Masquerade

Rating: G
Disclaimer: God Whedon owns them all, I just wrote it.
Comments: My on-crack!pairing from BtVS.

There's something in the way she moves that Giles thinks must be some sort of a mirror, as if anytime she could just put up her sleeve and show the same marks, and sing the same songs he did. Back there, if there had been a girl, it should have been a girl like her. No morals, no fear, neverending hunger for the next big emotion, absolutely no care about what happened to the others, the ones who weren't inside their circle.

Of course, the 'now' Giles isn't in her circle. No one's in her circle but Buffy, and he knows she doesn't measure up. When it comes to the wonders of wilderness, Buffy can't understand. If she could then Faith would be a whole and none of them would ever need anyone else. They'd disappear in a blast of completion, and Giles would stay because he's no longer a part of the circle.

But Buffy can't and never will. And it's in the silence when Giles fights himself as he's always done, he watches them both because it's his job. But now there's silence, and the stars went blind long time ago, so for a moment it's not too wrong when he wishes that Ripper wasn't gone. That he came back and knew what to do and how to get to the girl that should have been in his circle twenty years before.

Sure, he knows Ripper's still there. He wouldn't look at Faith that way if Ripper wasn't near. But there's no point in stopping the masquerade.