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Spike's heart clenched as he walked in and saw Buffy sitting in the middle of the bed, her knees pulled to her chin as she cried, and he wished he didn't have to tell her what he had to now. "Kitten?" he said softly.

Buffy looked up, her face red and splotchy from her tears. "Yeah?"

"I, uh, I think I just made things worse."

Her eyes widened at that and her voice trembled as she spoke. "Worse?"

"Yeah." Spike ran his hand through his curls, shifting from one foot to the other. "I wasn't trying to. See, I saw Joyce coming up here, and I didn't want her to yell at you anymore, so I told her to leave you alone. But apparently I was a little too overtly protective of you, because it made her piece things together—about us."

Buffy sighed heavily. "Well, I guess it might as well be out in the open. I was already getting sick of pretending I wasn't with you."

"Um, there's a little more. See, she got really upset about it and told me to leave. Then I told her I wasn't leaving you, and…"

Buffy got up, able to discern where Spike's explanation was going. "Let's start packing then."

"I'm really sorry, pet. I didn't mean to make things go like this."

"Spike, it's not your fault. She's the crazy bitch. And if she threw you out, of course I was going to. I wouldn't have it any other way."

"Where are we going to go?" Spike asked. "It's Christmas Eve—not exactly the prime time to be hunting for a hotel room."

"We'll find something. God, we'll sleep in your car if we have to."

"No," Spike replied. "I'm not having you spend sodding Christmas in my car."

Buffy put her hand on his arm. "Hey—I'll be with you. That's the important part. And besides, the whole 'no roof over our heads' thing is just chock-full of Christmas spirit."

Spike chuckled lightly. "You're amazing, you know that?"

"I try," Buffy replied. "Okay, if she wants us gone, then let's not waste any time." She grabbed her bag and started to put her things back into it. Spike took a deep breath, then followed suit.

*** *** ***

Buffy and Spike were putting their things in the trunk of his car when Rupert pulled up to the house, returning from a last-minute run to the grocery store. He turned off the engine and got out of his own car quickly, walking up to the pair. "What's going on?"

"Mom kicked us out," Buffy replied. "Apparently she doesn't approve of our relationship."

Rupert sucked in a deep breath. "Oh, like hell she did. Get your things and go back in the house."

"Da…" Spike started.

"No. Get your things right now and get back in the house. You are not going anywhere," Giles said, his tone leaving little room for argument.

Buffy and Spike exchanged a quick look but pulled their bags from the trunk, Spike slamming it shut before they followed Giles back inside.

"Joyce!" Rupert yelled as he got into the house. "Joyce, I want to talk to you this instant."

Joyce came into the foyer. "Rupert," she began, only to be cut off by her furious husband,

"Now, you listen here. I've had just about enough of this. If you want to go around in a snit and make yourself miserable, then you know what, fine. You're missing out on getting to know the wonderful young woman your daughter is, and that's very sad for you. But don't you dare try to send them away from me, too. For starters, this is the first Christmas I have had with my son since he was a teenager. Nothing is going to stop me from having that, not even you. Secondly, what sort of heartless woman do you have to be to turn your own child out of the house on Christmas Eve? Your own flesh and blood, Joyce! Now, I love you, I do, but I'm seriously starting to question if you're even the woman I thought I married."

Joyce paled slightly. "Rupert, I…"

"No. I mean it, Joyce. This is my home, too, and I'm spending the holidays with my children. End of the bloody story."

"Your children are sleeping together!" Joyce exclaimed. "Did you know that?"

Rupert winced, taking off his glasses then to polish them. "Yes, I did, though seeing as they are not blood related, nor were they raised as relatives, I've chosen to keep my nose out of where it doesn't belong. They're both adults, and what they do in their personal lives is none of my concern."

"None of your concern! And…and you knew? You knew and you didn't tell me?"

Rupert raised his eyebrow. "And seeing as you've handled it all so rationally, I can't imagine why I would've been crazy enough to do that."

Joyce scoffed. "Oh, I'm handling this irrationally? This is insane! I can't just bite my tongue while I know something like this is going on!"

"Well, if they want to be together, I seriously doubt there's anything you can say to make them change their minds, so you'd do just as well to bite it," Giles replied. "Now, as I've already stated, I'm not spending Christmas without them. Furthermore, this is my home, and I do not intend to leave it. So, the way I see it, you have one of two choices. You can either suck it up and behave like an adult instead of a three-year-old who didn't get her way, or you can leave yourself, seeing as you’re the one apparently so keen on spending Christmas alone."

Joyce gasped. "Well, I…" She stopped, her mouth snapping shut for a moment before she spoke again. "Fine. I hope you're all happy." She stopped upstairs, slamming the door hard enough to make the walls shake.

They were all silent for a moment before Rupert cleared his throat. "They're showing It's a Wonderful Life in two hours at the Sun Cinema. I bet if we drive very, very slowly we can make it."

"And that sounds like a plan to me," Buffy said, dropping her bags by the coat rack in order to not have to go back upstairs at the moment. "Dawn, you coming?"

Dawn peeked her head out from behind the wall in the living room where she'd been hiding through her mother and Rupert's argument. "Wild dogs couldn't stop me," she replied, grabbing her coat.

The four of them walked out of the house together.

*** *** ***

They killed some time driving around the local neighborhoods, looking at the Christmas decorations despite the fact that it was not yet dark before finally arriving at the theater. Giles let Dawn and Spike out at the front telling them to buy tickets both to let him park the car and to give him a moment to speak to Buffy alone.

Giles parked his car and then turned around to look at Buffy in the backseat. "Are you all right, my dear?"

"I'm okay, I guess," Buffy said. "But I am really sorry, Giles."

"Sorry?" Giles asked with a frown. "Whatever for?"

"For ruining your Christmas. For ruining everybody's Christmas," she replied.

"Buffy, you did nothing of the sort. If anyone's 'ruined Christmas,' it would be your mother."

"I shouldn't have come," Buffy asserted. "I knew she'd be like this. Everything would've been better if Spike and I had just stayed in New York."

"No, it wouldn't have," Giles insisted. "Despite everything that's happened, I am quite glad to be able to spend the holiday with you and with Spike. I haven't spent Christmas with him since he was a teenager, and the last few were quite strained at that. I also haven't seen you since you moved to New York. So no, you haven't ruined my Christmas. You've made it that much brighter by allowing me to spend it with my family."

"I wish Mom could think like that."

"So do I." Rupert reached out and patted her leg. "Come on. Let's not let her spoil our day, all right?"

"Yeah, all right. Might as well go and be assured that the world really wouldn't be any better if I'd never been born," Buffy muttered, reaching for the buckle to her seatbelt.

Giles started at that. "Do you think otherwise?"

"Sometimes," Buffy admitted with a sigh. "I just, I don't know, feel like I've brought more misery to the people around me than anything else."

"That isn't true," Giles said, the insistence in his voice so vehement that it made Buffy look up. "Please, don't ever think that. I've never considered knowing you anything but a gift, Buffy. And if you think you only bring misery, well, look at my son. He's happy Buffy. Do you know how long it's been since he's been happy? I watched something die inside of him the day we buried his mother, and you've managed to wake it up again. I can't even begin to tell you what it means to me that you've made William be able to truly smile again."

"He's helped me be happy, too," Buffy said.

"I know. And I'm also grateful for that. What I want most in the world is for you, William, and Dawn to be happy."

"Do you…do you think you and Mom are going to be okay? I don't want you two to break-up, especially on account of me."

"I believe we will be," Giles replied. "I'm quite angry with her at the moment, but I do love your mother. I have every intention of working things out with her."

"Good. I really do want you to."

"I know."

"So can we go in now?" Buffy asked.

Giles smiled softly. "Yes, we can. Come on."

They walked together up to the front of the Sun Cinema, meeting up with Spike and Dawn. Spike noticed the glistening of tears in Buffy's eyes and opened up his duster, letting Buffy move against his side, wrapping her arms around his waist for comfort. He held on to her, kissing the top of her head.

"There's more people than I would've thought would be here," Dawn said. "Usually this place only has customers when they're showing those foreign movies that Mom won't let me see."

At that, Giles cleared his throat. "So should we go in then?"

"Let's," Spike replied, giving Buffy a gentle squeeze. He kept his arm around her as they walked into the theater, and Buffy stayed close by his side, feeling as if as long as she was with him, things would turn out okay.

*** *** ***

Two and a half hours later, Spike, Buffy, Giles, and Dawn were walking slowly out of the theater, none of them in much of a rush to get back home and face Joyce, despite the fact that it was starting to get late in the evening,

Dawn kicked a piece of gravel in her path. "Do you think everyone has that much of an influence on the world, or was George just like special or something?" she wondered aloud, breaking the silence.

"He seemed overly important to me, for just a normal guy with a normal job," Buffy replied. "Besides, there's probably plenty of people out there that the world really would be better without, despite the peppy message of the movie." Spike and Giles both glanced at her as she spoke, worry on their faces, and Buffy quickly spoke again. "Like that cranky woman that used to live down the street from us in L.A. Do you remember her, Dawn?"

"Ugh. Mrs. Thompson? Yes. That woman was pure evil. If we even breathed on her lawn, she'd totally lose it."

"Honestly, the idea of a whole city going to hell just because one person isn't there is a little over the top if you ask me," Buffy said.

"It was exaggerated to emphasize the importance of every life," Spike said, squeezing Buffy's hand. "People go about making a difference in the world every day without ever knowing it."

Buffy squeezed his hand back. "Don't worry. Fighting with my mother didn't send me into a self-destructive tailspin where I'm going to go back to being all depressed and suicidal. I mean, I haven't actually been suicidal in years. Depressed, sure, but I had at least a small bit of the will to live left." Dawn and Giles both looked over at her at that, and Buffy looked back at them. "What?"

"It's just that you haven't spoken that conversationally about any of that, well, ever," Giles said. "When you came home from the, er, hospital, you retreated and wouldn't mention anything about it."

"I'm dealing with it better, I guess," Buffy said. "My life's taken a definite upturn in recent months." She smiled brightly, wrapping her arm around Spike's.

Spike responded by stopping for a second to kiss the top of her head, and Giles smiled slightly at the display. Despite factors in their relationship that made him squirm, Rupert could clearly see how good Buffy and Spike were for each other. He'd told her that she'd brought happiness back to his son, but she'd done the same for him as well. The Buffy who had left three years before for New York had been depressed and withdrawn, and Giles had worried more than once that she might make a repeat attempt at suicide once she was on her own. But now, while some of her guilt and heartache over Angel's death surely remained, she was certainly brighter than she had been before, reminding him much more of the girl he'd once known before tragedy had darkened her life.

He wished that Joyce could see that, could realize how happy Buffy was in the life she'd chosen for herself, and accept it. Giles had learned as he watched Spike take up with Drusilla that you couldn't control your children. The life you wanted for them was rarely the life they themselves chose, and if you tried to force them to bend to your will, all you would do was lose them. He'd spent years with his own son as a virtual stranger in his life, and now that he had him back, he'd vowed that he'd never allow that to happen again. If William was content with his life, then Giles would be, too—especially if it seemed to be having such a positive influence on him.

And it was a positive influence. That much was clear. The circumstances that had brought Buffy and Spike together may not have been the sort many people would be comfortable with, but Giles was willing to just be grateful for what it had brought. Love was too important, too powerful, to walk away from. Having lost it too many times in the past himself, Giles had come to believe that people should take love where they could find it, life being too short to throw it away.

Maybe someday his wife would understand that as well.

*** *** ***

Don't forget to review. And thank you so much to everyone who reviewed last chapter. Your comments were very much appreciated and the response I got really helped inspire me to write!





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