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Xander couldn’t close his mouth. His tongue was so dry it was hard, sticking half out of the gaping orifice. He tried to swallow.

Nope. ‘s not gonna happen.

He went to move his right arm and realized it was completely numb. He opened his eye (a feat in itself) to look at it and his fingers were purple.

Oh God! I’m dead, he thought. No….wait…that can’t be true, I opened my eye.

OK. …he was relieved…I’m not dead.

He moved his left hand over to see if he could feel the fingers of his right hand. They were ice cold….and he looked again….and they were still purple.

This isn’t good. Shape up, Harris, he said to himself. I don’t think I can, he heard himself answer in his head.

He heard a sound…an awful sound…a familiar sound….the sound of retching.

Good, he thought. I can hear, and it’s not me doing the retching. Get a grip, Alexander. Think. Think hard. Where are you? …Dunno…..OK….OK…..What’s the question again? Right…where am I? ‘s a good question. Think…..Right…..Hard….I’m on a hard place….Cold…..I’m cold…..Aaagh! I’m dead! I just know it. I’m dead….

Stop it! You’re not dead..

He closed his mouth around his dried out tongue and tried to make some spit to soften the cotton ball that someone had put into it. It was work. It was hard work. Once he got his mouth working he lifted his head to look around. His head was a lot heavier than the eight pounds the kid with the glasses in Jerry McGuire said..

The fog was lifting….slowly….and painfully, he was becoming aware. The full weight of his body was on his right arm….no circulation….blue…then purple. Aaaagh! I might lose my arm…..no circulation….it’ll fall right off like a skin tag with a string around it!

Roll over, dumb ass, he internalized. He did. His head hit the little tea table. Ow! Aaah…hah! I’m on the floor.

Just as the little ice pick tingles were starting to crawl up his arm as the blood tried to get back to his fingers he noticed a gray form shuffling in the periphery of his clouded vision. He turned his head toward it. OW! And ow! Again! That hurt!

It was Giles. Ewwww. He’s all gray. What the hell happened to us? Wake up! You dolt! …. …. ….

Spike….. …. ….

Spike happened to us.

There, on the couch, right next to him, lay Spike, looking all corpsy. Colorless. Still. At least he doesn’t have his arms crossed over his chest like they do in the Vampire movies. Humph! Not Spike. HE has his hands resting protectively over his “bits.”

“Giles? You OK?” squeaked Xander.

“OH?…Xander. You’re still here,” said Giles. “Um, …. Yes….Why do you ask?”

“Except that you’re moving, you look just as dead as Captain Peroxide here.”

“Quite.” Giles answered as another wave of nausea passed over him. “I think something disagreed with me…perhaps a bit of a bug.”

“Yeah…right. The bug that was preserved in the bottom of the bottles we polished off,”
said Xander. He kept his movements to a minimum and was amazed that Giles was actually up and about. He heard him run the water and light the stove. Evidently English Breakfast Tea was a certain cure-all…at least he hoped it was because he was frankly in need of a cure.

He allowed his mind to wander. He wasn’t going anywhere…not for a good long while. He now knew that…1. He wasn’t dead. A good thing…maybe. 2. He was on the floor next to Giles’ couch. 3. He was cold. 4. His arm hadn’t fallen off…yet and …. What was the next number? … Who cares? And he knew one more thing…. Good Xander… don’t need numbers…he knew that last night had been a wild ride.

~~~

“Come on, come on Dawnie…I’m under a little pressure here….Pick. Up. The. Phone,” impatient Buffy said as she rushed around her room making final checks on her luggage. She was only packing essentials…three bags. If she was going to stay longer than a couple of days she would just have to call and ask Willow to send over the rest. That’s what friends were for, right?

After seven rings Buffy heard Dawn’s voice, “Dawn, I’m call…” Buffy stopped when she heard Dawn’s voice droning on to leave a message at the beep. Instead she said, “Damn!” and threw the cell phone on the bed. She had broken too many things by pitching them in anger and she didn’t have time to buy a new phone. Her cab would be here any minute.

OK, OK, Buffy, calm down, she thought. This is OK. You have plenty of time to call Dawn, just get yourself downstairs to meet your cab.

Fifteen minutes later she was still sitting on her luggage waiting for the cab. Dawn star sixty-nined her and Buffy gave her the flight numbers and times. She was going to have a 6-hour hold over at JFK and once she was through customs she would have plenty of time for another call.

Waiting in airports was not Buffy’s favorite thing. Waiting anywhere was so not something she did well. In truth, there was only one thing Buffy did well and that was beat up and then kill demons and vamps. There wasn’t too much of that happening in this so called active Hellmouth in Cleveland …maybe the Sunnydale implosion had caused the First and all the other assorted nasties to think twice about taking on this Slayer and her minions. “Heheheh,” she giggled. Wouldn’t Giles and the Scoobies just love to hear I was thinking of them as minions?

~~~

In this pleasant mood, after her only slightly bumpy flight from Cleveland, Buffy walked around JFK and checked out the shops and food vendors. Waiting in one of the biggest international airports in the world however was not without it’s perks. She planned to eat before getting on the plane, but with so much variety available, she thought a tour of the place to find what suited her mood best was a good plan. The time went quicker than she thought when she realized as she finished her Chinese food in a neat little sit down restaurant called Chow Now that she still had to speak to Dawn before the flight. She tried her again. After three rings, Dawn came on, “Hi, this is Dawn!”

“Hi back! This is Buffy!” she laughed.

“Hey there, you. You almost missed me. I was just about to jump into the shower. How’s the airport.”

“Big…really, really big.” Buffy said, “But I’ve been here long enough now and I’ve got it figured out. Checked my bags already so all I’ve got weighing me down is my carry-on and the magazines I picked up. I’m gonna try to sleep on the flight, but I don’t have much hope for that one.”

“Yeah,” Dawn replied, “I’ve only flown a couple of times and ‘alert Dawnie’ was present and accounted for. Have you talked to Giles?”

“Nope. Keep getting his voice mail or his secretary. I’ve left messages. I think the secretary is getting annoyed at me. She had a veddy firm British accent when she told me that he said he would contact me as soon as he was able. So there will be no more calling from me.”

“Oh, well, he left a message on my cell and said to tell you that he’d lost your cell number and I should tell you that he would have a car meet you at Heathrow. Your flight is due in at ten minutes to eleven in the morning and he left instructions for the driver to be there at half ten.” She laughed, “That means ten-thirty.”

“Gee thanks, Dawn, I didn’t know that,” Buffy said dripping with sarcasm.

“Duh!” Dawn said, her voice rising, “….God, are you in a bitchy mood, or what?”

“No, no bitchy me. Just nervous about flying me, I guess. Flying…in the dark…over the ocean…all night… Nope…. Give me a half dozen fledglings surrounding me smelling all dead and earthy and wanting my blood and me with no back up. That I can handle. Night flying?…not so much.”

“You’ll be fine, Buff and you haven’t been to this part of England before, so that’s all good. Right?”

“Right! Feeling the sisterly cheerfulness and support right over the phone. I’ll be fine, Dawn. Just a momentary lapse of courage….It’s getting to the time I should head over to my gate. I still have about a half-hour before boarding time, but it’ll give me a couple of minutes to check out the ladies room and change to my comfy shoes. I’ll call you when I get to the school. It should be about three in the afternoon provided I don’t get strip searched in customs.”

“Ooh, I hope the customs official is cute, for your sake. All right Buffy, have a good trip and promise you’ll call when you get there.”

“I promise, little sister. I love you.” Buffy said, preparing to hang up.

“I love you. Bye!” said Dawn.
~~~
Giles held the phone away from his ear. Mrs. Reed had a loud voice. “Ah, yes, Adele…good morning…..Oh….is it really? I had no idea it was nearly noon. My guest and I have been so busy going over some business matters I’m afraid we lost track of the time…Oh? Oh dear. I hope they were not terribly upset. Had they traveled far?… Oh good. I trust you turned them over to one of the brighter girls for a tour and a complimentary lunch in the dining hall?… I can always count on you. …Well…. Actually I need to ask that you cancel my afternoon appointments. I will not be in at all today. …What is that?… Oh dear. Did you arrange for a driver?… Good…and a room in the dorm? Good…..No, wait….change that….Put her in The Harborage…and make sure it’s freshened and supplied with some staples. Thank you so much Mrs. Reed…. Yes. I will be in tomorrow morning. Ta.” And then quickly before she hung up, “Adele…oh good! One more thing…. Kennedy Kane?… Yes…? Yes. As I expected. Thank you again. Goodbye.”

“Got somebody’s mommy mad at you Rupes?” asked Spike.

“Could have, I suppose. Mrs. Reed is very competent and handles slip-ups like this with such grace. The parents leave feeling so pampered they don’t even know I blew them off.” Giles snickered. It had been a very long time since he had had such a reckless night as last night and he was almost enjoying the remnants of his hangover. He would never admit it, that’s certain, but it reminded him that it felt good to misbehave every now and then.

Spike raised his eyes over his cuppa and smiled as he savored his tea. Giles saw the look and felt as though Spike was reading his thoughts. Now that was unsettling.

Xander was not faring so well. He’d gone from numb to nausea and now was sleeping in Giles bed with his arm wrapped around a large bowl lest he need to empty himself yet again. The last two episodes had only produced dry heaves. He was asking to die.

“So, what’s it to be then Giles? We stuck here until the whelp heals?” queried Spike.

“No, I think we’ll leave him in peace and go on with your tour. We’ll head over to my office first. I have one matter to attend to. Actually, you will want to know.” Giles said.

“I’ll want to know?” Spike asked incredulously.

“Yes, it’s about Kennedy.” He replied.

“Can’t think of anything about her bein’ interestin’ to me. Didn’t like her then. Don’t like her now.”

“Well, this might be of interest. She’s been a thorn in the side of the program from the start. She and I have had words more than once. She has no respect for authority and evidently is unaccustomed to rules of any kind. She made many attempts to undermine my authority with the girls and generally made my life miserable. However, even with all that evidence, I believe the girl has talent and has just been misled so I made exceptions.”

“Sorta like Faith, then?” said Spike.

“What?” said Giles with utter surprise on his face, “No, nothing at all like Faith. Faith had a horrible upbringing but she was a survivor. She went over the edge because of low self-esteem. She was told from her earliest memories that she was no good and a burden on her alcoholic mother. No… fixing Faith was easy compared to finding a fix for Kennedy. That young woman has a superiority complex unlike any I have ever seen. It is my feeling that the very fact that she has placed herself in the hands of the program suggests that on some level she understands she needs a strong hand to guide her. I hoped that I could provide that help here. It is apparent that I have failed.”

Spike saw that this was troubling the watcher and talking about it, even to him, was constructive. “Turnin’ her loose then?” he said.

“No, quite the contrary. I have a member of the council in Cape Town, South Africa who has been writing me about an alarming increase in the vampire and demon population there. He has been asking for some additional staff. I am afraid I haven’t had anyone to send him.” Giles paused as he sipped his tea and then continued, “After Kennedy’s outburst yesterday, I realized I could no longer allow her behavior to go unchallenged. I gave her an ultimatum. I offered her a position in South Africa with this fellow or to pack her bags and be gone!”

“Humph, whoever said your stones had shriveled all up was wrong, eh?”.

“You have no idea, Spike. This girl is willful. I only hoped that she would accept the offer. I must say I feared she would not. It would have been a dark day for me if I turned her loose on an unsuspecting society with no checks or balances. This way at least, she is still somewhat under our control.”

“You’re daft if you really believe that Rupert. You’re forgettin’ I know that girl. If you’re not very careful she’ll go over all dark. She’s a lot smarter than Faith ever thought of bein’. She could be real trouble.” Spike finished, and then after a moment continued, “Oi, you want me to go there and ride herd on her?”

Giles was stunned.

“I got nothin’ else on my plate just now.” He hung his head as he spoke, “I came here to tell you about Angel and what all with no other plans besides. I need somethin’ to do Rupert. I told you. I’m alone…” he finished, letting that phrase just hang in the air.

Giles was touched. He had no intention of taking Spike up on the offer, but to dismiss the idea entirely would be an insult. The vampire had come to him a day ago (it seemed like a lifetime) and bared his soul to him. He would give him the courtesy of letting him think he was considering the offer.

“Well, that is a surprise. Do you really think you might consider doing something like this? I mean it’s Kennedy, after all.” Giles said.

“I’m gonna fuckin’ live forever, watcher, I need somethin’ to do with my time.” Spike replied.

“Well then, thank you, Spike. Let me give the matter some thought.” He took the cups from the table and rinsed them in the sink and put them in the drain. “Now though, let’s get on with the tour of the school.”

“Right! I’ll just leave a note for the Watcheroo.” Spike took up a pen and paper and wrote in his most careful and elegant handwriting…

Went to the school- - left you to drown in your own spew,
Regards,

At the bottom of the paper he drew a railroad spike as a signature.

~~~





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