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Home Truths

By Rach

Disclaimer: I'm just playing, okay?! I mean, I can't make most of my computer work, you gotta let me have some fun in Word - so Joss and Co own everything. Right?
Summary: Where did Anya go after the wedding?
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Post 'Hells Bells'
Dedication: For PT, seeing as this fic would probably still be sitting around waiting to get written if she hadn't been mean to me until I got it done! *g* And Regina, because arguing makes me change things, and she knows it!

Tap, tap, tap.

Giles turned down the TV, looking around to see where the noise was coming from.

Tap, tap, tap.

It seemed to be coming from the back of the house. Flicking the TV completely off, he set his mug down on the table and headed through into the kitchen.

Tap, tap, tap.

It was louder now, and faster. He flicked on the light, and glanced at the clock. It was too late for visitors - he'd just been about to go to bed himself. He opened a drawer with one hand and pulled out the rolling pin, as he slowly drew back the curtain with the other.

Nothing there. He was just about to pull the curtain back across and check the back door, when he saw something moving towards the side of the house. One hand holding back the curtain, he reached beside him, feeling around until he connected with the light switch, keeping an eye on the movement outside.

As the outside light illuminated the figure, she spun around, and Giles almost dropped the rolling pin in surprise.

"Anya?!" He hurried over to the back door, and unlocked it, standing back to let Anya inside.

She smiled gratefully, and dumped her bag on the kitchen floor. "I was starting to think you weren't in, or maybe I'd got the wrong place."

Closing the door, he smiled, puzzled. "Don't think I'm not pleased to see you, but ... what are you doing here?"

"Well ... I needed a break." She looked around the kitchen. "And I figured you'd be a fresh face, you might be able to help me see things differently." Looking down at her feet, she fidgeted with her fingers. "I needed a friend."

Giles frowned, worried. This wasn't the bubbly Anya he was used to. "Would you like a drink? Then you can tell me about whatever it is." He wasn't sure what to say to her. He hadn't really spoken to her since Willow had cast that bloody memory spell ... he'd left pretty much straight away.

Quickly boiling up the kettle, he tipped his mug of cold tea down the sink and set about making two fresh ones. Handing her a mug, he nodded towards her bag. "Leave that there for now. We can take it upstairs and get you settled later."

She smiled again, but it was a sad smile, and he realised she hadn't spoken for a long while. Her eyes were red, as if she'd been crying a lot. He pushed open the door into the living room, and shifted his TV Guide from the sofa, settling himself in an armchair.

They sat in silence for a little while, Anya not sure how to start, and Giles not wanting to push her.

"Xander left me." The words echoed round the room when she finally spoke. Giles opened his mouth to speak, to console her, but got the feeling there was more still to come. "At the altar." She smiled wryly. "Well, more at the back of the church than the altar, really, but the principle is the same." She looked up at Giles, and felt relieved. She'd been afraid he'd side with Xander, just like the others had. They'd all said they were on her side, but she knew it was just words. The fact of it was, Xander had been one of them longer than her, and she was only there as 'Xander's girlfriend.' But Giles was different. She knew he felt like an outsider a lot of the time, too, that was partly why he'd left, after all. He'd understand.

"Everything was just ... so good. Everyone was there, it was going to be perfect. My wedding. Why couldn't he have realised it before? I mean, it would still have hurt, but not ... not like this." Her voice cracked on the last few words, and tears sprang into her eyes.

Giles set his mug down again, moving over to sit beside Anya. "It's okay," he whispered. "It mightn't seem it, but eventually, it'll hurt ... less." Wrapping an arm around her shoulder, he pulled her head into his chest. Tears came slowly at first, but Giles soon felt his shirt becoming damp. He leant back, knowing that while crying it all out mightn't physically do any good, it would make Anya feel a lot better. Eventually her breathing became steadier, and shifting slightly, he could see she was asleep.

Carefully lifting her a little, he stood up, rearranging some cushions before laying her head back onto them. He tiptoed upstairs and retrieved two blankets, draping one over Anya, before arranging one over himself in the armchair, removing his glasses and attempting to get some sleep himself.

****

Giles woke up, and as he left whatever dream world he'd been in, his brain realised he could hear music. Waving his arm around, he tried to find the snooze button on his alarm, before eventually waking up enough to remember his alarm clock didn't have a radio function. Forcing his eyes open, he managed to make them focus enough for him to locate his glasses, and realise that the singing was coming from his kitchen, and he was asleep downstairs.

Another moment later he'd remembered the reason he was sleeping downstairs, and a split second after that, his head made the connection between the singing, and Anya.

She walked back into the living room just as he'd realised all of this, a bag of toiletries in her hand, and a smile on her face when she realised he was awake. She'd changed her clothes since arriving last night, and she brushed her hair and pulled it into pigtails.

"I took my bag upstairs. I kinda guessed which was your guest room, and I unpacked a few things ... I hope that's okay." The Anya that Giles knew had returned for a second, that cocky smile, always believing she was in the right, but it was quickly replaced by the girl he'd met last night, someone completely different.

"Not a problem ... I hope you managed to find everything, I didn't intend to sleep so late."

Now that he was awake, Anya decided to open the curtains, and grab her first glimpse of England in the daylight. Giles sat up, and watched as she stared out of the window like a little girl at Christmas, despite the fact that his garden looked no different to most of the gardens in Sunnydale.

"Well, miraculously it would appear you've arrived on one of the five annual days in England that the sun shines," he laughed, and she turned around, smiling again. "Shall we make the most of it and go for a walk? We can get some breakfast while we're out."

****

"Two cinnamon danish and two cappuccinos, please." Giles stared over at Anya as he waited for the coffees. She'd been distant all morning. There was no way he could describe her mood as quiet - she'd been rabbiting on - bad choice of words where Anya was concerned - about anything and everything ever since they left the house. She'd started by talking about the shop, what was selling, what wasn't, her plans for refurbishment - no, thank you - and moved on to her flight, what she was thinking of doing next with her hair - everything apart from the reason she was there. So, not quiet. Distant, however pretty much covered it.

As he paid, he handed her one of the coffees, and she thanked him as she started to drink it. They walked in silence for a while, and Giles got the feeling she was working up to something. They walked into the park, and Giles headed towards a bench under a tree, slightly in the shade, and away from everyone else.

"D'Hoffryn offered me my old job back."

"Oh?" That wasn't what he'd been expecting. "Did you take it?"

She sighed. "Yeah."

"Oh," Giles said again, a little disappointed.

"But if you're asking if I'm a vengeance demon now, no." She took a gulp of coffee, avoiding Giles' eyes. "I was so hurt, and so embarrassed, and just so ... everything. All I could think about was making Xander pay for what he'd done. But he'd left town, and I didn't feel ready to go and face him, so D'Hoffryn sent me out on a couple of other jobs, and I just couldn't do it. I failed completely, and I realised that however much Xander had hurt me, he'd made me feel like a person the whole time we'd been together. I didn't want to go back to being a demon. I liked being a mortal, I liked running the shop, and I didn't want to change it. So I smashed my necklace."

Giles smiled. This was a side of Anya he'd always known was there, she just never let it show. He'd hoped by giving her the shop, it'd bring a sense of responsibility out of her - but even he was surprised at how well it'd worked.

She grinned back at him, glad she'd finally managed to get that out, and have someone to listen. Well, she'd had D'Hoffryn to listen, but he hadn't really cared. He'd just wanted her to take her job back, she'd be surprised if he still remembered a single thing she'd told him. But Giles really wanted to help.

"In retrospect, I should have known something was wrong straight away. I mean, he wouldn't tell anyone about us for months. You know how long we'd been engaged before we told you all? Since the night Buffy fought Glory." She watched Giles' surprised expression. "He kept telling me it was best if we didn't say anything, because everyone was still sad about Buffy, and it wasn't fair. So I went along with it, but something was telling me that it wasn't right. That happy news in a sad time would make everyone happy again, at least a little bit."

"If I was engaged to someone like you, I'd want to tell everyone straight away," Giles spoke softly, not wanting to interrupt her flow.

"Exactly. So, I thought maybe he still had a thing for - wait." She blushed, realising what Giles had said. "You would?"

He laughed a little, and nodded.

"That's ... uh ... that's ..." she stammered, put off. "That's exactly my point," she squeezed out, even though it wasn't what she'd wanted to say at all. "So anyway, I wondered if he would rather be marrying Buffy, if she, y'know, weren't so dead, or even Willow, if she weren't so gay. But no, he'd asked me, so he must have meant it. You don't ask someone something like that if you don't mean it." She lowered her voice, and Giles heard it wobble slightly. "At least, that's what I thought." He moved around to the other side of the table, sitting down next to her, and placed his hand on top of hers.

"And then there was the whole musical demon thing. Apart from the fact that we had what was effectively an argument in song and pretty much ignored it, his calling the demon in the first place was worrying. He didn't trust that we could have a happy ending. He wanted to know it, for definite, and that's not right. With life, you have to take what you're given, right? You can't pick and choose, take a look into the future and decide to do something else instead. Because you have no way of knowing which factors contribute to what's going to happen, and you could end up with a worse ending."

Giles nodded. "You can never truly know. It's all about risks."

"Risks. Right. Willow took a risk when she cast the memory spell. She knew that Tara was going to leave her if she did more magic - hell, Xander and I knew that. But she took a risk, because she loved her so much. It didn't pay off, but she tried. If Xander really wanted to marry me, he would have taken the risk, not wimped out. At least then, we could have had a chance. Now, there's no way I'll ever be able to trust him enough to try it again."

"Perhaps he just didn't want your marriage to turn out like his parents' did. Perhaps he cared about you too much to subject you to that."

"But there's no way he could know. He wouldn't be 'subjecting' me to anything. I wanted to be in that marriage as much as I thought he did - so if anything went wrong, we'd both be as much to blame as the other." She paused for a second, trying to calm down again. "You know, when Willow cast the memory spell, he thought the two of them were going out."

"That doesn't mean anything, Anya. None of us knew."

"But Willow and Tara knew. It felt right between them, you know? I talked to Willow about it afterwards. That was the first time that I had any doubts. I wanted to know why the same didn't happen with Xander and me, why we weren't attracted. If ..." she looked at Giles, the one thing she'd been debating about telling him on the tip of her tongue. She took a deep breath, and carried on. "If there was a reason that it was you and I that thought we were a couple."

Giles moved his hand from hers, and squirmed a little, remembering how awkward he'd felt when the spell had lifted mid-kiss. "I ...."

"I mean, that was one hell of a kiss, however uncomfortable the aftermath was. And that's something I regret, because I've missed talking to you. Even though I know I was an idiot a lot of the time, you paid attention to me, you helped me out, and you were fun. You didn't mind when I screwed up, and you made me laugh." She frowned, suddenly remembering *why* she was having to tell him all of this stuff in the first place. "And this is all making me want to know why you didn't come to the wedding."

Giles blinked, slightly confused by Anya's sudden change of subject.

"Well, I ..." he paused. What was he going to tell her - the truth? Sorry, Anya, I couldn't come because I was jealous, I quite fancied marrying you myself, to be quite honest. No, that wouldn't go down very well. "I ... that is, I had some ... things ... that I couldn't get out of." I sort of wish the spell hadn't worn off, because I was enjoying being engaged to you, and we would probably have been married by now? Pillock.

She smacked him across the chest, and glared disapprovingly. "Don't lie to me, Giles. I know why you didn't come."

He opened his mouth to reply, and found that no sound was coming out, so he probably looked quite like a fish at the moment. "You do?" He finally managed to squeak.

"Yeah. You were afraid we'd ask you to give me away, and that would make you feel old."

He snorted with laughter at how off-target she was, and was glad to have his blunt Anya back. "Something like that." He looked up as he felt drops of rain landing on his head, and noticed how much darker and colder it had gotten since they'd sat down. Taking hold of Anya's hand, he pulled her from the table, and they ran for cover as the rain got heavier, leaving two half-empty cups of coffee and two danish pastries on the table. Realising that there wasn't any cover nearby, Giles speeded up, still a tight hold on Anya's hand, making it back to his house five minutes later, the pair of them giggling like children and soaked through to the bone. As he unlocked the door, they fell into the house, laughing at nothing in particular.

"That's one of the other things about England," Giles gasped, in between bursts of laughter. "We don't tend to get our days of sunshine all at once. We're pretty special, the way the weather can change so quickly. That doesn't happen in many countries."

He looked down at Anya, who was still lying on the floor, her face lit up with laughter. "It feels like I haven't laughed in weeks!" She pushed herself to her feet, and Giles tried not to notice the way that the rain had made her clothes stick to her. "I knew coming to see you was a good idea. Thank you." She punctuated the sentence with a shiver, and Giles reached out to her.

"You must be frozen. If you want to get changed, I can go and find you a towel." He rubbed his hands up and down her arms, trying to get some warmth back into her. He was used to the climate, and it had taken him weeks to get used to it again, after living in California for so long. It would be even harder for her, a newcomer to the country.

He suddenly realised she was staring at him strangely, and slowed down the rubbing motion, bringing his hands to a stop round her waist. He watcher her a moment or two longer, before leaning down and kissing her, tipping her back slightly like he'd done in the Magic Box all those months ago, and had repeated in his dreams so many times since.

She brought a hand up to rest on the back of her neck, and for the first time in weeks, she wasn't thinking about Xander at all. Her mind was completely on Giles, in a big fat one-track way.

Giles pulled back, immediately filled with panic about so many things, particularly what that would do to Xander if he knew, and hoping it wouldn't make Anya so uncomfortable she'd leave. He forgot about the worries, however, when Anya grinned at him.

"Wow," she laughed. "So, that technique really *didn't* come from Willow's spell, huh?"

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