Author’s Note: Kar continues to rock the beta job. Thank you all for the great comments. It makes me thrilled that I decided to get posty at last, and grateful to Shan for the challenge to get me jump-started. I’m glad people are enjoying the take on Xander. It drove me crazy when he went from Mr. Observant to Mr. Oblivious. I also think there are other ways to deal with Willow’s magic problem than the ‘magic is crack’ metaphor, but you’ll have to wait for future installments…

In our third installment Giles returns to Sunnydale, Spike gives Buffy a present, and Willow reflects.

As noted in the summary, dialog may be familiar in the early chapters.

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Life was returning to normal, Sunnydale normal anyway. And Giles was back; and she needed him back, needed him to anchor her. She couldn't be the slayer without him anymore. She’d thought he could make it better, take some of the pressure off. Instead he was just like everyone else, either tip-toeing around her or interrogating her. She sort of knew what he was doing. He’d done it before when she’d come back from L.A, coming at her sideways to get her to confess about Angel.

Maybe she should call Angel, but she’d never even gotten around to finding out if he knew she’d been dead. And ringing him up to say, ‘Hey, I’m alive, thought you should know,’ would sound really bitchy out of context. Besides she’d been busy dealing with the fact that Mom’s cancer had spread while she was gone and that she was going to need to start getting chemo treatments.

Giles was going to help with the driving. She kinda hoped Giles would help with a lot of things. Right now she really needed his help figuring out why an M'Fashnik demon was all over her. And maybe a cookie. Stupid Dawn.

But he and Willow were yelling, shouting horrible things at each other. The smoldering cigarette butt on the porch floor was stupidly relieving. She stamped it out and gave him a resigned but friendly, "Hello, Spike."

He stepped out of the shadows and grinned at her, then frowned. "You hear all that noise?"

She nodded. "Just enough to make me feel crappy."

"You know watcher-boy doesn't mean anything by it."

"I guess. Everyone ... they all care. They all care so much; it ... makes it all harder."

"I'm not sure I followed you around that bend, love".

"I don't know. I just, I feel like I'm spending all of my time trying to be okay, so they don't worry. It's exhausting. And then, I..."

"And that makes 'em worry even more."

She nodded. It freaked her out a little that he understood. Maybe it came from all the stalking.

"You want me to take them out?" he offered. "Give me a hell of a headache, but I could probably thin the herd a little."

She gave a smile, and it pleased him. She shouldn't care about pleasing him. "Knew I could get a grin."

They sat on the porch stairs. She remembered being there with him before, the night she found out about Mom. She remembered his arm around her shoulders while she cried. At the time it had wigged her. Now she kinda wished he would do it again. "Why are you always around when I'm miserable?"

"Cause that's when you're alone, I reckon. I'm not one for crowds myself these days."

Crowds. It seemed like she was always being crowded, all these loving people butting up against her. All their gushing emotions. "Me neither."

He smiled at her; he had such a nice smile. "That works out nicely then."

Something fizzy started happening in her stomach. It really wasn’t fair that he could look like that. "Mom's sick again," she blurted.

"I heard. Bit says the doctors aren’t worried." He petted her shoulder awkwardly and then folded his hands back in his lap.

She sighed. "This is so hard."

"Right. I can go then."

She shook her head, squeezed her eyes shut for a moment and then looked out at the night again. She should probably patrol. Track down the demon that was haunting her. She was still the Slayer. Or the Slayer again. Either way, she was Patrol Girl. "No, not you," she muttered. "You're not hard."

"Well, that's not entirely--"

"Ew, Spike," she cut him off, but she had to smile at his teasing tone.

“Got something for you,” he changed the subject abruptly. He produced some keys from his pocket and jingled them a few times before tossing them to her.

She caught them and scratched the metal skull key ring with a nail. “To match my engagement ring?” she queried wryly. “You shouldn’t have.”

“Came into a few motorcycles. Thought you might fancy one…” He cocked his head at her. “You still have the ring?”

“What are the other keys for?” she asked, ignoring his question.

He shrugged and put on his ‘I am a badass’ face. “Didn’t get a chance to ask the previous owner before I ripped out his spine.”

Her face fell. Who was the previous owner? What was the previous owner? “You…” she fumbled for how to ask. “When did you--”

“Night you came back. You saw the biker demons.” he rushed out. With a grin he suggested, “Could call it a rebirth day present.”

Internally she heaved a sigh or relief, but only let him see an eye roll. “I have no idea how to drive a motorcycle,” she informed him archly. It could be cool though. She could roar across Sunnydale, crossbow on her back. Skid to a stop to take aim at some fierce demon. Like some comic book heroine come to life. Plus it would be a good a great excuse for new boots. And jackets. Helmet hair was a big minus though.

“I could teach you,” he offered. He was trying to play it cool, like this wasn’t an obvious attempt to set up regular together time. It was actually kinda cute. And therefore a very bad idea.

She pocketed the keys anyway. “Yeah. Ok. Maybe.” He watched as she very deliberately reached out and placed a hand over his. “Thanks.”

Spike turned his palm and squeezed her hand, then let it go quickly. Nervousness radiated off him and she really didn’t want the moment to get heavy. "Come on." She bumped his shoulder with hers. "Let's go kill something."

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Isis, what was everyone’s problem? Tara’s hands fluttered like a startled moth every time she pulled a book off the shelf with a chant instead of getting up. So, floating kisses were okay, but floating books were naughty?

And Giles, all angry and doooooooom about the whole thing, like she didn’t know what she was doing? Okay, so maybe she hadn’t looked too closely at the consequences, and okay making a demon wasn’t exactly in the white witch handbook, but she was trying to get her friend out of hell, which, by the way, had worked. So why couldn’t everybody just chill?

Buffy seemed chill. Buffy was chilly, in fact, which was not of the good. Willow had to admit it was a wee bit worrisome how Buffy was all quiet and mopey, but hello, hell, trauma? That kind of thing didn’t just go away overnight. Unless you did a forgetting spell, but that had gone over like a lead balloon. She was just trying to help.

So Giles thought she was ‘damaged’? Willow tried to coax some wires to un-fray in the robot’s torso, but nothing doing. This was the damaged Buffy. Flesh and blood Buffy was just fine, and if she wasn’t, Willow would find a way to repair it.

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The crazy pace of posting may slow down a little from here. I'm really loving the feedback; please keep it coming.