Fic: Forced Perspective
Apr. 6th, 2012 11:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedi_of_urthTitle: Forced Perspective
Author:jedi_of_urth / Tori Mc as was
Fandom: BtVS
Characters/Pairings: Buffy/Giles
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,052
Summary: Buffy and Giles get clued in to each other's emotions during Tabula Rasa
Disclaimer: ME and Joss own it, not me
Author's Notes/Warnings (fic): Spoilers through ‘Tabula Rasa’ Serious issues with pronouns and gender usage, who knows where this idea came from.
Author’s Notes (flashback): Probably written late 2001/early 2002, since it’s dealing with Tabula Rasa issues. This one is...weird, there’s no other word as good for it. It’s WEIRD. I don’t think I’ve ever tried something like this since, even though I’d forgotten all about it in the last decade it’s probably why I would never try it again. It’s not bad, but I’m not sure it’s good either, just weird.
Buffy knew she hadn't acted very maturely but she was she supposed to do? He was leaving and apparently she didn't get a say it the matter. He was as bad as Angel, saying he was leaving for her own good; only Giles had even worse timing. God, why couldn't he understand how hard this was for her? Why couldn't he just understand how she felt right now?
Giles stared at the door as Buffy walked out of it. He didn't want to go. It was the last thing he wanted to do. He hated knowing he had to go, and he knew he was hurting her by doing it, but he believed he still had to. Why couldn't Buffy understand how hard this was for him? Why couldn't she understand how horrible he felt right now?
Suddenly Giles was walking through the front door of the Magic Box. He looked around and catching a glimpse of long blond hair falling on his own shoulders was his first clue that his body was not his own. He walked across the room with steps far shorter than he was used to covering the distance in, though he felt as if he must be walking normal speed for his body. He also felt something that he couldn't understand. An emptiness, a yearning for something intangible. Something Giles shouldn't be able to describe, but suddenly could. Heaven, he was wanting heaven and peace.
Buffy, he was living Buffy, but he had no control of his actions as he pushed open the door to the back room and saw himself sitting there. He felt a rush of fear, not sure if it was more his own or Buffy's. She had known, or had an instinctive suspicion when she had seen him here of what was to come, and he was afraid of what he was about to have to watch himself do.
For some reason Buffy was sitting on the couch in the training room, but she didn't seem to have the ability to look around and figure out why. All she knew was she felt horrible, but it was a different horrible than she'd been feeling a moment before. And she felt guilty. It was powerful guilt, making her want to back out of what was to she had to do, but she kept telling herself it was the right thing, that it had to be done, even though she could tell that she didn't really believe it.
It was very confusing, the emotions seemed to be her own, but yet they were separate and she had no control over them. But there was another part that realized it was weird that she did have control over, and it was just weird.
But that weirdness was secondary to looking up to see herself walk through the door.
"What did you want?" Giles said in Buffy's voice. The part of him that was himself wanted to change what was coming. The words had come out of his mouth from the control of the part of his mind that was Buffy and he couldn't stop them. Living this once had been more than enough, he didn't want to do it again.
He watched himself face him/Buffy and with his knowledge of himself he saw the pain there, and so did the part of him that was Buffy. She didn't want to hear what he had to say anymore than he wanted to hear himself say it and she hadn't already lived this.
The emptiness, the hollowness, became more pronounced as he tried to keep from feeling the fear of what was to come. Giles understood in a detached manner that it was Buffy's self defense mechanism, make yourself unable to feel, then you can't be hurt.
"Buffy, I'm...I'm going back to England," Buffy said, and she made the leap of logic and realized she was living in Giles' body a few minutes ago. Okay weirdness personified, but at least it couldn't last long, could it?
"You're saying you're leaving?" The Buffy in front of her/Giles said and Buffy felt how her/his heart broke hearing the plaintive sound in her voice. She/he wanted nothing more than to tell Buffy that he/she would always be there, could never leave her, loved her.
Buffy wanted to shake her head to try and clear the sensations, but of course couldn't. She just stayed staring at her own body feeling the grief in Giles heart as he/she said, "I have to."
She wanted to cry out as she hadn't when she had lived this moment herself. He didn't have to, he could stay, it would be okay, she'd find a way to make it okay. And she felt the Giles on some level thought so too, but couldn't allow himself to accept it.
'No, you're just leaving me, leaving me like everyone else I've ever loved' was the thought that raced through Giles/Buffy's mind and he was surprised at the venom, remembering slightly before the words emerged from his lips that "Uh huh," was all that she had said. Buffy's heart tried to withdraw farther into its safe retreat of emptiness but couldn't quite hide from the pain Giles had caused her.
Giles couldn't be leaving, she/he loved him, but she'd never told him, no matter how many times she had wanted to. She/he remembered the moment on top of the tower when she had wanted to make that her last message to Giles, but had backed off, not wanting to burden him with her heart when it was too late.
The part of him that was Giles cried too, how could it be true, how could he have never seen the love she had for him? Had he really been so blind? It made him want to stop this moment even more, make it something different, end it right.
"You have to be strong. I'm trying to-" Buffy found herself explaining. There were endings to that, a good many and she hadn't known for sure how it would continue before she was interrupted.
The Buffy part of her wondered how this conversation would have gone had she allowed him to finish. It was emotions she didn't understand and neither did she as Giles. Giles didn't understand his own heart right now, because it was screaming that the worst thing he could do was abandon the woman he loved. That gave Buffy some satisfaction that he would at least use the word 'abandon' himself and then was caught by the love part.
She wanted to investigate that more, see if he loved her like she loved him, but didn't have time dealing with Buffy's impassioned interruption. "Trying to what? Desert me? Abandon me? Leave me all alone when I really need somebody." Buffy felt how those words had affected Giles, even in his careful cover of doing what he believed was right those words pierced his soul as they had been spoken from hers.
"I don't want to leave," Buffy/Giles said. Both the Giles and Buffy parts of him hated him for saying that. Could he have said anything to make her feel worse? She loved him and he left, just like all the others. It was her fault, she'd just have Spike, at least when he left it wouldn't matter, she wouldn't care because she'd never love him.
She/he remembered kissing Spike a few nights before; remembered how it had felt and he wasn't sure if the revulsion he felt at that memory belonged to the Giles or Buffy parts of him. Neither wanted to have that memory.
He felt himself reaching for something to say as he sat down next to Giles. "So don't, please don't. I can't do this without you," those words, words that had brought him back from the point of leaving her to death or insanity could surely keep him from leaving for another country. She couldn't have so misinterpreted his actions these past few weeks that he didn't want her. If he'd just stay, she'd pretend she loved him like a little girl loved her father, not like a woman loved a man, not like she'd never loved Riley and might have loved Angel if there hadn't been so much pain involved.
"You can. That's why I'm going," Buffy/Giles was saying, hating from both sides every word that came out of her mouth. "As long as I stay you will always turn to me when something comes up that you feel you can't handle, and I'll step in because-because..." he/she reached for the right way to put this that would let Buffy know that he was still there for her, but couldn't be here for her, "because I can't bear to see you suffer," she/he managed, from this side understanding the truth in them as she hadn't before.
'I'm yours Buffy,' flashed through Giles mind; though not all of it in words, 'I will always be yours, but you only see me as a father, and I can't play at that anymore, not when you pierce my soul every time you walk away from me,' accompanied with many memories of her walking away during the past few weeks. 'You can never know, but I'm yours.' The Buffy part of her wanted to cry at his thoughts, and things she hadn't seen while the Giles part of her was on the verge of tears watching the emotions on Buffy's face.
"Me too, hate suffering, had about as much as I can take," Giles said feeling just how true that statement was. Sufferings he, as himself, had never, should never have to have, understood were now laid out plain for him in her mind. He felt the pain of crawling out of the grave, felt with her at seeing the bot destroyed, the confusion about being back in the painful world where there had been peace. Felt how Spike was the only one she could be around because she still hated him and didn't have mixed up feeling of knowing she should love him.
How Giles himself had been the one person, even over Dawn, that she could almost love the way her heart still did. Her heart still loved all of them, but she couldn't love them the way she had before or how she wanted to.
The words pouring out of Giles/Buffy's mouth made Buffy sick. "Believe me, I'm loath to cause you more, but this... I've taught you all you need to know about being the Slayer and your mother taught you all you need to know about life. You're not going to trust that until you're forced to stand alone." She watched her own face fall as the words continued. From her place inside Giles, Buffy shouted at the words to change, to never have been said, but even as she did she felt how Giles felt about it.
He was disgusted with himself, having wanted nothing more than for her to see him as something other than a father figure and then he went and did something highly fatherly like that, like putting himself on level with Joyce. That was only going to reinforce her opinion of him as a father. It was stupid.
"But why now?" Buffy/Giles said. "Now that you know where I've been, what I'm going through..." she/he let the sentence hang, not knowing how to explain what she was going through. But she no longer needed to, in that moment he felt it even more than before. Her emotions had been close to the surface for once and he could feel just how deep the pain went. No wonder she had never wanted to talk about it, the pain went so far beyond words, talking about it would have been impossible.
"Now more than ever," Giles was explaining. "I mean the temptation to give up is going to be overwhelming and I can't let-"
'Duh Giles,' was what went through her/his mind, if not in so many words, 'but if I was going to give up I could just off myself, not like it would take a lot of brainpower to go find a tall building to drop off of, kind of fun actually.' Giles felt sick for how easily that thought came to her, the idea of dying no longer frightened her. But he also felt how much she thought 'I won't make it without you.'
"So I won't. No giving up. You can be here and I can still be strong." Buffy as Giles said and she felt how much Giles wished he believed it could be true. He would have given just about anything for it to be true, but he too well remembered how strong she had been in the things they had faced in the past and while she had had her weak moments, he could not watch her live this half life.
And there, as in everything he felt for her, echoed his love for her. Deeper than needing to believe this was the right thing was that he needed to leave before he hated her for her behavior and himself for giving into it. 'Let me go Buffy, let me leave in love and not in anger,' his mind or heart cried and it broke Buffy's heart knowing that as much as neither of them wanted this maybe it was the right thing, until she grew up a little.
"Buffy I've thought this over and over; I believe it's the right thing to do," he/she said, and Buffy wondered if, given enough time she would ever truly accept that--even if a part of her might believe it.
Giles scanned his own face, but it was Buffy who moved the eyes. She searched for some sign that he knew what he was doing, looking for some sign of hesitance that she could use to remind him that he belonged at her side and saw none, just as she had seen none in Angel's eyes the day he'd dumped her in the sewers. Giles also searched his face for any sign of hesitance, but he was searching for that which he knew he felt and realized it was no wonder Buffy hadn't ever guessed how he felt for her, he hid his emotions so well even from himself. Yes, he saw pain in his own features, and knew Buffy saw it too, but not the uncertainty and certainly not love.
He felt something shift inside Buffy. It was the upheaval of the one thing she had actually believed safe in this new world, she didn't care anymore. If he was going to treat her like a child and be a father leaving the nest so she could grow up, well she was going to respond in kind. She'd be a child, but she wouldn't start seeing him like her father, she could never do that, not when she loved him the way she did.
"You're wrong," she said as she stood up and left not looking back, not because she didn't care but because she was on the verge of tears.
Those two words resounded in Giles/Buffy's ears as he watched her go. Somehow it was almost as painful as watching her jump into that damn portal, knowing she would never forgive him, knowing he had lost any chance of her loving him almost as surely as he had when she had died.
But Buffy forgave him, loved him more than she ever thought possible because she knew him like this and knew his heart more completely that anyone normally had any right to know another person. She knew how he felt watching her walk out the door, felt how much he didn't want to go and hated believing it was the right thing to do, and above all how much he hated the knowledge that he was hurting her by doing it but still believed he had to do it.
Why couldn't Buffy understand how hard this was for him? Why couldn't she understand how horrible he felt right now?
Buffy/Giles leaned against the door of the training room feeling horrible. She knew she had acted childish and that she shouldn't have. Giles had even worse timing that Angel about "leaving for her own good." Why couldn't he understand how hard this was for her? Why couldn't he just understand what she felt right now?
Suddenly Giles was back in his own body staring at the closed door of the training room. He double checked to be sure it was his own form all the while wondering what he should do now. What could he say? "I've reconsidered in these last few seconds, and by the way I know you love me; would you care for dinner Friday night?"
He thought about all the things he had felt in her mind and heart while in her body. What could he say now that he knew all of those things? He buried his head in his hands and wondered if fate might be so kind as to show him the proper thing to do.
Buffy suddenly found she back in her own body leaning against the training room door already on the verge of tears and letting them fall even as she tried to bury her feelings. It wasn't right, but she understood and knew there was nothing to say to it now.
She slid further down the wall and buried her face against her knees, thinking about all she now knew of Giles' mind and heart wondering what there was to say when she knew all of those things. She just wished fate would give her some sign as to what was to be done now.
"That's it!" Geojax cried, throwing up his many hands. This wasn't even his usual area of justice demon work, trying to get a couple together. It was obvious that fate wanted those two together but they seemed determined to deny it as long as possible. Well, he wasn't having it, he'd find a way to make it work; and when he did they would know there was more to justice demons than bloodshed and violence.
Sometimes they were the tools of fate every bit as much as normal humans, or even humans like these two.
THE END
Author:
jedi_of_urth / Tori Mc as wasFandom: BtVS
Characters/Pairings: Buffy/Giles
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,052
Summary: Buffy and Giles get clued in to each other's emotions during Tabula Rasa
Disclaimer: ME and Joss own it, not me
Author's Notes/Warnings (fic): Spoilers through ‘Tabula Rasa’ Serious issues with pronouns and gender usage, who knows where this idea came from.
Author’s Notes (flashback): Probably written late 2001/early 2002, since it’s dealing with Tabula Rasa issues. This one is...weird, there’s no other word as good for it. It’s WEIRD. I don’t think I’ve ever tried something like this since, even though I’d forgotten all about it in the last decade it’s probably why I would never try it again. It’s not bad, but I’m not sure it’s good either, just weird.
Buffy knew she hadn't acted very maturely but she was she supposed to do? He was leaving and apparently she didn't get a say it the matter. He was as bad as Angel, saying he was leaving for her own good; only Giles had even worse timing. God, why couldn't he understand how hard this was for her? Why couldn't he just understand how she felt right now?
Giles stared at the door as Buffy walked out of it. He didn't want to go. It was the last thing he wanted to do. He hated knowing he had to go, and he knew he was hurting her by doing it, but he believed he still had to. Why couldn't Buffy understand how hard this was for him? Why couldn't she understand how horrible he felt right now?
Suddenly Giles was walking through the front door of the Magic Box. He looked around and catching a glimpse of long blond hair falling on his own shoulders was his first clue that his body was not his own. He walked across the room with steps far shorter than he was used to covering the distance in, though he felt as if he must be walking normal speed for his body. He also felt something that he couldn't understand. An emptiness, a yearning for something intangible. Something Giles shouldn't be able to describe, but suddenly could. Heaven, he was wanting heaven and peace.
Buffy, he was living Buffy, but he had no control of his actions as he pushed open the door to the back room and saw himself sitting there. He felt a rush of fear, not sure if it was more his own or Buffy's. She had known, or had an instinctive suspicion when she had seen him here of what was to come, and he was afraid of what he was about to have to watch himself do.
For some reason Buffy was sitting on the couch in the training room, but she didn't seem to have the ability to look around and figure out why. All she knew was she felt horrible, but it was a different horrible than she'd been feeling a moment before. And she felt guilty. It was powerful guilt, making her want to back out of what was to she had to do, but she kept telling herself it was the right thing, that it had to be done, even though she could tell that she didn't really believe it.
It was very confusing, the emotions seemed to be her own, but yet they were separate and she had no control over them. But there was another part that realized it was weird that she did have control over, and it was just weird.
But that weirdness was secondary to looking up to see herself walk through the door.
"What did you want?" Giles said in Buffy's voice. The part of him that was himself wanted to change what was coming. The words had come out of his mouth from the control of the part of his mind that was Buffy and he couldn't stop them. Living this once had been more than enough, he didn't want to do it again.
He watched himself face him/Buffy and with his knowledge of himself he saw the pain there, and so did the part of him that was Buffy. She didn't want to hear what he had to say anymore than he wanted to hear himself say it and she hadn't already lived this.
The emptiness, the hollowness, became more pronounced as he tried to keep from feeling the fear of what was to come. Giles understood in a detached manner that it was Buffy's self defense mechanism, make yourself unable to feel, then you can't be hurt.
"Buffy, I'm...I'm going back to England," Buffy said, and she made the leap of logic and realized she was living in Giles' body a few minutes ago. Okay weirdness personified, but at least it couldn't last long, could it?
"You're saying you're leaving?" The Buffy in front of her/Giles said and Buffy felt how her/his heart broke hearing the plaintive sound in her voice. She/he wanted nothing more than to tell Buffy that he/she would always be there, could never leave her, loved her.
Buffy wanted to shake her head to try and clear the sensations, but of course couldn't. She just stayed staring at her own body feeling the grief in Giles heart as he/she said, "I have to."
She wanted to cry out as she hadn't when she had lived this moment herself. He didn't have to, he could stay, it would be okay, she'd find a way to make it okay. And she felt the Giles on some level thought so too, but couldn't allow himself to accept it.
'No, you're just leaving me, leaving me like everyone else I've ever loved' was the thought that raced through Giles/Buffy's mind and he was surprised at the venom, remembering slightly before the words emerged from his lips that "Uh huh," was all that she had said. Buffy's heart tried to withdraw farther into its safe retreat of emptiness but couldn't quite hide from the pain Giles had caused her.
Giles couldn't be leaving, she/he loved him, but she'd never told him, no matter how many times she had wanted to. She/he remembered the moment on top of the tower when she had wanted to make that her last message to Giles, but had backed off, not wanting to burden him with her heart when it was too late.
The part of him that was Giles cried too, how could it be true, how could he have never seen the love she had for him? Had he really been so blind? It made him want to stop this moment even more, make it something different, end it right.
"You have to be strong. I'm trying to-" Buffy found herself explaining. There were endings to that, a good many and she hadn't known for sure how it would continue before she was interrupted.
The Buffy part of her wondered how this conversation would have gone had she allowed him to finish. It was emotions she didn't understand and neither did she as Giles. Giles didn't understand his own heart right now, because it was screaming that the worst thing he could do was abandon the woman he loved. That gave Buffy some satisfaction that he would at least use the word 'abandon' himself and then was caught by the love part.
She wanted to investigate that more, see if he loved her like she loved him, but didn't have time dealing with Buffy's impassioned interruption. "Trying to what? Desert me? Abandon me? Leave me all alone when I really need somebody." Buffy felt how those words had affected Giles, even in his careful cover of doing what he believed was right those words pierced his soul as they had been spoken from hers.
"I don't want to leave," Buffy/Giles said. Both the Giles and Buffy parts of him hated him for saying that. Could he have said anything to make her feel worse? She loved him and he left, just like all the others. It was her fault, she'd just have Spike, at least when he left it wouldn't matter, she wouldn't care because she'd never love him.
She/he remembered kissing Spike a few nights before; remembered how it had felt and he wasn't sure if the revulsion he felt at that memory belonged to the Giles or Buffy parts of him. Neither wanted to have that memory.
He felt himself reaching for something to say as he sat down next to Giles. "So don't, please don't. I can't do this without you," those words, words that had brought him back from the point of leaving her to death or insanity could surely keep him from leaving for another country. She couldn't have so misinterpreted his actions these past few weeks that he didn't want her. If he'd just stay, she'd pretend she loved him like a little girl loved her father, not like a woman loved a man, not like she'd never loved Riley and might have loved Angel if there hadn't been so much pain involved.
"You can. That's why I'm going," Buffy/Giles was saying, hating from both sides every word that came out of her mouth. "As long as I stay you will always turn to me when something comes up that you feel you can't handle, and I'll step in because-because..." he/she reached for the right way to put this that would let Buffy know that he was still there for her, but couldn't be here for her, "because I can't bear to see you suffer," she/he managed, from this side understanding the truth in them as she hadn't before.
'I'm yours Buffy,' flashed through Giles mind; though not all of it in words, 'I will always be yours, but you only see me as a father, and I can't play at that anymore, not when you pierce my soul every time you walk away from me,' accompanied with many memories of her walking away during the past few weeks. 'You can never know, but I'm yours.' The Buffy part of her wanted to cry at his thoughts, and things she hadn't seen while the Giles part of her was on the verge of tears watching the emotions on Buffy's face.
"Me too, hate suffering, had about as much as I can take," Giles said feeling just how true that statement was. Sufferings he, as himself, had never, should never have to have, understood were now laid out plain for him in her mind. He felt the pain of crawling out of the grave, felt with her at seeing the bot destroyed, the confusion about being back in the painful world where there had been peace. Felt how Spike was the only one she could be around because she still hated him and didn't have mixed up feeling of knowing she should love him.
How Giles himself had been the one person, even over Dawn, that she could almost love the way her heart still did. Her heart still loved all of them, but she couldn't love them the way she had before or how she wanted to.
The words pouring out of Giles/Buffy's mouth made Buffy sick. "Believe me, I'm loath to cause you more, but this... I've taught you all you need to know about being the Slayer and your mother taught you all you need to know about life. You're not going to trust that until you're forced to stand alone." She watched her own face fall as the words continued. From her place inside Giles, Buffy shouted at the words to change, to never have been said, but even as she did she felt how Giles felt about it.
He was disgusted with himself, having wanted nothing more than for her to see him as something other than a father figure and then he went and did something highly fatherly like that, like putting himself on level with Joyce. That was only going to reinforce her opinion of him as a father. It was stupid.
"But why now?" Buffy/Giles said. "Now that you know where I've been, what I'm going through..." she/he let the sentence hang, not knowing how to explain what she was going through. But she no longer needed to, in that moment he felt it even more than before. Her emotions had been close to the surface for once and he could feel just how deep the pain went. No wonder she had never wanted to talk about it, the pain went so far beyond words, talking about it would have been impossible.
"Now more than ever," Giles was explaining. "I mean the temptation to give up is going to be overwhelming and I can't let-"
'Duh Giles,' was what went through her/his mind, if not in so many words, 'but if I was going to give up I could just off myself, not like it would take a lot of brainpower to go find a tall building to drop off of, kind of fun actually.' Giles felt sick for how easily that thought came to her, the idea of dying no longer frightened her. But he also felt how much she thought 'I won't make it without you.'
"So I won't. No giving up. You can be here and I can still be strong." Buffy as Giles said and she felt how much Giles wished he believed it could be true. He would have given just about anything for it to be true, but he too well remembered how strong she had been in the things they had faced in the past and while she had had her weak moments, he could not watch her live this half life.
And there, as in everything he felt for her, echoed his love for her. Deeper than needing to believe this was the right thing was that he needed to leave before he hated her for her behavior and himself for giving into it. 'Let me go Buffy, let me leave in love and not in anger,' his mind or heart cried and it broke Buffy's heart knowing that as much as neither of them wanted this maybe it was the right thing, until she grew up a little.
"Buffy I've thought this over and over; I believe it's the right thing to do," he/she said, and Buffy wondered if, given enough time she would ever truly accept that--even if a part of her might believe it.
Giles scanned his own face, but it was Buffy who moved the eyes. She searched for some sign that he knew what he was doing, looking for some sign of hesitance that she could use to remind him that he belonged at her side and saw none, just as she had seen none in Angel's eyes the day he'd dumped her in the sewers. Giles also searched his face for any sign of hesitance, but he was searching for that which he knew he felt and realized it was no wonder Buffy hadn't ever guessed how he felt for her, he hid his emotions so well even from himself. Yes, he saw pain in his own features, and knew Buffy saw it too, but not the uncertainty and certainly not love.
He felt something shift inside Buffy. It was the upheaval of the one thing she had actually believed safe in this new world, she didn't care anymore. If he was going to treat her like a child and be a father leaving the nest so she could grow up, well she was going to respond in kind. She'd be a child, but she wouldn't start seeing him like her father, she could never do that, not when she loved him the way she did.
"You're wrong," she said as she stood up and left not looking back, not because she didn't care but because she was on the verge of tears.
Those two words resounded in Giles/Buffy's ears as he watched her go. Somehow it was almost as painful as watching her jump into that damn portal, knowing she would never forgive him, knowing he had lost any chance of her loving him almost as surely as he had when she had died.
But Buffy forgave him, loved him more than she ever thought possible because she knew him like this and knew his heart more completely that anyone normally had any right to know another person. She knew how he felt watching her walk out the door, felt how much he didn't want to go and hated believing it was the right thing to do, and above all how much he hated the knowledge that he was hurting her by doing it but still believed he had to do it.
Why couldn't Buffy understand how hard this was for him? Why couldn't she understand how horrible he felt right now?
Buffy/Giles leaned against the door of the training room feeling horrible. She knew she had acted childish and that she shouldn't have. Giles had even worse timing that Angel about "leaving for her own good." Why couldn't he understand how hard this was for her? Why couldn't he just understand what she felt right now?
Suddenly Giles was back in his own body staring at the closed door of the training room. He double checked to be sure it was his own form all the while wondering what he should do now. What could he say? "I've reconsidered in these last few seconds, and by the way I know you love me; would you care for dinner Friday night?"
He thought about all the things he had felt in her mind and heart while in her body. What could he say now that he knew all of those things? He buried his head in his hands and wondered if fate might be so kind as to show him the proper thing to do.
Buffy suddenly found she back in her own body leaning against the training room door already on the verge of tears and letting them fall even as she tried to bury her feelings. It wasn't right, but she understood and knew there was nothing to say to it now.
She slid further down the wall and buried her face against her knees, thinking about all she now knew of Giles' mind and heart wondering what there was to say when she knew all of those things. She just wished fate would give her some sign as to what was to be done now.
"That's it!" Geojax cried, throwing up his many hands. This wasn't even his usual area of justice demon work, trying to get a couple together. It was obvious that fate wanted those two together but they seemed determined to deny it as long as possible. Well, he wasn't having it, he'd find a way to make it work; and when he did they would know there was more to justice demons than bloodshed and violence.
Sometimes they were the tools of fate every bit as much as normal humans, or even humans like these two.
THE END
