Archive of Our Own

Jenny tells him in the car.

On the phone she begs him to come pick her up, the request so unexpected, so direct, that Rupert hears himself agreeing before he’d even really decided to do so, furious with himself as soon as he hangs up on the phone.

But he’s already agreed, and even if it wouldn’t have left a sour taste in his mouth to go back on his word, argument or no, there’s something in her tone that’s — concerning, Rupert supposes is the right word, as much as he doesn’t like to admit to it. So he puts on his jacket and he drives to Jenny’s apartment complex and he parks in the spot right outside her building, which has never once been available when he’s visited her in better times. The good fortune feels mocking.

When Jenny lets herself into the passenger’s seat — another gesture that feels wrong; Rupert’s opened the door for her nearly every time she’s gotten in — she looks different. He can’t put his finger on it, at first. It’s nothing physical, just — her energy, he supposes. He’s gotten sort of used to seeing her miserable and repentant, the past few days — and doesn’t that make him feel like the worst sort of person, when he thinks of it like that — but now she looks miserable and, well. Something else. Rupert isn’t sure what. Determined, maybe.

He clenches his jaw in anticipation, already sure Jenny’s going to tell him something he won’t like. His stomach is sour, a dreadful mix of self-righteous irritation and bone-crushing guilt.

Jenny doesn’t fasten her seatbelt. She doesn’t look at him, either, just stares forward. She’s still got one hand on the door handle, Rupert can’t help but notice, ready to flee at a moment’s notice. He feels a prickle of unease, trying to imagine what would get her so upset. Something about Angelus, maybe —

“You called me,” he reminds her, a not-so-subtle prod for her to explain herself.

Jenny nods, still silent, as her fingers tighten on the door. Did something happen to her? Was she — has she been hurt? She isn’t visibly bruised, or holding herself strangely, or — but there are other ways to hurt someone, Rupert knows. Plenty of methods that wouldn’t show, and no doubt Angelus is familiar with a great many of them.

“Jenny — ” Rupert starts, frustration bleeding into his tone. “Jenny, would you please just —

“I’m pregnant.”

Whatever he was going to say next dies in his throat. Rupert stares at her, ears ringing, for what feels like a very long time, his brain struggling to accept what she’s just said.

“You’re — ” he starts, only to fall into silence once more, giving up on speech nearly immediately. Jenny still isn’t looking at him, knuckles white on the door handle as she stares resolutely out the window. “You’re, ah — you’re sure?” he manages, finally, and that gets her to look at him.

“Am I sure?” she asks, voice heavily tinged with disbelief, and she sounds so much like the version of her he remembers, before — before everything went to hell. Before he knew he loved her; before he knew she was lying to him. “God, that’s so — yes, I am sure. I’m sure it’s yours, too, if that was gonna be your next question.”

It wasn’t, actually; Rupert chokes awkwardly on his own breath, caught somewhere between suspicion and offence. He tries again, taking a slow breath, trying to formulate what to say next only to find himself faced with an utter blank.

Did you do it on purpose?

It’s the first coherent thought he manages and he feels like an absolute heel as soon as he’s thought it; he glances over at Jenny, taking in her hunched posture, the miserable, drawn look on her face. She’s let go of the door handle, at least, her anger apparently serving as a distraction from her desire to make a quick escape, but she’s visibly as ill at ease as Rupert feels. No, he thinks, watching as she meets his gaze for a split-second, grimaces, and immediately looks away. Not on purpose. Not even wanted, maybe, which brings up his next unpleasant thought —

“Are you — that is, I mean. Will you — ?”

Jenny stares at him, challenging, not offering him any help at all getting to the end of that sentence. He deserves it, Rupert supposes, rueful. It’s rather an unfeeling thing to ask.

Unfortunately, he does need to know.

“Will you keep it?” he forces out, as direct as he’s willing or able to ask. There are options, he knows, adoption, or — or. Jenny’s a modern woman. She’ll know what he means.

“If I wasn’t, would I have even bothered to tell you?” Jenny snaps immediately; Rupert feels it like a slap.

He deserved that too, probably.

“Shit,” Jenny mutters, then, both hands coming up to cover her face. “Sorry, that was — sorry. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

The words are muffled by her palms. Rupert’s own hands twitch uselessly in his lap, unable to space the space between them. He wants to touch her so badly. He’s angry at her, still. It doesn’t feel as though it matters.

“If it helps, I don’t either,” he manages, after another ungainly pause. Jenny sniffs, once, and scrubs one hand under nose rather ungracefully. Rupert digs in his pocket to offer her his handkerchief without a second thought, holding it out until she sighs and takes it, dabbing under her eyes, first, and then quietly blowing her nose.

“My uncle never liked me, you know,” she says, crumpling the handkerchief in one fist. “I was his responsibility, not his daughter. He raised me and he fed me and he paid for things when I needed them, but he didn’t love me and he didn’t like me. And I always knew that.”

Rupert stares at her, not quite following the direction she’s steered the direction towards and helpless as to how she wants him to respond. Unsure whether she even wants a response at all.

“He can’t know,” Jenny says, still staring straight ahead. “The way he raised me, the way he made me think — I won’t let him do that. I don’t care if that makes me selfish. I don’t care.”

“Alright,” Rupert says quietly, still not really sure what, exactly, she’s trying to tell him.

She takes a deep breath, still squeezing the handkerchief with what appears to be a fair amount of force. Rupert watches her wrist flex with the effort of it. Thinks maybe it’ll be easier for her if he isn’t looking at her face.

“I’m gonna — I’m leaving Sunnydale,” Jenny says, then. Her voice shakes, but only slightly. Just a little wobble, right there at the end. “And I know you can’t — I’m not asking you for that. I’m not asking you for anything. I won’t. I know I already ruined it. I just wanted to tell you first.”

He can feel something rising up inside of him — fear, maybe. Panic. It burns the back of his throat like bile.

“Jenny,” he starts, but she shakes her head before he can finish.

“I have to get out,” she insists. “I can’t — I’d stay, if it was only for me. I’d stay as long as it took.”

As long as what took? Rupert isn’t sure he can ask.

“I can — ” he tries, only for her to cut him off again.

“Rupert, don’t,” she says, mouth twisting in a shape that’s not quite a smile. “We both know you couldn’t. Not even if you really wanted to.”

It doesn’t sit right with him, the way she says it. Does he really think he wouldn’t — his own child?

“Is that what you think of me?” he asks stiffly, moving one hand to rest it on the steering wheel. As though he’s the one who wants to leave, now.

Jenny sighs.

“That isn’t what I meant,” she answers, although her exhausted tone of voice isn’t terribly convincing. “Just — you have someone else you have to put first, and that isn’t going to change. And I won’t — I won’t be that type of woman. I have a friend in — well. I have a friend. She said she’ll let me stay with her for a while, until — until I can figure things out.”

Rupert swallows hard, tasting bile.

“It does matter,” he says quietly. He can’t quite manage looking at her, but he feels Jenny’s eyes on him as he speaks. “Where — I want to know where you are. How it goes. I want — ”

He wants. What does he want? He wants to be a man who can step up, who can drop everything and leave alongside her. He wants to be a man who can even imagine it. But how could he, and leave Buffy here alone? The Slayer, with no Watcher to guide her?

How can he pit one responsibility against another? How could he ever choose which matters more?

You already did, he reminds himself. He chose already, and Jenny wasn’t his choice. And from the look on her face she knows, perfectly well, that she won’t be his choice this time around, either.

“When were you planning on leaving?” he asks, struggling to keep his voice even.

“Next week, I hope,” Jenny answers. Her nails tap absently at the plastic under the window, an aimless, jarring pattern. “Earlier, maybe, if I can get all my shit together fast enough.”

Rupert watches his fingers clutch the steering wheel, knuckles going painfully white.

“Will you — are you going to drive there?”

“Yeah.” Jenny sighs, running her hand through her hair. “I think I can fit everything in my car, so. Might as well do it in one trip.”

It strikes him as terribly sad, that she can pack up her entire life like that. Her car barely even has a backseat.

“Would….” Rupert coughs uncomfortably, his eyes fluttering shut as he screws up the courage to ask. “Would you let me go with you? Just — to see that you arrive safely.”

The silence stretches out for long enough that he has no choice but to look over at her, in the end, finding her staring in mute disbelief.

“You don’t have to do that,” she manages, finally. “I know you won’t want — it’s dangerous. You shouldn’t leave Buffy alone.”

“I shouldn’t leave you alone,” Rupert snaps immediately, tension drawing his voice up shorter than he’d like. He takes in a shaky breath. “Either of you,” he adds quietly, the reality of it hitting him with the small admission.

But Jenny’s already shaking her head.

“You’re mad at me,” she reminds him, almost — defiantly. Like she’s trying to prove a point. “You don’t even — look. I appreciate the offer, but we both know where we stand. I told you as a courtesy, but for anything else — you’re off the hook, alright? I’m not expecting, and I’m not asking.”

She reaches for the door handle as she speaks, and Rupert’s horrified to find himself reaching for her in turn, hand already on her shoulder before he’s even realized what he’s doing. It was only a light touch, but he jerks it back immediately, as though burned. Too late: it’s already had the intended effect. Jenny sits very still, frozen in place, head bowed, still half-turned away from him.

“Wait,” Rupert says hoarsely, hands up to show he won’t try and grab her again. “Please, just — would you just give me a moment?”

Jenny hesitates, then nods, jerky and too-fast. She doesn’t relax into the seat at all, still sitting frozen with her body awkwardly braced against the door.

“I am offering,” Rupert manages, at last. “Even if you aren’t asking, or expecting. You know I have — I have commitments here that I cannot leave. But that doesn’t mean I’m offering nothing.”

“And what is it, exactly, that you are offering?”

Jenny doesn’t sound combative, not quite; honestly, Rupert kind of wishes she would. The quiet exhaustion scares him. He’s never seen her give up before, and he doesn’t like to think that she ever could.

“I’ll send — I’ll support you,” he says, deciding as he speaks. “Financially. I know it’s not — but. I’ll write to my, my mother’s family. See if there are family — items. For the baby. You said you have your friend, but if you ever needed — you could go there, probably. I could have it arranged.”

Jenny stares at him for so long that he’s sure he’s offended her, features arranged in an expression of flat disbelief.

“Your — you can’t do that,” she says, finally, although she doesn’t sound quite as sure of herself as she normally does. “Your family?” She laughs, the sound of it harsher than he’d expect. Meaner. “What are you gonna tell them, exactly? You knocked up some gypsy girl and now you aren’t even gonna marry her?”

Rupert winces. It isn’t a conversation he’s particularly looking forward to, but — his mother’s side of the family is alright, he thinks. There’s no need to bring his father into it just yet.

“Is your uncle your only family?” he asks quietly, instead of voicing any of that. Jenny flinches and goes still, and then one shoulder raises in a tiny shrug, more of a muscle spasm than an actual agreement.

“Close enough.”

She doesn’t offer anything more, but Rupert can read between those lines just fine.

“If you want to raise the child away from here, I won’t stop you,” Rupert says slowly. “I’d never ask you to — I’d feel better knowing you were out of harm’s way. And if your relationship with your family is, ah —”

“Fucked,” Jenny fills in, and Rupert dips his head in acknowledgment.

“ — fraught, yes,” he agrees, pretending he doesn’t see the way the corner of Jenny’s mouth quirks up. Pretending it doesn’t make him feel just the slightest bit of warmth. “Then I understand. But I don’t like to think of you all alone.”

He watches, horrified, as Jenny’s lip wobbles, her tiny attempt at a smile gone just as quickly as it appeared.

“Shit,” she chokes out, on a funny little gasping sound that’s half a laugh and half a sob. “Sorry, I’m really sorry, I promised myself I wouldn’t cry in front of you, I wanted to — in my head I was really cool about it, you know?”

“It’s perfectly alright,” Rupert says awkwardly. He hesitates, then reaches for her hand, slow enough that she can pull away if she wants.

She doesn’t, apparently; when he touches her wrist she twists her hand so it’s palm up in her lap, silent permission for him to hold onto her properly. She’s still twisted in the seat, contorted into a position that can’t be comfortable, but she lets him hold her like that for longer than he expects. Her hand is small in his. It trembles, just slightly, in his grip.

“Let me see you there safely, at least,” Rupert says quietly. Begs, almost. “Please.”

“I’m not gonna meet your family,” Jenny warns him. Her voice is shaky, clogged with tears. “I’m not gonna do any of that. But — you can come with me to Seattle, I guess. If that’s what you really want.”

“It is,” Rupert answers immediately, with a firmness that surprises him. “It’s what I want.”

On Friday he tells Buffy that a colleague in Salt Lake City has a lead that might help them with Angelus, too distracted to feel anything but vaguely guilty at the lie. He makes her promise that she won’t patrol, which she acquiesces to easily, only putting up a fight when he instructs her not to leave the house after dark at all until he’s back Sunday night. The plan is to leave his car at the airport and fly home once he’s dropped Jenny off; it doesn’t leave much room for error, timing wise, but he thinks they can make it if they take the drive in shifts.

It’d be better if they could leave Friday night, but it’s too much of a risk; Rupert has Jenny pick him up from the airport after school, with the idea that he’ll spend the night on her couch so they can leave Saturday at dawn.

“I’m not really a morning person,” Jenny warns him that night, already changed into a pair of sweatpants and a long-sleeved t-shirt. Rupert can’t quite keep himself from glancing at her stomach; she catches him looking and rolls her eyes.

She doesn’t look any different yet. It’ll be a few more weeks, Rupert supposes. He’ll be long gone by then.

“I’ll take first shift,” he says, forcing his mind back on track. “It’s better if you rest, anyway.”

“I’m fine,” Jenny says pointedly. “It hasn’t even started pressing down on my organs yet, or whatever it’s gonna do in there. I feel totally normal. Basically.”

The risk for miscarriage is highest in the first trimester, Rupert knows, but he bites back the warning before it can make it out of his mouth. Jenny must know that too: surely the doctor will have told her.

Presuming she’s even seen a doctor; Rupert realizes he hasn’t heard her say anything one way or the other about it.

“You had a — a checkup, correct?” he asks hesitantly, moving past her to set his bag on the floor by the couch. Everything she’s bringing has been packed in her car already; the remainder Rupert’s promised to take care of before the new renters move in. “You’ve seen a physician? Everything’s in — in order?”

“Yes,” Jenny says tightly. “Everything’s in order, Rupert, I know you think I’m irresponsible, but — ”

“I don’t think that,” Rupert cuts her off before she can really get going. “I’m just — I want to be sure. I don’t want — ”

Jenny softens, just barely, letting out a tired sigh.

“Let’s just — ” She waves her hand around the mostly-empty living room, a gesture that communicates very little. “Let’s just eat dinner.” She lets out an irritated huff as soon as she’s said it, obviously remembering she already cleared out her fridge. “I’ll order a pizza or something.”

A pizza isn’t exactly the first choice he would have made for a pregnant woman, but the look Jenny shoots him says that she’s aware of his objections, and that she cares very little for his input on the subject.

“Pizza would be, ah. Lovely,” he forces out, shooting her a brief smile. “Just — not the meat lovers again, Jenny, I’m begging you.”

“Too much meat for you, huh.”

Jenny waggles her eyebrows, that teasing edge to her voice when she’s managed to sneak in an innuendo, and for a moment it’s almost as it was before.

“Yes,” Rupert responds, deadpan, refusing to cave. “I suppose mushrooms are off the table, are they?”

“I’ll compromise on pepperoni,” Jenny says, already reaching for the phone. Rupert sighs and waves a hand at her when she picks up the handset to dial, retreating to the bathroom to wash his hands. He leaves the door open, switching the sink off just in time to catch the back half of her conversation as she orders.

— half pepperoni, that’s right — large is fine, yeah. No, we don’t need any drinks — wait. Do you guys have Ginger Ale? Diet? No, no, regular’s fine — saving my life right now, seriously —

Rupert huffs out an exasperated breath. At least it’s not that god-awful green stuff, he tells himself. Xander’s always bringing cans of it to the library, a fact which in itself should be enough to put her off drinking it.

“The guy said thirty minutes,” she announces when Rupert returns to the living room. She’s made herself comfortable on one edge of the couch, her knee pulled up under her chin. She isn’t wearing socks; her toenails are painted dark purple. He watched her paint them red, once, leaned in the bathroom doorway while she perched on the edge of the tub, laughing about something he can’t remember now.

“Alright,” he says, tearing his eyes away.

It’s harder than he expects to wake her the next morning, even given all her warnings the night before.

“Jenny,” he murmurs, risking a hand on her shoulder to try to shake her awake. No luck — she doesn’t even move. He doesn’t understand how she can be sleeping so deeply in a position that looks so uncomfortable, curled up without even a pillow, only a throw blanket protecting the stripped mattress. “Jenny,” he says again, louder this time. She groans, softly, and tries to turn onto her other side. “Jenny, for heaven’s sake,” Rupert says, exasperated. “We’ve got to leave in ten minutes, you need to — ”

“Rupert?”

“Yes,” Rupert breathes, relieved. “You’re — are you awake?”

“Dumb question,” Jenny slurs, eyes still closed. Rupert huffs out a laugh. He’s still got a hand on her shoulder, he realizes; he lets her go, but doesn’t move to stand up. When she blinks her eyes open he’s still sitting there, one hand braced on the mattress by her hip.

“Will you get up if I leave you here?” he asks quietly. “I need to go finish packing the car.”

“‘m up,” Jenny agrees, although for a long few seconds she just lies there, breathing. “I’m up,” she says again, sounding mostly like she’s trying to convince herself. She still hasn’t actually moved at all.

“Alright,” Rupert sighs, giving up and reaching for her hands, tugging determinedly until she gives in and cooperates, not stopping until he’s on his feet and she’s sitting upright at the edge of the bed, squinting up at him with a halfhearted scowl.

“I feel like I got hit by a truck,” she groans, yawning into the back of her hand. She holds it like that for a few seconds, like she’s waiting for another one, and then she drops it down to her side instead, pushing herself unsteadily to a stand. “Give me five minutes,” she says groggily. “Can you put the pizza in the car for me?”

“That is not breakfast,” Rupert responds automatically, and then, walking it back at Jenny’s glare, “shall I heat it up first?”

Jenny pauses her unsteady shuffle towards the bathroom to stare at him incredulously.

“Should you — you know what? Never mind,” she says, sounding disgusted, but significantly more alert. “Don’t touch anything. I’ll be out in five minutes, I’ll take care of it then.”

Rupert ignores her warnings and takes the pizza box out of the refrigerator anyway, under the guise of checking to make sure she hasn’t left any other food in there to rot. When he opens the box there are more pieces left than he expects, only two missing from the pepperoni half.

“Ugh.”

He turns, startled, to find Jenny peering around his shoulder at the contents of the box, a grimace of disgust on her face.

“Does the cheese always look like that?”

“Er — I believe so, yes,” Rupert answers. He takes another look, but he’s not really sure what, exactly, she finds so objectionable. The mushrooms didn’t fare so well, perhaps, limp with grease and slightly congealed. Other than that, it isn’t any different than the leftovers of every other pizza Buffy and her friends have convinced him to order to the library and then conveniently forgotten to dispose of properly the next morning.

“Just take it out with the rest of the trash,” Jenny says, pressing one hand to her mouth. “I’m not that hungry anyway, I’ll pick up a snack at the gas station later or something.”

“Yes, because I’m sure whatever’s available at the gas station will be much more appealing,” Rupert says dryly. Jenny scowls at him, but it lacks her usual energy. She really does look very tired. “Go on out to the car, then,” he says, taking pity on her. “You can sleep for a few hours while I drive, and then we’ll stop and have breakfast.”

Not at a gas station, Rupert privately decides, although he keeps that to himself.

In the car Jenny slides down in her seat until she’s hardly sitting at all, and doesn’t fasten her seatbelt until Rupert tells her to.

“We’re stopping for coffee,” she informs him, eyes still closed. “I don’t care where.”

“I’m, ah,” he stutters, trying to figure out how to phrase it delicately. “I was under the impression that the, ah, caffeine could be, you know. Harmful. For women in your — ”

“If you finish that sentence with my condition, I will grab the wheel and crash this car.”

“That seems a — perfectly reasonable reaction, of course,” he course-corrects hastily when she slits one eye open to glare at him, unimpressed.

“I’m weaning off,” she informs him, after a chilly few seconds of silence. “Have you ever tried to quit anything cold turkey?”

He has, in point of fact. It’s not an experience he’s eager to repeat.

Jenny grimaces as her words catch up with her; he offers her a pained, close-lipped smile.

“Half a cup,” she bargains, undeterred. “And then I’ll dump it out the window. I promise.”

She drinks the promised half-cup with exaggerated slowness, fingers clutching the paper sleeve as though it’s all that stands between life and death. When Rupert stops for gas she dumps it in the trashcan on her way into the store, comes out clutching another bottle of Ginger Ale.

“I need something to distract me,” she explains as she pops the tab, holding it out in front of her when the carbonation starts to hiss. “I would have gotten you one, too, but. You know.”

“Yes, of course,” Rupert agrees vaguely, distracted by the map he’s got spread out on his lap to doublecheck the route. Jenny takes a sip of her drink before she peers over his shoulder, curious. He wishes he wasn’t so aware of everything: the scent of her hair, of the lotion she uses on her hands. He wishes he didn’t know how her lipstick would taste, if he were to kiss her.

Traffic slows as they near Los Angeles, the heat in the car growing more and more oppressive as the sun beats down on the asphalt around them. Jenny rolls down her window only to be hit with a wave of stale, hot air; it smells like burned tires and burned trees. She winces and rolls it back up reluctantly, reaching forward to fiddle with the air conditioning vents instead.

Rupert watches out of the corner of his eye as she opens her mouth and closes it again; he’s debating whether to just give in and ask her what she’s thinking when she comes to a decision and speaks.

“You’re sure Buffy will be okay on her own?”

The thin bubble of normalcy pops; Rupert grips the steering wheel tighter and silently wills the Jeep in front of him to move.

“I don’t want to talk about Buffy.”

It’s quiet after that.

When they get past the city traffic Jenny makes him pull the car over so they can switch, the silence between them still heavy and comfortable.

“Only for a few hours,” Rupert waits until she rolls her eyes and nods before relinquishing the keys, not really sure why he’s being so insistent about it. Jenny isn’t a bad driver; she’s more confident behind the wheel than he is, even. Some masculine hangup he wasn’t even aware of, perhaps, which doesn’t reflect particularly well on him.

Or maybe he’s just thinking about her face when he woke her up in the morning, drawn and tired. She barely touched the donut he bought her with her coffee.

“Do you have any family names? You know, traditions, or whatever? You’re not Rupert Giles the third or anything?”

The question takes Rupert by surprise; he glances over at her, trying to get a feel for her mood, only to find her looking forward, staring at the road ahead of them with an undue amount of focus, given that there are hardly any other cars on the road.

“Do you?” he asks carefully, turning his own gaze ahead as well. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her shake her head.

“No,” she says immediately. “Not — no. I don’t want her tied to any of that.”

“Her?”

She can’t know, surely — it’s far too early. She hasn’t even been for an ultrasound yet, Rupert doesn’t think.

“Or him,” Jenny corrects hastily. “Sorry, I don’t know — I don’t know why I said it like that. It was just a feeling, I guess.”

Rupert hums his acknowledgment.

“If there was a — a family name, from my side, is that something you’d — would you use it?”

Jenny shrugs. Now that he’s paying more attention he can tell that she isn’t quite as cool about it as she’s pretending to be.

“As long as it’s not, like — Enid, or something horrible, I mean — I’d consider it.”

“Well, you’re in luck on that front,” he says dryly. “No Enids on either side of the family tree, as far as I’m aware. And you’re off the hook for Rupert Giles the fourth, as well. I’m the only one.”

Jenny hums and nods. She reaches forward to fiddle with the air conditioning vent before sitting back and adjusting her hands on the wheel, squirming like she can’t quite get comfortable.

“Are there — you said you didn’t want a family name, but. Are there names you’ve thought of?”

Jenny shrugs again.

“I don’t really know,” she admits, after a pause. “I never thought about it when I was younger. My family was such a burden to me, I never wanted — it wasn’t what I dreamed of, for myself. Mostly I just wanted to be free.”

The words don’t sit right with him, or maybe it’s just the way she says them.

“I always liked the name Elizabeth,” he offers into the silence. “It’s not a, a family name, or a tradition. I just thought it was — pretty.”

It feels foolish, saying it out loud, but when he glances over again Jenny’s smiling, small but real.

“Elizabeth, huh? Figures you’d go for the classics.”

Rupert could volley something back, maybe even start an argument. For old time’s sake. He can picture it so clearly: he’d say something about Jenny’s frightfully modern taste, in return Jenny would threaten to name the child something horrendous, Tiffani-with-an-i or Jayce-with-a-y. He’d snap something back, just a shade too cruel, hurting her feelings in a moment of thoughtlessness, and then it’d be all downhill from there.

The thought holds no appeal, even if he is privately somewhat concerned about what Jenny’s taste in baby names might be. She hasn’t made any suggestions so far.

He guesses she’ll have plenty of time to consider her options.

“It’s just an idea,” he says, finally, letting her off the hook if she chooses. “You’ll have the final say, obviously.”

He won’t be in the room when the baby’s born, after all, or even in the same state. At dinner last night Jenny mentioned trying to move up to Vancouver in a few months; he won’t even be in the same country, if she really does end up going.

“Obviously,” Jenny echoes, with a notable lack of enthusiasm.

She must be thinking the same thing.

They stop for dinner in Redding, settling on Applebee’s after a brief disagreement in the car. Jenny orders fajitas just to annoy him, Rupert’s pretty sure, but she actually does eat the chicken, so he stabs at his lacklustre salad and keeps his comments to himself.

They’ve made good enough time that Rupert feels comfortable finding a hotel instead of heading back on the road; his eyes aren’t as good as they once were, and he’d rather head out early than drive in the dark.

“I’ll clean up first,” he says quietly, once he’s checked that the room’s safe, although really it’s just instinct, at this point; he doesn’t really think they’re in much danger this far north of Sunnydale.

This far from the Slayer.

Jenny just nods, flopping onto the bed with a groan.

When he comes out of the bathroom she’s rolled onto her stomach and switched on the TV; she’s watching Shirley Temple sing in a soldier’s uniform with an expression of open revulsion on her face.

“Good heavens,” Rupert says mildly, but for some reason he’s just as transfixed, the two of them watching, unsettled, as Shirley salutes and skips up a set of stairs. “Surely even silence would be preferable,” he says, finally tearing his gaze away to turn towards his bag, packing away his shaving case and folded shirt. Jenny snorts her agreement, but doesn’t reach for the remote.

“I’ve never liked it when it’s quiet,” she admits, still watching the screen even as the credits start to roll. “I used to sleep with the radio on every night. By the end of freshman year I think my roommate was about ready to murder me.”

“That seems, ah — extreme,” Rupert says. Finished with his bag, he turns towards the empty bed. The woman at the check-in desk had raised an eyebrow when he asked for two doubles, but it seemed like the best idea at the time. He sits at the end of it, wincing when he immediately starts to slip towards the edge of the polyester bedspread.

“You look like such a snob right now,” Jenny informs him as she stands from the bed — TV still on — and starts to dig through her own bag for her pyjamas. “Missing your thousand thread count sheets?”

“Whereas you’re perfectly comfortable,” Rupert says dryly, gingerly peeling the coverlet back. He’d claimed the bed closest to the door on instinct; he isn’t sure whether Jenny noticed or not.

“That sounds like a comment you won’t want to try and explain,” Jenny comments, punctuated with a mild eyebrow raise. Rupert huffs out an impatient breath.

“It’s no such thing,” he responds, exasperated. “I merely meant that your sheets are a higher thread count than mine. If anyone’s a snob about bedding, it’s you.”

It’s one of the few things she’s really, genuinely picky about; it took him an embarrassingly long time to realize how deliberately easygoing she is about her preferences for nearly everything. Even when she picks — used to pick — fights about what to have for dinner, or where to go, it was more for the act of fighting than because she cared deeply about the outcome.

The things she really wants are harder to read.

Jenny stares at him a moment, pyjamas clutched to her chest, a look on her face as though she wants to speak. She turns towards the bathroom and says nothing, in the end.

The door closes behind her very quietly.

In his dreams everything is red.

The lights, the walls. The bed. The blood so thick he can smell it, metallic and cloying, making it nearly impossible to breathe. He’s lived a life of violence; he’s no stranger to blood. Still. He’s never seen anything like this. Never seen anything like —

“ — rt? Rupert!”

He shakes awake, gasping on nothing, and for a dizzying few seconds he can still smell the blood.

“Rupert?”

“Sorry,” he wheezes, pushing himself up on one elbow to reach for the bottle of water he left by the side of the bed. “Sorry, I must have been — did I wake you up?”

“I wasn’t really sleeping,” Jenny says evasively. She clears her throat, a quiet little half-cough. “Is everything — are you okay?”

“Fine,” Rupert answers automatically, taking another slow sip of water. He isn’t, actually — his whole body feels clammy and strange, as though he’s coming back from a fever that just broke. He’s sweat through the undershirt he wore to bed.

“Okay,” Jenny says slowly, drawing the word out longer than strictly necessary. “You wanna try that one again, or — ?”

“I will be fine,” Rupert corrects, only to be met with a skeptical snort from the other side of the room.

“It sounded pretty bad.” Jenny’s voice is quieter, this time. More sincere. She must be really worried — he’d have thought she would just let it go. He can’t imagine she’s interested in digging into Rupert’s emotional state at the moment; she’s got quite enough problems of her own.

“You should sleep,” he murmurs, flipping the pillow over so he can press his face back into it. It won’t make a difference, he knows; the way his heart’s still racing, he can’t imagine he’ll be falling back asleep any time soon. “You need rest,” he insists anyway, the words muffled by the scratchy fabric of the pillowcase, knowing he’s being a hypocrite and not really finding it in himself to care. He’s not the one who needs it, anyway. Jenny’s the one who ought to be taking care of herself.

A few long minutes pass like that, silence marred only the ticking of the old-fashioned clock next to Jenny’s bed and the sound of their own breathing.

“Rupert,” Jenny whispers, finally, evidently giving up on the attempt. “Are you listening?”

He hums an affirmative, unearthing his face from the — probably filthy — pillowcase and flopping onto his back instead.

“I want to tell you something,” Jenny says, then. “I don’t want you to say anything, okay? Just listen.”

Rupert hums again, waiting. In the dark everything feels strange, surreal. Part of him almost wonders if he’s still dreaming.

He hopes not. What he saw in his dreams — he hopes he never has to see anything like that again.

He knows he probably will.

“I know I lied to you,” Jenny murmurs hesitantly, voice hushed. “And you don’t — I know maybe you can never forgive me, and that’s fine. That’s how it is. But I need you to know that it wasn’t to take advantage of you, or to hurt you, or — or use you.”

“Jenny,” Rupert says quietly, pained. He’s suddenly feeling much more awake.

“Please just let me get this out,” Jenny begs, and he wishes he could see her face. “Okay? I can say it now because it doesn’t matter anymore. No one ever loved Janna, not for — not for herself. But I thought maybe — maybe you were starting to love Jenny. That’s all it was. That’s why I couldn’t tell you.”

There’s this horrible pressure on Rupert’s chest, almost as though he’s being smothered. As though Jenny’s pressing her hand against his mouth and nose and holding it there.

“Are they really so different?” he croaks out, finally. “Jenny and, and — Janna.”

“I don’t know,” she answers. She’s started to cry, silently; he can hear it in her voice. He’s never heard her sound like this before. He doesn’t know if he can stand it. “I thought so, but now — I don’t know.”

“Jenny,” Rupert says, cringing at the desperation in his voice. He lurches to his feet, awkward and unsteady in the dark, wincing at the way his t-shirt clings to his skin. He smells like fear and sweat, he’s sure, but he feels way towards her bed anyway, patting at the bedspread when he finds it to make sure he’s not about to climb directly on top of her. She lets out a startled sound when his hand catches her — well, he isn’t actually sure what part of her, given that he can’t really see anything. An elbow, maybe.

“What are you doing?” Jenny whispers, voice clogged, but Rupert only shushes her as he fumbles his way awkwardly under the covers, reaching for her in the dark. She shifts towards him without any of the protests he was expecting, fingers curling automatically into the fabric of his still-damp undershirt. He waits, but she doesn’t say anything about the state of it.

“You need to sleep,” he says quietly. “You’re going to be tired in the morning.”

“You’re one to talk,” Jenny mumbles immediately, contrary as ever.

She’s stripped down to a camisole to sleep; he runs his fingers over her bare shoulder, then her neck, feeling her shiver in response. He gets a little braver, then: smoothing his hand through her hair, loosely holding her head against his shoulder. He doesn’t know what any of this means. He doesn’t want to stop.

Jenny isn’t asking him to stop.

“Do you need the TV on?” The thought occurs to Rupert suddenly, their earlier conversation coming to his mind. Jenny hums a wordless question, obviously not following. “For the sound,” he clarifies. “You said you can’t sleep in the silence.”

“It’s not silent,” Jenny murmurs, shaking her head against his chest. “I can hear you just fine.”

In the morning she seems just as exhausted as she was the previous day; Rupert had asked the woman at the front desk for a wake-up call, but while he wakes to the sound of the phone ringing Jenny doesn’t so much as move, not even when Rupert awkwardly shifts her off of him to answer it. She simply rolls to her other side and continues sleeping, not bothered by the racket in the slightest.

“Jenny,” he murmurs, one hand on her bare shoulder. She frowns in her sleep, murmuring something he can’t quite catch. Her hair’s grown out since he met her; it’s tangled in a dark mess around her head. She’s curled up so tightly that her head barely even touches the pillow. “Jenny.”

Her eyes open slowly, reluctantly. In the dim morning light she looks pale.

“Five more minutes,” she slurs, draping one arm over her eyes. Rupert takes pity on her and lets her rest while he gets ready, but when he comes back from the bathroom she isn’t any closer to getting up than she was when he left.

“Jenny,” he says again. He reaches for her hands, just as he did the morning before, tugging gently until she’s sitting upright, not letting go until he’s got her on her feet. “I’m terribly sorry, but if we want to make good time we do need to — ”

“Get going,” Jenny finishes, rubbing clumsily at her eyes. She offers him a sleepy smile.

“If we hurry we can stop for breakfast,” Rupert tries to summon a convincing level of enthusiasm. “Compliments of the hotel.”

“Great,” Jenny says around a yawn, stumbling towards the bathroom. “Stale muffins and rubber eggs.”

“Breakfast of champions,” Rupert agrees.

He hears her laugh through the bathroom door; it feels like a reward.

They stop at a rest stop around lunchtime; for all her insistence that she hasn’t experienced any physical changes Jenny’s more restless than he thinks she would be normally, obviously struggling to get comfortable as they drive.

Rupert, for his part, has only old age to blame; he winces as he stands, half-heartedly attempting a stretch before he hurries over to close Jenny’s door behind her.

“Thanks,” she says dryly, in a tone that clearly communicates that she thinks the action was unnecessary. Rupert looks straight ahead and pretends not to have heard her, a hand hovering at her back as he pushes open the door.

Inside it’s as ghastly as any American roadside establishment; Rupert resigns himself to eating whatever fried monstrosity Jenny will no doubt force upon him as he moves reluctantly towards the drink refrigerators. He gets two bottles of water and one of those iced teas he sees Jenny drinking sometimes, hoping to avoid an argument about whether it’s acceptable for a pregnant woman to be drinking Mountain Dew — as far as he’s concerned, it isn’t acceptable for anyone to be drinking Mountain Dew, but Jenny has, thus far, refused to listen to reason.

“You said you were getting lunch,” he says blankly, when he catches up with her again only to find her holding a bar of Snickers in one hand and nothing in the other.

“Sure,” Jenny says, holding up the chocolate bar without any other explanation, as though it should speak for itself. “Is that iced tea?”

“Yes,” Rupert says stiffly, stepping back out of her reach when she makes a grab for it, reaching to take the Snickers from her instead. “I’ll get it, Jenny, honestly — isn’t there anything else? A, a sandwich, or a fruit cup, or — something?”

“I hate it when the bread gets soggy, you know that,” Jenny dismisses the sandwich idea immediately, wrinkling her nose. Rupert didn’t know that, actually, but he files it away for — well. He guesses he probably won’t need to remember it very far into the future. He’ll try anyway. “And didn’t you say fruit cups are all sugar?”

Rupert holds up the Snickers bar, pinched between his thumb and his forefinger, dangling it in the space between them with a raised eyebrow.

“And this isn’t?”

“Yeah, but I actually want to eat that,” Jenny says impatiently. “Fruit cups are so — wet.”

“Alright,” Rupert sighs exasperatedly, wishing he had a hand free to press his fingers to the bridge of his nose, maybe alleviate some of the pressure building in his skull. He used to be better at this, he thinks, or at least he could put on a good show. Before Buffy entered his life, constantly wanting to eat Sour Patch Kids and M&Ms and, god forbid, Funyuns in his library, wheedling and begging until Rupert inevitably gives in. “Would you at least get a — a granola bar? Some raisins, even, that would be — ”

Jenny huffs out an irritated breath, reaching down to snatch a Nature’s Valley bar from the display by her feet — and of course she picked that one, there will be crumbs in every crevice of that car for weeks — and handing it to him with her eyebrows raised.

“Happy?”

“Quite,” Rupert breathes out tightly, making his way to the register and dumping his armful of items unceremoniously onto the counter.

“Wait,” Jenny says, frowning, taking in the rather meager pile. “What are you gonna eat?”

Oh. He hadn’t quite — he hadn’t bothered to think about it all, actually. He just assumed she’d pick out something horrible to torment him with and left it entirely in her hands.

“He’ll have a hot dog,” Jenny informs the attendant, which — of course. That’ll do the job quite nicely. “And a coffee.”

“Jenny, I don’t even drink — ”

“I just wanna be able to smell it,” Jenny begs, tugging on his arm. “C’mon. You don’t even have to drink it. Just leave it open in the car.”

“Well,” Rupert says awkwardly, uncomfortable at her proximity and equally uncomfortably aware of how much a fool that makes him. She slept half on top of him the night before, and in the morning her camisole had ridden halfway up her stomach. There’s no reason for him to get flustered by her fingers on his arm; he’s wearing a jacket, for god’s sake. There are two full layers of fabric between them. “Alright then,” he agrees. The attendant, who’s been watching the entire exchange with impatiently raised eyebrows, nods her agreement and starts to scan. She has impressively — and impractically — long nails, painted neon green to match her eyeshadow. Her nametag reads Anne-Marie.

Jenny beams up at Rupert, giving his arm one last squeeze, and he forgets about Anne-Marie entirely until she clears her throat, nodding her head towards the total on the machine.

“Cash or credit?”

At a picnic table outside the building, Rupert squeezes out exactly one packet of ketchup and one packet of mustard onto the hot dog Jenny’s procured him, and then he heaves out a sigh and just stares at it, trying to muster the willpower to take a bite.

“It’s not gonna bite you back,” Jenny comments, amused, taking a bite of her Snickers bar. “You’ll survive, I promise. Although,” she pauses mid-chew, wrinkling her nose. “You ever smell a hot dog and just get really, really aware that you’re smelling cooked flesh?”

“Yes, thank you, Jenny,” Rupert says loudly, before she can add anything to that horrifying train of thought. He didn’t really need to intervene, he suspects: she looks like she regrets saying anything, setting her Snickers bar down gingerly on the table and reaching for the iced tea instead. Rupert copies her, nudging the hot dog far enough down the table to keep the smell out of range, and twists open his water bottle instead.

Jenny offers him the granola bar in silence, still clutching the bottle of iced tea in her free hand. Rupert hesitates, unwilling to deprive her of the only source of — well. Nutrition isn’t the word, exactly. But there’s some fibre in there, surely, at least.

Jenny takes another queasy sip of iced tea. Rupert sighs and gives in, unwrapping the bar and taking a bite only to be showered immediately with crumbs. He brushes ineffectively at his shirt with his free hand, scowling.

When he meets her eye across the table Jenny’s fighting a smile.

“Raisins would have perhaps been more dignified,” Rupert says dryly.

“Yeah, but then you’d be hungry again in about five minutes.”

“Whereas this will keep me satisfied until dinner, I’m sure.”

Jenny laughs, and there’s that feeling again: like he’s won something. A prize he isn’t supposed to be working towards anymore. A prize he wasn’t even supposed to want in the first place.

“I guess I should get used to this,” Jenny says after a moment, squinting into the distance.

“Get used to what?” Rupert asks, taking another graceless bite of his granola bar. He holds his hand under his mouth to catch the crumbs this time; it doesn’t seem to make very much difference.

“Like I don’t belong in my own body,” Jenny says, a forced lightness in her voice. “And I’ve heard the heartburn is killer, so I’ve got that to look forward to, too.”

He winces.

“It’s kind of like demonic possession, when you think about it,” Jenny continues.

Rupert’s eyes widen in alarm.

“I should think not,” he protests, folding the granola bar wrapper and leaning across the table towards her, suddenly concerned. “You’ll have your consciousness, for one thing — ”

“My consciousness was just fine when that thing was inside me, and you know it,” Jenny snaps. “It was my body that I couldn’t control.”

Rupert swallows hard, feeling ill.

“If you don’t want — ”

But Jenny sighs and shakes her head, holding a hand up for him to stop.

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” she says, which doesn’t actually make him feel any better, nor does her follow-up remark. “I do want to do this. I’m a modern woman, Rupert. If I didn’t want to be pregnant I would have just gotten an abortion and never told anyone about it.”

She covers her face with her hands and breathes. Rupert holds himself very still and waits.

For what, he couldn’t say.

“Well, maybe my therapist,” she amends, finally, drawing her hands back from her face. “In about twenty years, when I finally work up the courage to get one.”

“That’s — ” Rupert really doesn’t know where to start. “I don’t understand why — ”

Even if he couldn’t admit it at first, there’s always been an ease to his interactions with Jenny. A sense that no matter how flustered or tongue-tied he became, she would try to push past it anyway. Even when they were arguing — especially when they were arguing. He resented her for it, the way she never left him alone, even as he turned towards her attention every time.

But that’s just one more thing that’s been ruined, and now when Jenny looks at him he misses that certainty: the knowledge that she would pick him up and keep the conversation going, no matter how badly he stumbled.

“I wouldn’t have guessed that a child would be something you’d want,” he manages, finally, with Jenny staring blankly at him the whole time.

“Why not?”

Rupert stares at her, at a loss for how to describe it. How he’d been mired in the pit of his responsibilities, but she never seemed tied down by anything at all. Which was a lie, he knows now, but he still can’t quite reconcile it. He still can’t quite understand how the parts of her fit together.

“It’s not — I don’t mean it in a bad way,” he forces out. “It just isn’t how I saw you, I suppose. You didn’t seem the type for, you know. Serious things. Commitments.”

She hadn’t even wanted to spend the night, that first time: only his appeal to her common sense, pointing out the inherent risk posed by walking to one’s car alone at two in the morning in Sunnydale, had convinced her to stay. Even then she’d been visibly uncomfortable, lying next to him with her whole body rigid with tension, waiting for the sun to rise so she could make her escape.

But the next day at the school she’d greeted him as though nothing had happened, smiling and flirting and suggesting another date, and he hadn’t known what to do, other than agree.

Jenny flinches at the reminder; he regrets opening his mouth at all.

“Never mind,” he says hastily. “I shouldn’t have — never mind.”

Jenny looks away, jaw tight, fingers tapping against the wood of the picnic table. She ought to be careful, Rupert thinks vaguely. The wood’s unfinished; she’ll get a splinter if she keeps doing that.

“I’m not doubting you,” he tries, searching wildly for something that’ll make him seem less of an enormous ass. “If that’s what it sounded like, I apologize. I’m simply surprised. I shouldn’t have even brought it up.”

“It’s fine,” Jenny says, voice distant, the expression on her face clearly communicating the opposite.

“It’s not,” he counters softly.

“My whole life was one big commitment,” she says, then. “I wasn’t supposed to leave any room for anything else. But I didn’t want — when I met you, I was pretending to be someone else. Someone free. It was what I thought I wanted, but it wasn’t who I was.”

That doesn’t actually make him feel any better — quite the opposite.

“Jenny,” he starts. “I can’t — I’m sorry, but I don’t quite understand what you mean.”

Jenny shrugs.

“The woman I was pretending to be — she would never have wanted the things I want with you. Can you understand that, at least?”

“I think — I think I might, yes,” Rupert stutters, trying to get his mind around the enormity of what she’s implying.

“So much for women’s lib,” she says, after a few seconds of quiet. “Jeez. Please don’t tell anyone I said that, okay?”

“I’m afraid you’ve lost me again,” Rupert confesses, but Jenny only smiles humourlessly, shaking her head.

“Don’t worry about it.”

There’s a family in the parking lot: a man and woman with their teenage son and young daughter, the two adults poring over a map while the boy messes around with a Polaroid camera, taking pictures of his sister doing cartwheels in the scrubby grass.

“Excuse me,” Jenny says, when they’ve dumped their trash and started back for the car, already moving toward them before Rupert can stop her. When they look up she smiles at them, sunny and carefree, one hand reaching behind her to catch Rupert’s elbow and drag him closer. “Excuse me, yeah — Hi. I’m so sorry to impose, but would you mind taking a picture of us together?”

Rupert stares down at her, slack-jawed.

“It’s our first road trip,” Jenny explains to the woman, who’s looking at the two of them with a charmed sort of expression that makes Rupert quite uncomfortable. He feels like an imposter, irritated at Jenny for lying, when he was just starting to believe that she wouldn’t — “I don’t have any nice pictures of us together,” Jenny continues, and Rupert realizes, abruptly, that she isn’t lying at all. “I want to be able to remember, you know?”

Her fingers are digging into his arm, even if her friendly smile hasn’t wavered.

“Yes,” Rupert agrees, free hand coming up to rest over hers, squeezing gently. He turns toward the woman. “Would you?”

“Oh, of course,” she says immediately, one hand resting over her heart. “Toby, hon, get over here, would you? And bring the camera?”

“Do you mind taking two?” Rupert asks, as the woman — Deb, apparently — positions them so the gas pumps won’t show in the photo. “It’s, ah — that is. We’re — ”

“It’s a long distance thing,” Jenny fills in, one arm around Rupert’s waist, eyes on their feet as she tries to arrange them into a pose that looks natural. She looks up at him, one hand shielding her eyes as she squints against the sun. “So we’ll each need a copy.”

“We can pay you back for the film,” Rupert hastens to add. He’s still got a grip on Jenny’s hand.

“Oh, nonsense, sweetheart,” Deb says, motioning again for her son to come closer. His ears are an embarrassed red as he lets his mother muscle him in front of where Jenny and Rupert are standing. “Such a good-looking couple,” she adds, almost to herself, hand still on her chest. “Don’t you think?”

She turns toward her husband, a tall, mustachioed figure, and evidently a man of few words: he nods stoically at the question, which is enough for Deb. She nods back, with significantly more energy, as though the matter’s been decided.

“Sorry,” Jenny murmurs, soft enough so no one but Rupert can hear. He looks down to find her hesitant to meet his gaze, finally offering him a half-hearted smile.

“You’re alright,” Rupert responds, finding that he does mean it. He doesn’t have any pictures of her; he wouldn’t have thought to ask, but — he is grateful. It seems impossible that he could forget what she looks like when she’s this close, smiling up at him, but with time all memories fade. “I’m — ”

The snap of the camera startles both of them; they look up together to find Toby wincing apologetically.

“Sorry,” he mutters. “I was trying to check the light.”

“Quite alright,” Rupert assures him, still feeling a little dazed. He’d forgotten they had an audience.

“I’ll take two real ones, if you’re ready?”

Jenny makes small talk with Deb while they wait for the pictures to develop; Rupert plays the part of the stoic partner, standing next to Deb’s husband in slightly-uncomfortable silence.

“Rupert,” he offers after a few minutes, belatedly realizing that he never said.

“Jeb,” the man answers, holding out a calloused hand for Rupert to shake.

“Deb and Jeb,” Rupert repeats incredulously without thinking, wincing at himself as soon as he’s said it. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to — ”

“Nah,” Jeb says, his severe expression melting into an easy grin. “Near twenty years, and the jokes still aren’t anywhere close to finished.”

Twenty years. Rupert glances over to Jenny without meaning to. She’s still talking to Deb about homeschooling; her arms are protectively crossed over her chest, but the smile on her face seems genuine enough. In twenty years she’ll still be beautiful, Rupert thinks. Smile lines on her face, dyeing her hair to cover greys. Still beautiful.

When he tries to imagine his own future he draws a blank.

“Pictures are done,” the younger girl announces from where she’s been watching them with hawklike interest, squatted down in the scrubby grass with the pictures all spread out in front of her. She reaches out to pluck three from the spread, handing them to Jenny with a confidence her older brother doesn’t share.

“Well, isn’t that just darling,” Deb says, leaning over Jenny’s shoulder to check.

Jenny motions for Rupert to come closer, turning the photos for him to see.

The first two are — ordinary, he supposes. His arm around Jenny’s shoulder, her hand reached up to clasp his. She looks beautiful, of course. He looks like himself. But it’s the third one, the one Toby hadn’t meant to take, that catches his eye. Jenny’s beaming up at him, warm and playful, and there’s a sort of befuddled smile on his face that he doesn’t quite recognize. He looks happy, he thinks dimly. They both look happy.

“Can I,” he starts, and then hesitates. She should have it, if she wants. He shouldn’t —

But Jenny’s already pushing the photo into his hand, one of the posed ones along with it.

“You take it,” is all she says when he looks at her, startled; he searches her face for an explanation, but she looks away before he can find one.

The little girl — Rupert never did catch her name — waves goodbye from next to the family’s minivan as they walk away, the rest of the photos in one hand and a mysteriously procured stick in the other. Rupert’s eyes linger on her skinny, scabbed knees, on the tangle of her fine yellow hair, and finds himself imagining it, for the first time since Jenny told him. Their child won’t be fair like this girl, Rupert imagines. Jenny’s hair is so dark; surely they’ll inherit more from her side than his. But will they be so confident, so adventurous, with knobbly knees and big front teeth? Or more like Toby, quiet and reserved?

“What were you like?” he asks, once they’re both buckled in the car, Jenny having insisted on taking the driver’s seat until dinner. “As a child, I mean. Do you have, ah — photographs, or — ?”

Jenny chews at her bottom lip. She’s giving the highway on-ramp more attention than it really requires, although Rupert supposes he can’t complain: she has the opposite problem, usually.

“I don’t know,” she says, finally. “I was normal, I guess. Nothing special.”

“That can’t possibly be true.”

The words come so naturally that at first he can’t understand why she glances over at him, a strange expression on her face.

“I might have pictures,” she says reluctantly, after another long pause. “I could scan some. If you really want to see.”

Suddenly it feels as though he’s pushed rather too far, but if he disagrees at this point he’ll no doubt insult her, and. Well. He does want to see them, he’s somewhat surprised to realize. He wants to see them quite badly.

“Well?” Jenny asks after another minute of silence, both eyebrows raised. “Aren’t you gonna offer, too?”

“Oh.” Rupert pauses, thrown. Does he have any childhood photographs? They exist, surely. Perhaps in some of the boxes he kept in storage. “I’ll look, as well,” he promises, with perhaps undue gravity. “My mother’s family can send them here, possibly, if I haven’t got any here.”

“You’re close?”

“Well, no,” Rupert admits, a little abashed. “But they won’t mind the request, I don’t think.”

“I can’t imagine.”

“How do you mean?”

“My uncle minds every request,” Jenny says after another pause, tapping her fingernail against the steering wheel. “It’s always this whole … production, you know? And then in the end it never even makes any difference. I don’t get what I want, and I feel guilty for even asking, and everything’s exactly the same except worse, because now he’s angry at me.”

Rupert frowns. It’s true that his own childhood was less than idyllic, but it seems unfair that someone as warm and lovely as Jenny — Janna, he supposes, although it still doesn’t seem right to think of her with that name — could be raised with so little affection.

“I always thought if I just tried hard enough, maybe — ” She shakes her head. “Stupid, right?”

“Of course not.”

Jenny doesn’t look as though she believes him.

“I really wanted him to be wrong,” she says. “About Angel.”

“Your, ah — your uncle?”

Jenny nods.

“I grew up hearing about the horrible things Angel — Angelus — had done, all the horror my people had suffered, and I had — I had no context, you know? That was the sum total of my knowledge of the supernatural, of the occult, and I had no one else to tell me any different. But I started researching myself when I got older, because I wanted — I wanted to believe that it wasn’t all just horror. And then I came to Sunnydale, and I met — I met you and the kids, and I met Angel, and I thought. Maybe my uncle really was wrong, about everything. He always told me about a monster, but Angel saved my life. I was so relieved he might be wrong.”

“But he wasn’t,” Rupert says cautiously. “In the end.”

“He told me a lot of things. He told me I’d never amount to anything, that I couldn’t do anything right. He told me I could never trust anyone outside the family.” Jenny’s voice is very deliberately even, something almost accusing in her dark gaze. “That he was the only one looking out for me. That anyone I met would betray me if I put my trust in them, because in the end there’s nothing stronger than blood. Was he wrong about that, too?”

Rupert looks away.

“I can’t — that is — ” He pauses. Swallows. All that anger he felt towards Jenny, all that betrayal — it felt so important, at the time, but with her right here, being so honest with him — he doesn’t know what to think. She wouldn’t tell him these things if she were staying, he knows. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t true. “Yes,” he decides, as firmly as he can. “Yes. He was.”

“I really do want to believe that.”

“Jenny….”

He should never have come, Rupert thinks dimly. He should have just stayed in Sunnydale. He should have lied to the children, told them he had no idea where their computer science teacher went. He should have washed his hands of the whole thing.

But he knows he couldn’t have. The very thought of it turns his stomach, not only because he would be proving her uncle right. He likes to think he grew into a responsible man; he wasn’t one, naturally, but he spent the past twenty or so years trying.

He’s been a fool, of course, to give himself so much credit. A responsible man wouldn’t leave Jenny to fend for herself.

But a responsible man couldn’t leave Buffy alone, either. They’d send another Watcher, sure, but how could he trust anyone they chose? Buffy’s such a unique case.

“This isn’t permanent,” he hears himself say, knowing the words to be useless. “I won’t always — it’ll be different, some day.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Jenny warns, and she’s right. He knows she’s right.

He can’t be a father while he’s Buffy’s Watcher, and he’ll be her Watcher until one of them is dead.

“I wanted a pet bear,” Jenny says suddenly, and it’s such an unexpected turn that Rupert can only stare at her, at a loss. “When I was a kid,” she clarifies. “You asked what I was like. I had this — imaginary friend, I guess. A big brown bear. I used to talk to him. I’d forgotten until just now.”

Rupert fights a smile, imagining it, although the idea is as sweet as it is sad.

“Did he have a name?”

Jenny spends a few seconds visibly deciding whether to lie about it, chewing at her bottom lip, before finally giving in and answering.

“John,” she says, cutting a glance over towards Rupert, as though daring him to tease her for it. “I wasn’t a very creative kid.”

“I don’t know,” Rupert says quietly, as kindly as he thinks Jenny’ll let him get away with. “An imaginary bear is pretty creative. I imagine you were quite a special little girl.”

But Jenny only laughs, dark and miserable.

“I told you,” she says. “There wasn’t anything special about me.”

A miserable silence settles in the car, after that; there doesn’t really seem to be much left for either of them to say.

Jenny reads him the directions for her friend’s address quietly; he pulls up in front of a small white house outside the city with a few hours to spare before sunset.

“We’re sharing for now, but Maggie said there’s a basement apartment,” Jenny tells him; she’s nervous, he thinks, and looking for any excuse to speak. “She said tenants come and go a lot, so if I like the area I might be able to move in.”

“It seems nice,” Rupert offers, and finds he does mean it sincerely. He doesn’t know about Jenny — doesn’t know anything about where she’s from, or where she grew up, now that he’s thinking about it — but the weather here suits him better than sunny California. It’ll suit her too, he thinks. All those leather jackets. “Will you — are you concerned about finding work?”

He should have asked before, probably, but Jenny doesn’t seem annoyed. She shrugs as she lets herself out of the car.

“I can do freelance stuff,” she says, huffing in quiet exasperation as he rushes around to hold her door. “I’ll miss teaching, but maybe — when the kid’s a little older, I guess, or I can try and find daycare. I’ll figure something out.”

Rupert’s stomach cramps uncomfortably. He ignores it.

“Shall we, ah. Shall we start with the boxes, then?”

Jenny’s friend isn’t home; she’s left a key under the doormat and a letter stuck to the fridge. Jenny reads it silently, then folds it very carefully and tucks it into her back pocket.

“Spare room’s ready for me,” she says with a tight smile, directing Rupert towards the open door just before the bathroom. The apartment’s decor is similar to Jenny’s, dark colours and far too much purple for Rupert’s taste, but the spare room is a little brighter: lace curtains flutter over the window, and the walls are painted a bright seafoam green. Rupert quite likes it, but Jenny’s nose wrinkles as she takes it in.

“All my stuff’s gonna clash,” she says, almost to herself, and then she shakes her head and pastes on a terribly fake smile. “Oh, well. It’s just temporary, right? Maybe Maggie will let me paint it.”

“Maybe,” Rupert agrees, nudging a box into the corner with his foot.

It takes even less time to unload the car than it had to pack it; Rupert finds himself wishing, stupidly, that he could stretch it out somehow, that he could find an excuse to linger for just a few hours more.

It’s ridiculous. He has a flight to catch.

“Jenny,” he says. They’ve got all the boxes in her room and now they’re standing in front of the lace curtains Jenny obviously hates, just looking at each other. He stalls, his mind gone horribly blank.

He’s been trying to think of a way to say this to her all weekend, but the timing has never seemed right, or maybe it’s just that he’s too much of a coward. Or very possibly both.

He considered simply leaving the box with her things, perhaps writing a note to go with it, but the time has passed for note-writing and it’d feel cheap, anyway, just leaving her without saying it in person.

And Jenny’s still just looking at him, not with any of that coldness from earlier in the day but with honest confusion. Which is understandable, given that all he’s managed is some ineffectual stuttering.

“This is for you,” he manages, finally, digging into his bag to pull out the box he’d stored carefully at the bottom, wrapped in an extra undershirt to keep it safe. “It’s — ah. That is. I wanted — ”

It was my mother’s feels too heavy, somehow. A burden Jenny may not want to accept.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Jenny says warily, but she accepts it when he hands it over. His hands reach for his glasses as soon as they’re free, rubbing uselessly at the lenses so he won’t have to look at her face when she opens the box. “What is — Rupert.”

“Please don’t argue,” he blurts out without thinking. “Just — I want you to keep it. For the — the baby, or if it’s, well, it could be a boy, you know, or even if it’s a girl she might not want it, some girls don’t — anyway. Then it would be for — for you. Please.”

He finishes his little speech uncomfortably, the words unimpressive and poorly delivered, and then he can’t simply stand there with his glasses in his hand, staring at Jenny’s blurred-out shape, as much as the idea does appeal, so he slides them back on reluctantly, only to find —

“Jenny.”

His voice comes out low and soft, softer than he even knew himself capable.

She’s shaking her head, silently, one hand pressed to her mouth.

“I can’t take this,” she whispers, and he can see her hand trembling as she snaps the box shut.

“Who else?” Rupert asks quietly.

“I don’t know!” Jenny laughs wetly, sounding more than a little hysterical. “Maybe you’ll meet someone in Sunnydale! It happened once, right? It could happen again. And maybe the next woman you meet won’t lie to you. Maybe she won’t break your — ”

She clamps her mouth shut, eyes widening as she realizes what she’s just said.

“Never mind,” she says hastily. “Forget I said anything, just — ”

She tries to hand the box back, but he pushes it towards her, gently, refusing to accept it.

“You didn’t break my heart,” he tells her, then, finally sure of what he needs to say. “Jenny. You — you hurt me, yes. And the situation with, with Buffy, it was — is less than ideal. But it wasn’t — I didn’t think it was the end. I hoped it wasn’t the end. I just thought — I thought there would be more time.”

He watches, heart sinking, as Jenny’s face crumples.

“God,” she chokes out miserably. “I don’t want — ”

He hands her another handkerchief, silent, unable to do anything but watch as she awkwardly tries to dab her face clean.

“I’m not going to meet someone else,” he says, finally, when it’s clear she’s not going to be able to finish her sentence. “There won’t be anyone else after you.”

It’s the truth, miserable as it sounds. She came as such a surprise: he never thought there would be anyone at all.

“You can’t just say things like that!” Jenny snaps. “You can’t — ”

She sounds exasperated, but she’s still crying, just a little bit, and if Rupert were a better man he’d offer to give it all up and stay with her.

But Buffy’s waiting for him back in Sunnydale. He can’t stay, isn’t sure she’d even let him if he could.

“Jenny.” He hopes he never forgets how she looks at him when he says her name. “The box is for you. I’ll — I’ll send for the rest, too. The photos, and — there’s a baby spoon, I think. My mother had it engraved. It’s for you and, and — the baby. But they’re only — they’re just objects, that’s all. I wish I could — you deserve more.”

His mother’s jewelry: a string of pearls, a pretty flower brooch. A thin gold watch, battery long since drained. Her engagement ring, studded with two tiny diamonds, a sapphire in between. Rupert has never been a particularly sentimental man; he kept them safe as a historian more than a son. They’re only objects, and he doesn’t even remember her well enough to associate them with any memories. They keep a poor record of a dead woman’s life. He’d rather have had her letters, or her diary — something more informative, something he could read and understand — but those his father kept. Destroyed, possibly. Rupert never asked.

None of the jewelry is Jenny’s taste, he doesn’t think, all of it long since gone out of fashion, but maybe — if the baby’s a girl, like Jenny predicted, maybe —

Maybe.

“Fine,” Jenny says quietly, carefully setting the box on top of her suitcase. The action seems to remind her of something; she makes a soft sound and zips open the outside pocket, digging out a padded envelope and handing it to him. “For Willow,” she says, not quite meeting his eye. “I graded her last project. Tell her — I don’t know. Something that makes me sound like less of a coward.”

“You aren’t a coward.”

He tucks the envelope into his jacket pocket, not taking his eyes off her the whole time. Watches the muscle in her jaw flex as she clenches her jaw, arms crossed combatively — no, protectively — in front of her chest.

“Whatever,” she says finally. “We should probably go, if you want to make your flight.”

“I’ll take a taxi,” Rupert says. If she drives him to the airport he’ll never get out of the car.

Jenny sinks her teeth into her lower lip, hard.

“Right,” she says, with a jerky nod of her head. “Right, I guess you should just — I’ll call.”

“Yes, please do,” Rupert says, and then for ten, fifteen, thirty seconds, they’re simply stood there, staring at each other.

He’s never been any good at things like this. He never knows the right thing to say.

Perhaps he doesn’t have to say anything at all. He watches, as though removed from his own body, as his hand comes up to cup Jenny’s face. He’s hardly even breathing as he strokes his thumb across her lip, right where she’d dug her teeth in.

When he kisses her she’s already leaning towards him, swaying up on her toes, one hand braced on his chest. He tries to memorize everything: the fall of her hair, the silver studs in her ears. She’s wearing three rings on her right hand and none on her left, and a necklace that’s little more than a black string around her throat.

She smells like that cheap perfume she loves so much, the one he once heard her tell Willow she picks up in bulk at the mall.

“Taxi,” he murmurs.

“Yeah,” she agrees.

She’s the one to pull back, in the end. Her eyes are too bright when she smiles.

He stands in her seafoam green bedroom and listens to her dial the cab company from the living room and watches, transfixed, as her new lace curtains flutter in the breeze.

He’s thirty minutes early for his flight.

Selected Contents of the Personal Safe of Rupert E. Giles, Watcher:

1. An ultrasound in an unmarked brown paper envelope. Labeled 3 months.

2. A colour photograph of a young girl standing in front of a school. Her hair is tied back with a red ribbon, and she’s facing the camera with an uncertain smile. Her clothes look secondhand. The corner of the photo is dark, as though the lens was partially covered with a finger. Labeled Jenny, 1976 (?).

3. A polaroid of a man and a woman in front of a picnic bench. The man is looking down at the woman, expression slightly lost, yet fond. The woman is smiling up at him, one hand resting on his arm. Labeled Rest stop, Oregon, 1998.

4. A notarized copy of Rupert E. Giles’ personal will, leaving the majority of his estate split between his daughter, Stella Elizabeth Giles, and one Jenny Calendar (relation undefined). Some exceptions are made, including a sizable list of weapons left to one Buffy Anne Summers, a pocket watch to one Xander Harris, as well as a list of several books requested to be given to one Willow Rosenberg. It is noted that the copy is quite recent, as the will appears to be updated fairly regularly.

5. Several sheets of paper, various sizes, held together with a paperclip, containing various abstract smears of colour. Medium: finger paint. Unlabeled.

Selected Contents From the Locked Bookcase of Jenny Calendar, Freelance Online Curse Specialist*:

1. A sterling silver spoon and baby cup, both bearing the same engraving. R.E.G, 1954.

2. A second baby cup, significantly newer, with the engraving S.E.G, 1998.

3. A jewelry box, containing: a thin string of pearls, an enamel brooch, and a gold ring. The ring is simple, inset with two small diamonds and a single sapphire. All pieces are well-preserved, and appear to have been purchased some time between 1945 and 1950.

4. A small wooden figurine of a rabbit, probably hand carved, with a faded red ribbon around its neck. Origins unknown.

5. A single porcelain pepper shaker, shaped like a black cat with green glass eyes. The figurine is a British mass production; although well-preserved, its value appears to be sentimental, rather than material. As with the rabbit figurine, there are no visible clues as to the item’s origin, nor as to how it was acquired.

*for inquiries, please call 206-xxx-xxxx, or reach out via email at [redacted]