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Author's Chapter Notes:
thanks to Cordykitten and Dusty for reviewing. i promise the worst bit of giles is over:) but for the story you had to hate him.
They all looked dreadful. They were exhausted. It had been three days since Buffy had returned from the past and Willow was only just strong enough to emerge from her room. Kennedy had been waiting on her hand and foot all that time, barely leaving her side to go to the bathroom. The other girls had brought food up to them: Willow could just manage soup and a sandwich before falling back to sleep. The effort of holding the glamour in place was weakening her considerably. They needed more help.

Xander had vanished for a couple of hours on the second day. He had gone to the bus station, at Kennedy’s request. The slayer wouldn’t, couldn’t leave Willow for long, and she needed a job doing. Xander was the one trusted to do it.

He’d been met by a nondescript man who had handed him a key for a locker in the railway terminal. The locker contained two suitcases, both full of cash. Daddy had come through. Xander returned back to the hotel with the best part of two hundred thousand dollars in unmarked, old, untraceable bills.

He dropped the bags off in the foyer for Kennedy to collect later, made his way back to his room and shut the door against the world again.


Xander couldn’t talk to the girls. He was doing everything on automatic. He remembered Giles attacking one of the slayers. Raping her. God he couldn’t even remember the poor girl’s name, but Giles had raped her then killed her. His arm had a tattoo that glowed red with the girl’s pain and fear. The memories included a second man holding him back as the poor girl screamed her last. The next morning he had really believed that she had been killed by a vampire. And all that time it had been Giles betraying them from the inside. Giles and a shadowy figure that he could never quite see.

Then there was Anya, sweet, honest forthright Anya, killed by Andrew and not the Turok Han, killed for some nefarious purpose. At that moment Xander would have done anything, given anything to have her back in his arms.

His heart also broke for poor Buffy, having to hide the love she felt for Spike. Xander didn’t know if he could ever forgive himself for the pain he put her through.

And the blood, the blood that Giles took from the slayers. Xander could remember the vials of blood Giles kept in his office, taken from all of the slayers. With that available to a warlock like Giles, it gave him power over all of the slayers should, no when, he chose to use it. It was a time bomb waiting to explode beneath them.


It was Dawn who finally dragged him out of his room. She’d had enough of him ‘sulking like a girl’ and threatened to pull his hair out by the roots if he didn’t come downstairs immediately. Xander was brave enough to face vampires, demons and even witches but an angry Summers’ female was more than any man, alive or dead, should have to deal with. He opened the door and let her into his darkened room.

‘You stink,’ was Dawn’s first comment as she roughly opened the curtains to let in the light. She pointed in the direction of the shower. Xander was a little slow on the uptake. So she dragged him into the bathroom and shoved him in the direction of the cubicle.

‘Eeew! Don’t you ever clean up after yourself?’ She moaned as she switched the shower on and shoved him under it, clothes and all.

‘It’s cold!’ Xander squealed as the water hit him.

‘Well warm it up.’ Dawn said with exaggerated patience. ‘You turn that knob there,’ she pointed as though she were talking to a six year old.

‘And my clothes are wet…’

‘Then take them off,’ she demanded.

‘No way, not with you in here.’

‘Fine, I’ll wait outside, but if you’re more than five minutes I’m coming in to get you.’ Dawn stomped out of the room and waited in the hall. It was exactly four and a half minutes later that a bedraggled Xander appeared at the door, his hair still wet.

Dawn looked him up and down and pointed towards the stairs.

‘We all have things that hurt at the moment Xander, it’s cutting us all to pieces and we all have to face them, but it’s better we do it together.’ She looked at Xander. ‘We have to stick together,’ she repeated softly, compassionately.

Xander nodded and followed the younger Summers down to join the rest of the gang.

‘There’s coffee in the kitchen,’ Buffy pointed in the direction of a pair of swing doors. ‘Don’t worry, I didn’t make it,’ she smiled, ‘Viv and Rona have taken over in there and are even making breakfast as we speak.’

‘Breakfast would be of the good.’ Xander tried to raise a smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. They were still haunted.

The seven of them looked very lonely around the huge table in the kitchen: they were the original Scoobies plus a few extras. Buffy looked around at the only people who meant anything to her anymore.

‘Right,’ she said, ‘we have to be honest now, really honest. Everything that you remember, no matter how shameful, must be out in the open.’

She looked around the table again. It was hard to look everyone in the face.

‘I’ll start. I loved Spike with all my heart and he loved me. When we left Sunnydale I was pregnant with his child; Giles gave me something to get rid of the baby. Xander, if you’re going to freak or start saying horrid things, you can leave now. I might not have defended him before but I will now. He was my life and he will always be my soul.’

Xander opened his mouth a couple of times.

‘I remember him trying to make friends with me: he saved me from a couple of nasty idiots from college who wanted to beat me up, and bought me beers when I was under age. But my big secret is, I saw him Giles i mean, rape and kill one of the slayers, and then there’s Anya, we were back together and I really loved her, there has been no-one else. I didn’t hate the fact that she was a vengeance demon, in fact it sort of made me hot. I think I saw Ethan Rayne during the last days before the hellmouth collapsed and I think I saw him in London as well.’

‘So did I!’ echoed around the table.

‘Well now we know where some of the bad vibes were coming from. Ethan Rayne was always trouble.’

The rest of their conversation was cut short by a small disturbance outside the service door behind them. There was a loud banging on the door.
Buffy signalled for the others to wait, and picking up a knife, headed to see who or what was making all that noise. She was a little surprised to see Septamus Pratt and Morgana pulled up outside in a truck.

Buffy quickly opened the door to let them into the building. Septamus carefully locked the truck before stepping inside the hotel to face a… gaggle? Murder? Group? …of slayers. None of whom were that fond of Watchers and what they represented.





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