Still Grrr

Title: Recurring
Author: Beer Good (beer_good_foamy)
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 200
Prompt: 018, Jenny
Characters/Pairing (if any): Giles
Timeline: AtS 5.16, "Shells"



Recurring

Six years is a long time, too long to keep grieving over something that never really had a chance to be. He lives with it and what remains is mostly a lingering unease around computers and roses, and an intense dislike of Puccini.

But once a year, it hits him, always on the same day. Giles sits remembering, wondering what might have been if things had gone in a different way, where they would be now. And it's not the emptiness of his bed that keeps him up, but the memory of the shock the one time he found her in it. The feeling that there'll be something cold and dead between his sheets, that it's far too late to do anything about it or stop the monster responsible.

So when Angel calls from Wolfram and Hart the next morning to ask for... make that demand his and Willow's help in resurrecting some "Fred" woman Giles has never met, not exactly sounding like the poster boy for atonement – yeah, maybe Giles could have done something different. Maybe it wasn't too late. Maybe he just needed a good night's sleep.

Maybe that's something they're both going to have to live with.