It was surprising how easily Joyce fell into dating Giles.
Only a few days after his first visit Giles returned, sheepishly adorable with several books on metamorphosis.
“You got all this … for me?”
Giles rubbed the back of his neck nervously. “Well, I … yes. I thought it might help.”
Joyce stared at him with amazement. “This is one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me.”
He grinned bashfully.
She slowly got used to calling him Giles. Rupert felt too personal at first, and later she’d save calling him by his first name for special occasions.
It was several visits before he made any move to kiss her.
He was sipping his tea, his eyes crinkling just how she loved it, when he suddenly leaned over and softly placed his lips on hers. It ended too quickly for Joyce. She was sure she was grinning like a mad woman but she didn’t care.
“I’m sorry,” Giles said, flustered. “I shouldn’t have-”
Joyce cut him off with her lips. He groaned softly against her and enveloped her in his arms.
Buffy took an immediate shine to him. And he became equally attached to the little girl. Giles was soon taking extended visits in Sunnydale. He didn’t push Joyce physically; he’d stay at the local motel on the nights he couldn’t tear himself away from the woman and little girl he was coming to love.
The literature that Giles regularly brought didn’t shed any more light on Buffy’s ability, but Joyce was hard pressed to worry about it that much. She was taking time every day to help Buffy learn to control the strong emotions that caused her to change, and Joyce was satisfied with how Buffy’s control was progressing. Every week Buffy reported fewer and fewer unexpected changes.
Joyce knew that Giles was curious about why she wanted to research metamorphosis. But thankfully, he seemed to accept her lame excuse of being ‘interested in it and wanting to know more.’ He also hadn’t asked her about why she lied about being a student at Sunnydale University. Sometimes she could see the questions burning in his eyes, but he didn’t ask.
It was on his fifth visit that he asked her out on a date. Joyce accepted on her next breath. Olga eagerly agreed to watch Buffy, pleased with how happy Joyce was. Olga hadn’t warmed to Giles at first. She was protective of Joyce and Buffy, and she remembered how easily the few men Joyce had dated dumped her because she had a child. However, the Polish woman had observed how good Giles was with Buffy and was quick to approve.
“He’s a good man, droga,” Olga said on the evening of Giles’ fourth visit.
“Yeah, I think so, too,” Joyce said, her eyes riveted to the scene of Giles playing dolls with Buffy in the living room.
After their first date, Joyce arrived home on cloud nine.
Slipping into Buffy’s room, she saw the little girl sit up at her mother’s entrance.
“Why aren’t you asleep?”
“I wanted to wait for you. Make sure it went okay.”
Smiling, Joyce sat on the edge of Buffy’s bed. “Very okay. Great, actually.”
Buffy settled back into her pillows. “Good. I told him he had to be nice to you.”
Joyce raised an eyebrow. “You told him to be nice to me?”
“Yep. He asked me if it was okay if he asked you out on a date, an’ I said it was okay as long as he was nice.”
“He asked you that?” Joyce blinked back tears.
“Mmhmm.”
It was at that moment that Joyce knew she was in love.
Giles only broached the topic of Buffy’s biological father once.
“Is he still around?”
“No, he’s not.”
Giles misinterpreted the odd look on Joyce’s face. “Oh, Joyce. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize …”
Joyce’s brow scrunched in confusion. “What?”
“I didn’t realize Buffy’s father had died.”
“Oh. No, he’s not dead. I mean, as far as I know he’s not.”
“Well, he’s a right bastard then.”
She stared at him surprised. Giles rarely swore.
“Any man that would leave you and Buffy is a bloody idiot.”
She smiled widely at him. God she loved this man.
The first time they made love Joyce knew he was more nervous than she was. As he pushed into her, she saw stars. He looked down at her worriedly; his breath gasping with hers.
“Oh my God. Don’t stop … please don’t stop, Rupert!”
He quickly regained his confidence, a cocky smirk on his lips as he quickened the pace.
It was six months after they started dating that Giles began to behave unusually. He was more nervous than usual and more often than not he’d cut his visits with Joyce and Buffy short. Just when Joyce was beginning to think the worst he astounded her.
“You’re moving to Sunnydale?”
They were in one of the better restaurants in Sunnydale. It was a Saturday night so it was fairly busy, but Joyce clearly heard his surprising statement.
“Yes. I’ve been putting it together for a little while. I wanted to wait until I was accepted on at Sunnydale University before I told you.” He looked at her worriedly when she didn’t say anything. “If … if you don’t want me to move here, I won’t. I just wanted to be closer to you and Buffy. And the position at the University is quite good. I already bought a little house – not that I’m saying you and Buffy move in with me – although that would be wonderful. I know I just sprung this on you-”
Joyce silenced him with a kiss.
“So … it’s okay?” Giles asked when they parted.
Smiling through her tears, Joyce could only answer with another kiss.
Buffy was ecstatic when she heard that Giles was moving to Sunnydale. Joyce didn’t mention Giles’ offer for them to move in with him. She wasn’t sure that he completely realized the huge changes it would take for him, and them, to actually live together. He didn’t ask her outright to move in with him, but she knew that was what he wanted.
Everything was perfect. Joyce was so happy.
And then it happened.
It was the end of winter semester and Giles was stuck in LA swamped with final exams to mark. He had already moved most of his furniture down to Sunnydale and was planning to haul the rest of his things in a few days after the last final exam had been marked. On the day before he was set to arrive in Sunnydale, Joyce decided to surprise him. She missed him terribly and thought he’d appreciate the extra help with packing his belongings.
Joyce strapped Buffy in the back seat and cheerfully turned onto the highway that led to LA.
It happened so fast. The driver in front of her spun out erratically. One second she was driving on the highway, the next they were rolled over in the ditch. One second Buffy was singing along with a song on the radio, the next she was completely silent.
Joyce could feel something warm dripping down her forehead. She feebly called out to Buffy before blood loss darkened her vision. Then she knew no more.
She woke up in a hospital room. She blinked several times trying to clear her vision. God. Everything hurt. She looked over and was mildly surprised to see Giles sleeping in a chair. His face looked haggard and was sporting several days’ worth of stubble.
She looked around the room, her head sluggishly trying to put together why she was there. What happened?
Then she remembered.
And she couldn’t breathe.
Giles woke up to the sound of her gasping. He jumped up and rushed to her side.
“Joyce! What’s wrong?! Oh, god! Nurse!” He ran out of the room and was back just as quickly with a nurse in tow. The nurse gave her something and Joyce immediately began to calm down.
She turned brimming eyes to Giles. “B-Buffy … is she …? Where is she?”
“Oh, sweetheart.” Giles sat next to her and stroked her hand. “She’s fine. Barely a scratch on her. She’s just at home with Olga getting some sleep.”
Joyce shook with relief. “I-I thought …”
“I know, darling. But she’s fine.”
The nurse was gone. Joyce didn’t remember him leaving, but at that moment it didn’t matter. She found herself caught in Giles’ eyes. He looked so worn. So fatigued with worry. Suddenly, tears were coursing down his cheeks. Joyce watched them with fascination.
With a wordless sob he gathered her in his arms.
“All this … for me?”
Giles chuckled harshly. “Of course for you. Always for you. I love you. I don’t know what I would do if … I can’t …” He sighed and pressed his forehead to the crook of her neck.
“Me neither,” she whispered, pressing a chaste kiss to his cheek. “What happened? What caused the crash? I … I can’t remember.”
“The driver in front of you was trying to avoid an animal on the road.”
Joyce’s brow scrunched with worry. “Are they alright? The people in the other car?”
He gazed at her with love in his eyes. “Yes, they’re fine.”
The next few days Joyce experienced pain like she never had before. She had a broken arm, a broken leg, a concussion, a fractured pubic bone and a long gash that if it had been any deeper it would have nicked a major artery. She was in for a long recovery.
Olga and Buffy came in every day to visit her. Buffy burst into tears the first time she saw her mother. Joyce did the same and held out her good arm. Buffy jumped into her embrace and Joyce didn’t care how much it hurt.
Giles almost never left her side. He spent every day with her, only leaving to sometimes go shower at the house or eat in the hospital cafeteria.
One day into the second week of her stay at the hospital, Giles stared at her thoughtfully for a long time before Joyce broke the silence.
“What?” she asked.
He shook his head slowly, obviously in thought. “There’s something … I want to ask you about.”
Joyce stared at him curiously. “What’s that?”
“It’s about Buffy.”
Joyce’s eyes widened. Her heart stuttered. He couldn’t possibly …
“It’s about … something a saw her do.”
He was watching her carefully, cataloging each of the emotions crossing her face.
“It was after the crash … after I drove up here. She was so distraught … and her face …”
Oh God. Oh God.
“She told me that you knew. That you were practicing how to control it with her. The search for information about metamorphosis makes so much sense now.”
Joyce’s bottom lip wobbled. “Rupert … please … I can’t live without her. Please don’t take her away from me.”
He stared at her, aghast. “What? You-you think that I -?”
“I know she’s different … but she’s just a little girl. My little girl. I can’t be without her. I can’t!”
Giles pushed her chin up with a gentle hand. His eyes were warm and bright. “Oh, darling. I would never do that. Don’t you know I love you? That I love Buffy like she was my own? I want to marry you, I wouldn’t-”
He froze at the same time Joyce did. They stared at each other for long seconds before a tentative grin kissed Joyce’s lips.
“Was that a proposal?”
Giles flushed brightly. “I-well … could it be?”
She nodded wordlessly.
“I … well … then I guess it is.”
Her answer was a heart melting kiss.
--
Buffy knew her parents would totally flip if they knew that she was walking home late at night by herself. But she couldn’t have stayed in the Bronze for one more second. Watching Jason make out with Teri was like hot betrayal.
Okay, so Buffy wasn’t dating Jason, but there was some definite sparkage last week in math class. She was sure of it.
Grumbling, she kicked at a rock on the sidewalk. Stupid Teri. And stupid Jason for getting Buffy’s hopes up.
A cool breeze blew past her and Buffy tightened her jacket around her; her kitten heels tapped a steady rhythm on the dark pavement. Her only company on the deserted street was the low fluorescent glow from streetlamps. Okay, so, walking home alone probably wasn’t the smartest thing she’d ever done. As a resident of Sunnydale she knew, as every other Sunnydalian knew, the unspoken dangers of being outside at night.
But it wasn’t like she was totally defenseless. Her dad had put her in karate when she was eight years old and he took special interest in teaching her how to fight, much to her mother’s chagrin.
“Giles … do you think she really needs to learn this?”
“She’s special, Joyce. And she has talent. You know she’s stronger than other children.”
Joyce’s lips twisted with worry. “I know …”
Giles’ eyes were compassionate. “I know Joyce. But she is different. Someday she’ll need to know how to protect herself. And as much as I hate to say this … we won’t always be there to protect her.”
A look of understanding passed between her parents that Buffy wouldn’t understand until years later.
She was different. Very different. As a child she knew she had abilities other children didn’t, but she didn’t really consider herself that strange. However, as she grew older and more self aware she quickly realized how weird she was. She was stronger than anyone she knew. Stronger and faster. By the time she was ten years old she was regularly coming up victor when sparring with her dad. She had to learn how to control her strength. Sometimes she would forget and she’d accidentally break things or punch Giles a little bit too hard when they sparred.
They didn’t know what she was. Buffy began asking them that when she was nine. But they couldn’t answer her questions. They’d kiss her, tell her they loved her, but they never had answers.
She knew the her dad wasn’t really her dad, so she wondered if maybe what she was was genetically passed from her biological father. She asked her mother once about it, but Joyce immediately became distant.
“Do you know where he is?”
Joyce looked away for a moment. “No, I don’t.”
“Can’t you tell me his name? Maybe I can find him.”
“Buffy…”
Buffy threw her hands up in frustration, her thirteen year old hormones making her quick to anger. “God! Fine. Whatever. Keep your secrets. But he’s my father, you know!”
And now she was seventeen, but she was no closer to the truth of her origins. She felt like such a freak sometimes.
Making friends hadn’t been easy. She’d been ostracized from the other children since preschool. She eventually learned how to completely control her changes but the damage was already done. She was labeled a freak and segregated from the rest of the students. True friendship came in new student Willow Rosenburg. Willow was unique in a different way than Buffy. She wore the most bizarre clothing and she was amazingly smart. The other students steered clear of her. In Willow, Buffy found a friend with a heart of gold.
It was Willow and her boyfriend, Oz, that Buffy had left at the Bronze that night. Willow had wanted to walk Buffy home, but Buffy told her she was going to take a cab. And she honestly was. But once outside, she felt too jittery with nerves and decided walking home was a good idea.
However, as she was to realize not twenty minutes later, it really hadn’t been a good idea.
It had been a very bad idea.
Out of nowhere a hand shot out and grabbed her by the throat. She choked out a scream, but a fist slamming in her face lowered the scream into a low moan of pain. Her feet left the ground and she was slammed into a wall. The hand holding her throat was hard as iron and cold. Buffy could barely make out her attackers face. Terrified and desperate, she kicked out hard with her legs, she hit something pliable and the hands holding her loosened slightly. Reacting on pure instinct, Buffy angled her elbow and struck it into where she thought his face was. She was rewarded with a loud audible crunching sound and explicit oaths. His hands left her to touch his face for damage. Buffy scrambled away from him on hands and knees. She got to her feet and ran a few steps before she was tugged back by her hair. An arm snaked around her throat and another around her waist.
“Ah, ah, ah,” he whispered in a low southern drawl. “You’re a feisty one aren’t you?”
God. It was like all her training was for naught. She told her limbs to move in the manner she’d practiced hours on end, but terror made them numb and wooden.
Buffy struggled against him, but his grip was too tight, too solid. She’d never felt so helpless. He was so strong. Tears streaked down her cheeks. “H-help!” She tried to scream but her throat was like cotton. Her voice came out scratchy and pathetic.
Buffy could feel him laughing behind her. “There’s no one here, princess. Just you … and me.” Buffy felt something sharp graze against her neck. Images of a knife sprang to her mind and she began to struggle against him anew.
“D-don’t … please …” she whimpered.
“Oh, yeah. I love it when you beg.” He rubbed himself against her. “Do it again. Makes me all hot.”
She could feel herself changing. Her panic forcing the transformation. With the change some shred of clarity came to her mind; calming her. She lifted her right foot and stomped her heel on his foot. Her heel tore through his shoe, broke the skin, crushed bone.
“Fuck!” he yelled and suddenly Buffy was free.
She faced him in a defensive position. He was a big man. Broad shouldered, dark blonde hair, menacing dark eyes.
She knew she should run. She knew it. But she didn’t. She wanted to cause this man pain. He thought he could take her? Kill her? Arrogant bastard.
“You fucking bitch!”
Buffy almost laughed. Her heart pounded. She was sweating. Her face had changed but her attacker was still too pissed off about his foot to notice.
“Come on,” Buffy goaded around her incisors. “Be a man. Can’t take on one little girl?”
He then really looked at her, his eyes narrowed. “You’re not dead.”
She did laugh then. “You’re very observant.”
“You’re not dead … but you’re a vampire. What the hell are you?”
Buffy’s blood ran cold. “I’m not … I’m not a vampire.” Was she?
“What the fuck are you?”
She jumped him then. Her emotions too much in a tumble to sort out at the moment. She caught him off guard, which was her only advantage. Her moves were too slow. Sparring with Giles was nothing like fighting with this man. The label of ‘man’ was quickly dropped when she was his features change.
She stumbled slightly in shock. He was a vampire.
He looked a lot like she did when she changed. But there were notable differences.
With his change he became stronger. Much too strong for her to handle. Very quickly she was once again at his mercy. His knee in her gut, one hand holding her legs from kicking, the other clasping her arms in an iron grip. He slammed her head into the pavement, and she knew darkness for one long terrifying moment. Her heart was beating wildly. She was going to die. The thought ran through her head at a dizzying rate.
And suddenly he was off her.
Stunned, it took her a moment to sit up, and another to realize a fight was taking place only feet from her. She watched her attacker fight another man. Her saviour it would seem. Her vision blanked out sporadically, so she didn’t see the end of the fight. But she suddenly realized it was quiet. She opened her eyes to the ocean.
“Are you alright, love?” His voice was like silk and honey.
Buffy hated the stereotypical femaleness of it, but she couldn’t help it. Her adrenaline rush was quickly abating, leaving her mind trying to deal with the shock of what happened. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head and she blacked out.
[Reviews - 61]
-
Table of Contents [Report This]
Chapter or Story |
Chapter or Story | 
Chapter or Story
Has been viewed 2071 times
- Text Size +
-
Table of Contents [Report This]
Chapter or Story |
Chapter or Story | Chapter or Story - Text Size +
Author's Chapter Notes:
Wow, you guys just floor me. Your support has been so amazing! I love you all! And woo! two updates in two days!
Chapter End Notes:
I found it really hard to place Joyce's story aside. Not that I won't go back to it in flashbacks (like I did in the second part), but I grew very attached to it. I hope the first part wasn't too fast. I felt like it got the points I wanted to get across without forcing it.
And cliffhanger! Am I evil or what?
And cliffhanger! Am I evil or what?