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Much to Jenny’s chagrin, she still couldn’t drive.
The fiercely stubborn, independent side of her brain was furious that she was sitting in the passenger seat of Rupert’s car for her first day back at work. She should’ve been able to drive herself. She should’ve been able to pull her sweater over her head without Rupert’s assistance. It was so unbelievably unfair that her arm was still all bandaged up, that she was coming back to work and couldn’t even pretend that something was normal.
The kids were sort of obsessed with the cast; Buffy and Xander had decorated every inch of it with little Sharpie doodles, and Jenny had given them (mostly Xander) strict guidelines as to what they could and couldn’t put on there. Jenny had thought it was cute, all of their signatures and doodles of werewolves, vampires, ghosts and demons…but that was before she was getting ready for work, trying to look as ready for normalcy as possible. The brightly coloured drawings and scrawled names only drew further attention to the fact that Jenny had been away from work for an entire month. They would only draw more attention to the fact that she’d been injured.
Although most of the bruising on her neck had started to fade, she knew that she would have to continue dipping into her collection of turtleneck sweaters for the better half of the semester. Her sprained ankle was hurting a lot less, too, after a not-insignificant amount of painkillers and plenty of couch-time.
It was just the other stuff that continued to affect her in ways that she was still unable to fully cover up. The jumping at little noises, the fear of the dark, the fear of being left alone…
This was where the other part of her brain kicked in – the part of her brain that appreciated Rupert’s company – more than she could possibly say. She didn’t say it often, only in the dead of night, whispered into the pitch black of their bedroom just before she drifted off to sleep.
Rupert was still living in Jenny’s apartment; his clothes were squeezed into her already overflowing chest of drawers, his toothbrush sat next to hers on the bathroom sink, and his cooking ingredients had been loaded into her usually sparsely stocked refrigerator.
He stroked her hair to keep her calm whilst she waited until she was too exhausted to force herself to stay awake. He never brought it up in the morning if she kept him awake half the night with her sleepy, unconscious mumbling.
The part of her that relished in Rupert’s company and support was in a constant battle with the part of her that yearned for a return to her usual state of independence; neither side of her was feeling totally comfortable with the idea of returning to Sunnydale High.
The car had stopped, parked in Rupert’s usual parking spot. It was the one closest to the back entrance of the library, the first place that Rupert went in the morning. Well, usually – Jenny had requested otherwise for her first day back. She wanted to go straight to her classroom to make sure that the supply teacher hadn’t wrecked her entire setup whilst she’d been away.
Well, no more than it had already been wrecked by Angelus.
Willow had delivered a lot of the more valuable items back to Jenny at the end of her first week out of work; her good pens, the framed picture of Jenny and her favourite cousin at a wedding, the necklace that she’d left in the drawer of her desk, her floppy disk…
They’d restored Angel’s soul not too long ago. He’d left town. That was the last she’d heard of it. She didn’t need to hear any more of it.
Despite her disinterest in knowing where and how Angel was these days, she still made her regular check-ins with Rupert to make sure that Buffy was holding up decently enough. She wasn’t, not really, but that was understandable – neither was Jenny, most days.
All in all, as a group, they were a bit of a mess.
And, to add to the mess, Jenny was still expected to attend a faculty meeting that morning – the universe really wouldn’t cut her a break.
“D’you think Snyder will let me sit this one out?” She asked as she climbed out of the car, balancing her already half-empty reusable cup of coffee on the roof as she rifled through her bag for the keys to her classroom. “I really don’t think that a faculty meeting will be good for the rehabilitation process.”
Rupert chuckled, reaching for Jenny’s cup. She was about to protest, to tell him that she could carry her own things, thank you very much.
But then she remembered.
With her keys in one hand, that kind of left her with…well, the broken one. Her hand was too constrained by her cast to hold the cup, too.
“I should think that Snyder will go a little easier on you this morning,” he suggested. “But then again, knowing Snyder…”
“He’ll make it extra gruelling, just to remind me how much I hate him?” Jenny offered, linking her arm with Rupert’s as they made their way across the parking lot.
She was doing a pretty solid job of ignoring the way that her heart seemed to rise into her throat the closer that they got to the front entrance.
Enter all ye who seek an emotionally taxing day at the office .
Sunnydale high smelled like it always did. The chemicals that the janitor used to polish the floors every evening, the paint that always smelled a little too fresh and tickled Jenny’s nostrils, something sort of musty that Jenny couldn’t place…it was all so familiar.
She used to come here every single day with little thought, and yet only one night stuck in her memory now. Every smell, every sound…all she could remember was her terror, her breathlessness as she ran through these very halls.
Her grip on Rupert’s arm tightened as they made their way to Jenny’s classroom, with thirty minutes to spare before the faculty meeting.
“Are you alright?” Rupert asked gently, drawing little circles on Jenny’s bicep as they approached their destination.
She wanted to roll her eyes at him and tease him for worrying about her but, truthfully, she appreciated his concern. It gave her an entrance to tell the truth – she wouldn't have done that without a prompt.
“Honestly? I've been better,” she admitted. The key clicked inside the lock as she turned it, pushing down on the door handle to her classroom.
Jenny’s stomach twisted, a tight sensation that made her heart stammer as she unlocked her classroom door. The hinges were bent out of shape just enough that it made opening the door difficult, requiring more force than usual to get inside. Angelus’ work, no doubt – despite no longer being an imminent threat, he still left a little reminder for her there. A broken door that she’d pushed herself up against, scrambling for the handle in an attempt at escaping from him, that she’d now have to force her way through every morning until Snyder arranged for it to be replaced.
Nudging the door with her hip, it finally swung open, and Jenny was staring into her classroom.
It wasn't quite how she'd left it. The lights were on for some reason and the shattered glass that had been left behind her desk had been swept up. Her fire-damaged computer had been replaced by an almost identical model, absent of her small collection of little sticky note reminders she'd left attached to the edges almost an entire month ago.
The one thing left of Jenny there was the large crack in the blackboard, a shatter made on impact by her Orb of Thesulah, flung carelessly at her by Angelus and missing her skull by barely a centimetre.
There was new handwriting on the board too. Large, block capitals explaining html codes replacing Jenny's curly scrawl that had been there before.
It smelled of someone else's air freshener, new posters had been stuck on the walls, some of the desks had been rearranged…
Everything had carried on without her. Things had changed.
“I'd feel a whole lot better about coming back to work if someone hadn't messed up my room,” Jenny grumbled as she pulled out her desk chair slightly too sharply. It rolled back and hit the wall, sending a couple of pieces of chalk tumbling to the floor.
It was a lie, of course. If her room had been exactly as it was that night, it would’ve probably only made things worse . But she couldn’t admit that.
Rupert bent down, replacing the chalk and beginning to clean Jenny’s board. Fresh start.
She followed suit, reaching beneath her desk for one of the boxes that Rupert had dropped off the previous Friday in preparation for her return. Opening the box, she pulled out a framed picture of herself and Rupert, taken at the Spring Fling the year before, and placed it on her desk. Then, she placed her large, clear quartz cluster – a joint ‘get well soon’ gift from the scoobies – next to the frame, brushing her fingers against it gently. Maybe she could pick up on some of that healing energy. She’d take all she could get, at that moment.
As they unpacked Jenny’s boxes, Rupert spoke again, his voice a comforting reminder that Jenny wasn’t alone. It was still only morning and she wasn’t the only person in her empty classroom.
“Would it help if I told you that the teacher that they replaced you with was positively dreadful?”
“Depends. Are you lying to make me feel better?” Jenny tested, arching one eyebrow as she booted up her computer, careful not to put too much pressure on her injured hand as she rested on the desk.
“No. I don't know of a better computing teacher than you, my darling,” Rupert answered sweetly, catching Jenny off guard with the softness of his eyes as he titled his head to smile down at her.
Her chest fluttered, a million butterflies, like she was some kind of love sick teenager and not a fully grown adult in her thirties.
“I'm the only computing teacher you know,” she reminded him, an attempt to casually brush him off, feeling the twitch of her lips as she failed to mask her smile. “Doesn't count. That's like me saying you're my favourite librarian.”
“Well, am I?” He asked, and she answered by cupping her unbroken hand around his cheek and pressing a small kiss to the corner of his mouth.
It was a nice distraction, that moment of quiet alone with Rupert when the building was quiet and almost empty. It was just a shame that, come first period, she wouldn't have her favourite emotional support librarian standing by her side and making sure that she didn't freak out if one of her students made any sudden moves.
She was getting better, really. But being back here…she'd been tossing and turning all night.
*
Snyder gave Rupert specific instructions at the last faculty meeting – he and Jenny were not to sit together whilst morning announcements were being made.
According to Snyder, they had been a nuisance prior to Jenny's leave of absence, and this would only worsen now that they were living together. Therefore, the only solution was to split them up like a pair of uncontrollable school children to prevent distraction.
Nonsense.
Rupert was perfectly capable of being distracted by Jenny from the other side of the room.
She was taking hasty notes with a pen and paper, not wanting to miss anything new on her first day or to feel that she had fallen behind the rest of the faculty. Rupert observed as she worried away at her bottom lip with her front teeth, scraping at the reddish-brown lipstick that she was wearing. He noticed her foot tapping against the leg of the table, her knee bouncing and her dark brows furrowed.
It wasn't lost on him that Jenny was on edge; even though she had reassured him as they left her classroom that she was feeling much better, he’d seen the way that she’d frozen stiff at the distant sound of a slamming door, how she’d deliberately fallen behind so that he could turn all of the corners before her.
It had taken a great deal of restraint for him to only check in on her once on their walk to the faculty room.
“First day nerves, that's all it is. I'm getting over it though – seriously, babe.”
Rupert’s face warmed at the memory of the term of endearment; it was so very American, so very Jenny . But it distracted him from her façade only briefly; he was more than familiar with the way that Jenny’s expression shifted when something was troubling her.
On those incredibly rare occasions when Jenny drifted off to sleep first, Rupert would find himself lying completely still, eyes fixed on her face as she slept. Not even sleep seemed to offer her a moment’s rest – the deep crease between her eyebrows remained throughout the night and dark circles beneath her eyes were becoming a permanent fixture.
She’d covered them with light concealer for work, framing her tired eyes with strokes of dark eyeliner, her long, thick lashes brushed with mascara. Still, Rupert saw it all and was consistently frustrated that he didn’t know how to help, how to make all of her worries disappear.
Jenny had given him the following list – handwritten and attached to the fridge with an ‘I Heart England’ magnet that had not been purchased by Rupert – as a starting point:
1) Jenny had to sleep on the side of the bed closest to the bedroom door so that there was nothing standing between her and the nearest exit route. They also always had to have at least one light on in the apartment at all times, just in case.
2) If either of them were going to be late home, they had to call the other to reassure them that neither of them were in any sort of mortal danger. This rule was written for both of their benefits.
3) All guests must be thrown out by seven p.m. to give Jenny time to prepare herself for the daunting task of going to bed every night.
4) Rupert was in charge of all of the cooking.
Not surprisingly, this was a rule that Rupert himself had added to the list; it was one sure fire way that he could make sure that Jenny was well looked after without going full helicopter mode. Jenny’s only addendum to this rule was that Rupert could feed her, but only if they didn’t have to eat in the library or the crowded, too-noisy cafeteria during their lunch break. So, on her first day back, Rupert met her in her classroom just after the lunch bell rang, two paper bags in his hands as a swarm of students filed out of Jenny’s classroom.
“Good to see you, Miss Calendar,” one of the girls said – Rupert didn’t know many students by name, on account of the fact that he kept himself locked away in his office as often as he could – smiling sweetly at Jenny as she passed by her desk. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
“Good to see you too, Lucy. I’m looking forward to reading your report,” Jenny replied, smiling. It was a tired smile, but it was sincere even so.
One thing that Rupert always noticed when he visited Jenny at the tail end of one of her lessons was how much respect the students had for her – she was consistently the most popular contender for ‘favourite teacher’ at Sunnydale High and not even the other faculty members could begrudge her that. It wasn’t just Rupert who had come to realise how brilliant Jenny was, with her sharp sense of humour, her passion for her chosen subject and how her entire face became immediately animated every time she got up in front of her class to introduce a new concept.
This school would’ve been a less vibrant place without her . The thought sprung upon Rupert as those sorts of thoughts often did, a sudden, rude interruption that chilled his blood and squeezed at his lungs.
Sunnydale without Jenny… life without Jenny.
Rupert froze where he stood, his grip on the brown paper sandwich bags tightening as he attempted to regain some control of his train of thought, desperate to brush off any nasty reminders of what might have been.
In the end, it was the cold brush of Jenny’s fingers against his own as she took one of the bags from Rupert.
“Thanks, England,” she said with a grin, a sight which dragged Rupert immediately back down to earth. “Table for two,” Jenny continued as she dragged a spare chair from underneath one of the students’ tables, placing it on the other side of her desk. “Well, for now at least.”
“How has your first day been?” Rupert asked, pecking Jenny quickly on the cheek before taking his seat and unpacking his lunch. They had matching cheese sandwiches, sliced apples, and packets of ready salted crisps.
(“They’re chips , Rupert.” “I beg to differ – chips are warm and served best with battered fish.” “Beg all you like, England. I’m still right.”)
“Honestly,” Jenny answered between bites of sandwich, “it’s been okay. The kids keep you way too busy to be thinking about everything that could go wrong, so…not bad so far. No disasters.”
Was it a glowing review? Not quite, but some of the old tension seemed to have lifted by Jenny’s shoulders, her demeanour slightly more relaxed than when he’d left her that morning. “I’m glad to hear it,” he said.
“Yeah, I guess…I don’t know, it’s not as bad as I was expecting , actually. Although,” she added, her expression peculiar and difficult to decipher, “ask me again when all the students go home and it’s all quiet out there. Be warned – I’m expecting some serious build up of nerves.”
Rupert nodded. “Well, I suppose that’s only natural. If it would make things a little easier on you, though, I’m sure that you could leave work when your classes end, if staying late is a particular difficulty for you.”
Jenny snorted, shaking her head. “Rupert, I’m a high school teacher. I need to readjust to a life of late nights and hours of marking, sitting in this chair until my back hurts. I’ll just…I don’t know, I guess you’ll just have to stick around and keep me company,” she said, resting her elbow on the desk, her chin in her hand as she fixed their eyes together. Her entire face sparkled as she smiled.
Rupert could spend hours swimming in those big, brown eyes. “Jenny, darling, I’m sure that–”
“Incoming, incoming – be not afraid,” Xander’s voice interrupted, announcing the arrival of their own personal rabble of students who had been advised against bursting into rooms unexpectedly after several panic-inducing incidents. “And by the way? Tone all the way down on the pet names – you’re both definitely too old for that,” he half-teasingly, half-sincerely complained. “It’s icky.”
“Oh, grow up , Xander, they’re sweet” Cordelia scolded, rolling her eyes at her boyfriend’s immaturity before turning to Jenny. “Hey, Miss Calendar,” she greeted with a bright, wide smile that displayed all of her teeth. “I know we’re later than we said but, well, we thought it was totally lame to be seen coming to eat our lunch in a teacher’s classroom.”
“How is that any less rude than what I said?” Xander asked, throwing his hands up in disbelief at Cordelia’s hypocrisy.
“Um, kindly requesting to be excluded from your ‘we,’ Cordelia?” Buffy corrected. “Don’t worry, you're not totally lame – just a little,” she teased with a small laugh.
“You’re all very tactless,” Rupert said, his lip curling into a poorly hidden smile. “I’m beginning to wonder why I keep you around.”
“Fate?” Willow suggested.
“Destiny?” Oz offered.
“The Watcher’s Council would hunt you for sport if you didn’t?” Buffy asked. Rupert hummed in agreement.
“Yes, that’s the one.”
Still, he was smiling fondly at Buffy in the way that he very often did. A shockingly parental sort of affection that.
“Are you all done teasing Mr. Giles?” Jenny asked, eyebrows raised as the kids shuffled their chairs into good spots – apart from Oz, who simply perched himself on the edge of the desk next to Willow’s seat.
"So," Willow said, turning to face Jenny as she unwrapped her baguette, her foot tapping against the leg of her chair. “How’s your first day back going? I wish that I had computer science on Mondays, because I would’ve made sure that everyone did their work and- and did as you told them and–”
“Willow,” Jenny interrupted what was sure to spiral into a rambling spiel. Willow did that when she was nervous. “Thanks for covering some of my classes last month, I really appreciate it. I've heard good things about you.” Willow glowed with pride at Jenny’s words, her mouth curving into a bright smile as her back straightened slightly. "But I also hear that my official substitute was nothing to write home about, huh?”
Okay, so she was doing a little compliment fishing – she needed the morale boost. Sue her.
Cordelia hummed in agreement. “He was a total stick in the mud – you’re way cooler than him. Plus, you dress better.”
“Definitely,” Buffy agreed. Then, she turned her full attention to Jenny, meeting her eyes as she added with sincerity, “I’m really glad you’re back, Miss Calendar. School was pretty lame without you, honestly.”
Jenny could only smile in response. There was a sharp, whispering voice in the back of her head that constantly tried to convince her that Buffy only tolerated her because she didn’t want to hurt Rupert’s feelings and secretly still harboured some well-masked resentment from the entire Angelus debacle. Jenny had been through a lot with them all – demons, vampires, Doctor Frankenstein wannabes, the odd apocalypse – but still, she didn’t always feel like a key member of the group. Sometimes, she felt like Buffy just saw her as ‘the Watcher’s girlfriend.’
The Watcher’s girlfriend who Buffy had made it very clear that she didn’t trust barely a month ago.
Since everything had happened, Buffy swore up and down that she didn’t really blame Jenny and that she was simply looking for someone to hate when her broken heart wouldn’t let her hate Angel. It was just that doubtful, self-conscious voice in the back of Jenny’s mind that was impossible to shut up.
“Hey, Miss Calendar – you still there?” Buffy’s voice snapped her back to attention She holding an already-opened packet of cafeteria cookies underneath Jenny’s nose. The good ones that were still warm and a little gooey in the middle, probably slightly underbaked. “Cookie? I decided to splash out on a little treat for our party.”
“Party?” Jenny asked, eyeing up the cookies with suspicion.
Cordelia sighed. “ I wanted to throw you a ‘welcome back’ party, but Giles,” she said his name in an accusatory manner that made Jenny smirk, “said that we shouldn’t make a whole thing of it. Something about ‘not overwhelming you’, or whatever,” Cordelia continued, bending her fingers into quotation marks as she recalled Rupert’s advice. “Buffy thought that getting you some cafeteria cookies was a good substitute. This lunch is your party, even though we all know I could've thrown together something better.”
Cordelia’s bluntness… warmed Jenny, in a strange sort of way – there was some familiarity in it that reminded her of how things were before things got even more complicated than usual.
“They’re a great substitute,” Jenny answered, taking a cookie before Buffy passed them around to the others. “Thanks, Buffy.”
It was an unremarkable lunch. So mundane. The kids teased Rupert and he defended himself in some incredibly ‘Giles’ fashion, leaving them with no choice but to tease him some more. They discussed the latest supernatural menace plaguing Sunnydale High, Jenny and Rupert offered some of their expertise, and they passed around snacks. Rinse, repeat.
Maybe Jenny could go back to normal. She could cope with being back here and put that whole nasty episode behind her once and for all.
When the school day ended (the teacher’s school day, at least – Jenny stayed behind to grade papers for a little while and Rupert leafed through books, sitting on the other side of her desk pretending to have things to keep him busy at school), Rupert and Jenny headed home. Rupert made spaghetti bolognese, they watched quiz shows and competed ruthlessly. Things felt normal – really normal.
Sure, they’d bumped into a vampire on their way back to Rupert’s car that evening, but he was only a fledgling; it barely took a poke with the stake to dust him. They faced mortal danger on a regular basis and came out on the other side every time.
But that didn’t make the fear any less real when Jenny was jolted awake in the middle of the night by yet another dreadful scenario that her mind had managed to conjure.
The nightmares always started in exactly the same way - Jenny trapped in a room with Angelus. She would attempt to scream, but no sound ever came out. She would run and run and run, but would never come across an exit. She would call out, but nobody would hear her. Every attempt proved futile. Her voice didn’t work and her lungs wouldn’t fill.
After this, though, the plotline would change on a night-to-night basis.
Last week, Jenny had jolted awake with a sound that fell halfway between a gasp and a scream, waking up just before Angelus tightened his grip on her neck one final time and twisted. But that night, the dream ended with her arriving at the library to find that Angelus had already gotten to work on his revenge. She was faced with the bodies of all of the people that she’d allowed herself to get closer to in the past year, stiff and cold, taken before Jenny could restore Angelus’ soul.
It was the common theme of every nightmare; what if Jenny had failed?
Jenny sat up slowly, pulling a few loose pieces of hair away from her face as she inhaled a slow, unsteady breath. The worst thing about the nightmares, the thing that made them harder to cope with than the physical injuries, was that there was no medicine or miracle cure that could ease their impact.
Jenny had been prone to nightmares as a child, a combination of her active imagination and the constant talk of demons and vampires that she listened in on with curiosity, despite her parents’ insistence that she’d keep herself awake all night with fear if she did. Even so, when she would inevitably run into their bedroom with a snotty nose and teary eyes, frightened by an imaginary monster lurking in the shadows, her mom would lift her into the bed and take her into her arms to sing her favourite lullaby until she drifted off to sleep again. It never made the dreams go away but it made her feel safe, despite all of the evil that she knew roamed the earth outside the safety of their home…but Jenny could hardly ask Rupert to sing her an old nursery rhyme. He wouldn’t know the right one, anyway.
She felt it was childish, really, to yearn so desperately to feel her mother’s fingers run through her hair again. To curl up into a little ball in her lap like that scared little girl who would recover from every scraped knee or bad dream with little more than a ‘kiss to make it better.'
Hesitantly, Jenny placed a hand on Rupert’s shoulder, shaking it gently.
“Rupert,” she whispered. He still didn’t stir, fast asleep and muttering something under his breath, having dreams of his own. She didn’t even know why she was waking him up – it wasn’t like he could do anything, anyway. Still, she didn’t want to be the only one in the apartment awake at one a.m. Not after the things she’d seen in her sleep. “Rupert?”
“Hmmmnnngh?” he replied, the sound muffled against his hand as he rubbed his face sleepily. “Are–” he interrupted himself with a yawn. “Are you alright?”
“Not really. I…I had another nightmare.”
He reached over, resting his hand on her knee. “Oh, darling. Is there anything I can do?”
Jenny felt shame bubbling in her stomach. She bit the inside of her lip, folding her arms and staring down at them in the dark. “I don’t think so…sorry. I shouldn’t have woken you up.”
Rupert shuffled beside her, reaching to tug the little pull-switch on his bedside lamp. “No, no – it’s alright. I could make you some tea?” he offered. It was sort of a ‘catch-all’ for him when he didn’t know how to help. Rough day at work? He’d stick the kettle on. Knocked out by a demon? He’d stick the kettle on. Ceaseless nightmares? A steaming mug of peppermint tea to help Jenny fall asleep would always do the trick.
“Sure,” Jenny replied.
She waited on the couch as Rupert got to work in the kitchen, rustling around for the right teabag before pouring boiling water into her favourite mug and leaving it to stew for a few minutes. Rupert carried two mugs of tea into the living room, placing one of them carefully into Jenny’s free hand.
“Thanks,” she said, taking the drink with a tired smile and blowing away some of the steam.
“Are you feeling any better?” he asked.
Jenny sighed, taking a sip. “Rupert, I’m not–you don’t have to–” she cut herself off before she could finish her sentence. She was about to say ‘you don’t have to babysit me’ , a frustrated thought that didn’t particularly represent how she felt but that her mind wanted her to blurt out anyway, apparently preferring the idea of an argument to the idea of displaying any vulnerability.
But Jenny had sworn to herself that she would give this whole ‘communicating’ and ‘letting each other in’ thing an honest go.
Rupert had taken a seat next to her, but hadn’t spoken. He was giving her a chance to finish her thought without interruption.
She didn’t want to go into the nightmare – it couldn’t be the best feeling, hearing a detailed account of your imaginary death at the hands of a brutal, soulless demon who you’d once trusted. It also wasn’t the best feeling for her to have to relive it, especially since she’d probably be doing that again the next night.
Jenny decided upon a different approach. “When…when I was a kid, there was this song my mom always used to sing. Some sort of lullaby, I guess. I don’t think it had a name – her mom made it up when she was younger. Anyway, she always used to sing it when I had a nightmare, or if I was just being a hyper little kid and refused to go to sleep,” Jenny explained and Rupert listened intently, all of his attention fixed onto her. It was more than she’d ever revealed about her life pre-Sunnydale all in one go; she usually just peppered in the odd fact to casual conversation and left no room for follow-up questions.
“Were you often, uh– hyperactive as a child?” Rupert asked, his thoughtful expression softening into a warm smile.
“You know it – I hated being sent to go to sleep,” Jenny replied with a soft laugh. It faded when she continued, tapping the side of her mug with her fingernails as she said, “I had a pretty rough dream last night, and I just wish…I just wish that there was some quick fix to make it all feel better. Some silly little song that makes me feel safe like it used to. But I’m not a little kid anymore, so…I guess I just have to deal.” She shrugged.
Rupert scanned her face, his forehead creased with concentration as he watched her. “I wish that I had a ‘quick fix’ to recommend, but I don’t. I wish I could do something for you.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it isn’t. You deserve better than this town, better than-”
“ Rupert,” Jenny said sternly, fixing her eyes on his. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, having just scrambled out of bed, and he still looked barely awake. “I don’t need - or expect - you to fix all of my problems, and I'm perfectly capable of leaving Sunnydale if this all gets too much, okay? I do have free will.”
"I know that, Jenny." Rupert chuckled, a sad sound, defeated. “I wish that I could make things better," he repeated. "Me knowing what is possible doesn't change the fact that I wish that things were different."
So pedantic. Jenny rolled her eyes and smiled, tilting her head.
“I know,” Jenny replied, nudging Rupert gently in the side with her foot. “You could just fix my arm instead if you were looking for something to do,” she joked, nodding towards her colourfully decorated cast.
“Sweetheart, we’ve been over this,” he replied, attempting to sound exasperated but only managing to sound lovingly amused. “I am not using magic to speed up your recovery process – what would all of our colleagues say if you returned to work with a miraculously healed limb , for goodness sake.”
“I bet Willow would do it,” Jenny teased. “She’s been asking a lot of questions about magic lately. You could have a little witch on your hands.”
“Well, you can be responsible for supervising that particular hobby.”
Grinning, Jenny scoffed, “Excuse me? I’m already a very busy–”
“-and I’m already a Watcher!” he protested. “I can't train Willow as well as Buffy - consider my poor nerves! And besides, I think that Buffy and Xander are much too proud of their little decorations to let you take the cast off any earlier than you ought to.”
“Damn,” Jenny groaned playfully. “You may have a point and I hate it.”
Rupert’s face softened, his hand reaching over to rest on Jenny’s knee. “Your arm will be healed before you know it.”
Lowering her eyes, Jenny nodded. “I…yeah, I know. I’m just ready for this all to finally be over . I’m just ready to go back to normal.”
Rupert’s mouth curved into a wry smile. “Is there any such thing as normal here? Any such thing as normal for us?”
Jenny laughed because, well, when he put it like that …
“Good point," she agreed before correcting herself: "I'm ready to go back to pretending that my life is normal."
That felt more accurate.