archaeology and some knowledge of anthropology, palaeontology, zoology, botany and natural history. Happy now?"

"Only if you can make traps to catch us some dinner...and maybe make us somewhere a little less buggy to sleep."

"Does madam want satin sheets with that, or will palm leaves do?" The sarcasm was dripping from every word.

He shifted swiftly to see what had caught her attention. The tide had turned some time in the last hour or so and was now running in rather well. Buffy was pointing to something moving on the sandy bottom.

Bickering forgotten, Buffy looked up at him like an excited six year old. "Can we eat it?"

Giles looked down at the mud-crab sized crustacean, orange-red with huge cream coloured claws held up like weapons.

Buffy turned tail and Giles thought she was flouncing off. He was about to level another burst of sarcasm at her when she kicked off her shoes and shucked her jeans then bent, giving him heart failure again, and picked up one of the swords from the bank. Finally, she waded into the water and happily skewered the hapless crab in one impressive thrust.

"Lunch," she announced, holding up her, now dead, prize, then looked him in the eye. "Wimp."

She turned her head and squinted down into the water behind her. At least two or three more, even bigger, crabs were scuttling sideways towards her, all of them with terrifyingly large pincers cocked and ready for action.

"Asshole," she muttered when she reached the bank and dropped her loaded sword. A moment later she picked up the other one, catching his eye as he sobered again. "Your turn."

Once they'd secured four crabs, Giles realized that they didn't have anything to cook them in and he doubted roasting them would do them justice.

"You know if this was a movie, there'd be coconut palms or a gourd tree or something," Buffy complained as they walked along the beach looking for anything, even a sizable seashell.

"You've seen too many movies. And I've read too many books. If this was the Swiss Family Robinson there would be a marvellous array of barrels and supplies washed up on shore by now."

"You mean like 'Danger, Danger Will Robinson'?" she quoted. "I thought they were American and lost in space, not on an island."

"Americans," Giles muttered. "Never mind. I say, I think we're about to have a one of those moments after all. Look."

Buffy looked down at the item Giles had spotted and screwed up her face. "I think I'm going to be sick."

"I think I can clean it up," he said appraisingly. "It's mostly dried out anyway."

"True enough. I'm going to find a way to anchor it in the mouth of the stream and hope that in a few days, between the current and the interested feeders, it will be clean enough for us to use for water or carrying all manner of things. I will do a final polish with sand when it's dry just to make certain all the unpleasantness is gone before we use it."

Buffy looked down at the bizarre looking, but very large, sea turtle shell...and remaining, very stinky guts, and then back at Giles. "You're going to expect me to carry this, aren't you? You could at least wash it and clean out some of the grossness with your sword first."

In the end they made a fire on the beach and roasted the crabs on the end of their swords, Giles mourning his fine blades as they blackened in the heat of the flames. Their catch turned out to be full of meat with the texture of rock lobster and the colour of butter. Though his instinct was that it would have been better for him to try it and then wait to see what happened, he didn't have the heart to make Buffy go hungry again after the effort they'd gone to, and the pleasing aroma of the cooked crabs.

With a prayer to anyone who'd listen, he cracked open all the shells with the hilt of his sword, being careful not to mush the thick legs and claws in the process. By the time he was done they were cool enough to pick up. Amazingly Buffy waited, turning to him instead.

"It smells great. Do you think it's okay to eat? I mean, I could just try a piece and we could see if I'm barfing in the morning. The rest will keep under some leaves, in the shade, to have cold like crab back home, later, right?"

He smiled at her. "A very wise and sensible precaution," he agreed. "But I suspect your stomach is in about the same state as mine and neither of us will get much sleep tonight if we don't eat something besides those plums."

They feasted for some time, savouring the best of the meat, which did indeed taste like rock lobster...buttery rock lobster. Giles suspected a very high fat content, which would serve them well as a food source until they could do better...provided of course it didn't kill them first.

When they were finished they had a pile of very empty crab shells and very full stomachs.

Buffy smiled tolerantly at him. "And I'd really like a mocha right now...and I don't guess after-dinner mints are going to be an option?"

He looked sideways at her and smiled back. "We'll get out of this, I promise you. I'm not exactly sure how, yet, but we will. And in the meantime we can keep busy trying to make things a little more comfortable for ourselves. Once we've done that, we're going to have to find a way to climb one of the big trees and get a good look at where we are, and what, if anything, there is for us to make for if we leave here." The giant forest trees were smooth-trunked, except for a lush crown starting about thirty feet up. Their smaller cousins and various palms and ferns were interspersed with the behemoths, but the top leaves of even the largest of those barely reached the underside of the canopy.

"Even if we can't find a way, Will and the others have gotta be looking for us by now...that is if time works the same way here. What if it's only five minutes since we left or...or a hundred years? Oh, God..." Buffy's good mood vanished. "Do you think...?"

"No I don't think," he chided. "In any case I see no point in worrying yourself until we know one way or the other. You're quite right. Willow and the others are more than capable of investigating what happened to us and finding a way to bring us home. Now, we've got about six hours of good light left to pick some more fruit for supper and more importantly, to find something to make ourselves a shelter." He looked up at the sky. "No sign of rain, but I don't think we can put it off any longer. Besides, I want to make some kind of platform off the ground to sleep on."

Buffy made an effort to put away her fear and to stop thinking about the hell dimension she'd been caught in back when she ran away to Los Angeles, or worse, the one in which Angel had spent a hundred years in just a few months...

"So we're going to have just one shelter? I mean, two would be kind of extravagant, when one would do, right?"

His eyes flashed with both amusement and irritation. He'd automatically thought in terms of one shelter, without contemplating the connotations of that. Trust Buffy to pick up on it immediately.

"Well start with one," he told her gruffly. "And once that is finished we'll start on a second one. Our clearing has a number of stout trees close enough together to anchor our shelters securely."

"Spoilsport," Buffy teased, getting up and wandering down to the water's edge to wash her hands. When she came back he'd buried the shells and smothered the fire.

"Well, various primitive peoples in this kind of environment used either gourds or the bladders or intestines of various animals they'd hunted or slaughtered, as water vessels."

Giles gave up trying to keep a straight face. "I doubt that most of them would have a potter's wheel or a kiln in the jungle, Buffy."

She made a small, unhappy noise. "I hate this back to nature stuff. There has to be something we can use. It's been hours since we've had anything to drink. That can't be good for us."

"It won't hurt," he assured her, "but I agree it's not very pleasant. Mind you if it were ten degrees warmer today we might have been a lot more uncomfortable, perhaps even made ourselves ill exerting ourselves as much as we have without re-hydrating."

"Whatever happened to good old pollution?" She muttered, watching the waves roll up onto the shore. "Anywhere in the good ol' US of A where there's water, there's a Coke bottle, or a beer bottle or a can floating in it: it's the American way."

Giles made a noise suspiciously like a rude word as they headed up the beach to the path back to the camp. "Well, we'll just have to find a more ecologically sound solution, won't we? I'm sure we can find a creature around here somewhere willing to donate some steaks for our supper and give up its bladder for posterity."

As they disappeared into the undergrowth, Giles' shout of laughter echoed across the marshland.

After eating several more fruit for supper, despite the fact that both of them were experiencing mildly upset stomachs, with the usual consequences, they turned in without having built their new shelter. The rest of the day had not been wasted, however.

Giles had found plants and leaves that suited his purpose, but wasn't happy with any of the possibilities for the frame. They'd brought back armfuls of palm and other thick or tough and very colourful leaves, and huge amounts of stems from another kind of plant that frayed when they cut it. Giles said it was a good thing, but they were so tired by the time they'd carried back multiple loads, picked more fruit and followed one of Buffy's weird ducks for over an hour until they found out it was a courting male and not a sitting female, and therefore didn't have a nest for them to find, that shelter-building had been postponed for another day.

By mid-morning the following morning, they'd made about four miles upstream, exploring new territory, without straying too far from their best landmark. Giles was blazing trees anyway, but until they were more comfortable with their environs they wanted the security of being able to follow the watercourse back to their campsite.

They'd turned Giles' t-shirt into a sack with some improvised knots in the sleeves and one to close the neck. It hadn't taken long to fill it with several kinds of fruit and some weird pods Buffy wanted to open to see if they could be cleaned out and used to serve food in. They were the size of Giles' hand, olive coloured and bumpy, but they were the first things they'd found that looked like they could hold...something...at least.

Buffy stopped at a huge thicket, tired of chopping and bashing stuff out of the way. "We should rest for a bit. Water might not be an issue up here, with the stream and all, but it's definitely hotter today."

Giles, however, was walking toward the hulking great growth of what looked like cane of some kind.

Buffy followed him. "Be careful. Like you said, you don't know what's poisonous, and what's not...like with weird alkaloids and stuff..."

He turned, his eyes narrowed. "Where on earth did you learn about plant alkaloids?"

He turned back to the tall growth. "It's what we needed. Rather like rattan, which will do us nicely for making the walls of a shelter. Cut as many long thin ones as you can, while I work on getting us some heavy ones."

Buffy eyed the cane. "How many trips is it going to take for you to be satisfied?"

"Hard to say," he replied, failing to pick up on her less than cheerful tone. "Several, probably. With your Slayer strength, I daresay you'll be able to carry as much as three of me, which will help considerably, but in order to do the job properly we'll need enough for four sides and a roof, not to mention a sleeping platform."

It took them two days, with mornings devoted to finding food, especially since most of the new fruit was either bitter or in one case, caused a nasty reaction. Giles had been in some pain and had spent the greater part of one morning somewhere far enough downwind of the camp that Buffy couldn't hear his groans or detect the olfactory consequences of playing Russian roulette with alien foods. Fortunately the rash had all but cleared up as well, by the second day.

Their diet, therefore, still consisted pretty much of crabs and plums to fortify themselves for the work ahead, and the greater part of the rest of each day was devoted to the collection of the cane, to bring back enough material to satisfy Giles. On the second morning he'd also stumbled on a waterside stand of saplings on his way to get a drink, a rarity in the old growth forest. They were a type of tree they hadn't seen before, prompting the Watcher to suggest that at some point the creek had probably flooded and brought the seeds or nuts of the saplings down from somewhere much higher up.

Buffy, watching him study the area and the young trees, was beginning to realize that for perhaps the first time since they'd met, Giles was now the one, not her...and that it felt...right.

"What? Not really. Knowledge can be very useful, but if something with very large teeth and claws comes crashing out of this lot in the next ten minutes it won't mean a damned thing, will it?"

She smiled ruefully. "It'll mean I get a chance to do something useful for a change."

Giles started to cut down one of the saplings. "You're doing fine. Everything would have taken three times as long without your help. Just like this will if you don't come over here and help me cut some of these."