Disclaimer:- It all belongs to Joss, I'm just playing with his characters for a bit.

Rating:- This chapter is a T for language.

Prologue

"Buffy!" Giles shouted as she was thrown through the air, landing painfully on the pile of firewood next to the barn.

Her vision began to blur as she heard the crack of gunfire. His special silver bullets, hollow point, filled with iron pellets, engraved with religious symbols and soaked in holy water, good for killing demons and hurting vamps. She tried to get up to help him but her body wouldn't cooperate past lifting her hand and twitching her foot so she had to suffer the sounds of the demon screaming as Giles shot it again and again, wondering if he would be hurt too.

His panicked voice screaming into a radio calling for help broke through her daze as she began to lose focus, she heard his feet hitting the hard packed dirt and skid to a stop next to her, felt his hands touch her throat checking for a pulse and her lips pulled up in a smile when she heard his relieved sigh shuddering from his chest.

"Buffy, open your eyes love" he said, running his hands over her body, a body he knew very well since they had fallen together after the fight with the First, checking her for other injuries.

She forced open her eyes and struggled to focus on his face, her head was pounding and she had a sharp pain on her right side, she tried to look but he stopped her,

"No, don't move love, just keep your eyes open and on me, the ambulance is coming" he said urgently, staring into her eyes with a desperation that scared her.

"I'm not going anywhere love" she whispered to him, lifting her hand and touching his cheek, "Might go to sleep though, I'm so tired" her eyes slid shut despite her efforts to keep them open.

"No! Don't shut your eyes, keep looking at me!" he shouted at her but her eyes wouldn't open no matter how hard she tried.

She heard the wail of the ambulance siren over his desperate pleas for her to stay with him, the council response team had gotten quicker since the last time they had needed them. Using every ounce of strength left she forced her eyes open and looked at him, "Told you we should have ignored the phone" she said with a sarcastic grin.

She saw his eyes light up with relief just as she blacked out, her last conscious thought was for her children at home with Dawn before all she knew was darkness.

Chapter 1

"Buffy!"

She slowly came up out of the darkness to the sound of her name being called. She turned over on the bed she was in, snuggling deeper into her pillow and tried to go back to sleep.

"Buffy, get up, you're going to be late for school" her Mom called up the stairs.

She sat bolt upright, gasping in shock when she realized she was in her old room in Sunnydale.

"Shit!" she said as she shot out of bed and yanked open her wardrobe door to look at herself in the mirror, she saw the still healing gash on her head and the bruise on her jaw and knew exactly when she had come to.

"Buffy!" her Mom called again, angrier this time.

"Coming Mom" she called back, proud that she had managed to keep her voice from trembling.

She rifled through her closet and pulled out her black jeans and a red tank top before bending down and grabbing up her black ballet pumps. She pulled open her underwear drawer and rummaged through it for her red bra and matching panties before running to the bathroom and grabbing a quick shower.

Dressing quickly she rushed back to her room and blow dried her hair before pulling it up in a ponytail and applying her make up and adding some silver jewelery. Ready in what was record time for her younger self she picked up her school bag and steeled herself for who was waiting for her downstairs.

"I'll see you later Mom" she called out as she ran down the stairs, finding that when it came to it, she couldn't face her Mom and not throw herself into her arms and never let go.

"Don't you want something to eat first?" her mother called from the kitchen.

"Not hungry, love you" she called back as she shut the front door, I miss you, so much she thought as she ran down the sidewalk towards the school.

She got to the school just as the bell rang for homeroom and ran straight to the library, "Rup….Giles!" she called out, almost calling him by his first name, forgetting for a moment that this was twenty years in the past for him.

"Buffy? What is it? What's wrong?" he said coming out of his office and seeing her panicked look.

"Somethings happened to me and I don't know if you're going to like it" she said walking past him and into his office, "I need you to sit down"

"Buffy, I..Have you decided that you want me to go w...when the new W...Watcher gets h...here?" he stuttered and she would have laughed if it weren't for the hurt in his eyes, "I...I know that I h..hurt you, b..betrayed your trust..."

"Rupert" she said smiling at him. He hadn't stuttered in years having dropped that part of his persona after they had started dating, "please just sit down"

He sat heavily in his office chair, in shock that she had called him by his given name, "You have decided then" he said sadly looking at the floor.

"I'm not gonna want a new Watcher, so breath okay" she said placing her hand on his knee and giving it a reassuring squeeze, smiling when he breathed a sigh of relief "That's not what I want to talk to you about"

"Then what's happened that you don't think I will like?" he asked covering her hand with his and patting it uncomfortably.

"If you had the chance to know what would happen to me, to us, in the future, would you take it?" she asked removing her hand, lifting her bag over her head and dropping it on the floor.

"I'm not sure, knowing the future can be dangerous, changing one little thing can be disastrous, why?" he asked leaning forward and forcing her to look at him. When she did he sat back, his eyes wide as he realized she wasn't the same Buffy he had spoken to just last night, her eyes had a haunted look that spoke of deep loss and pain, he saw experience and a wisdom in them that wasn't there last night.

"You're not Buffy" he said standing up and leaning over her.

"I am Buffy just not this Buffy, I'm the Buffy from the future" she said sitting back and staring up at him, "Why did you never tell me you grew up on a bloody huge estate and that I should call you Sir Giles?" she asked and smirked when he sat back down, his mouth open in shock.

"It never mattered" he mumbled. He pulled his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose, "How far in the future?" he asked warily as he put them back on.

"Twenty years" she said crossing her legs under her, "Could I have a cup of tea and some biscuits please, I didn't eat breakfast and I ran all the way here"

"Of course...you actually want tea?!" he asked surprised, pausing as he turned to the kettle next to his desk.

"It's grown on me, hard to avoid it twenty four seven" she said with a smirk as he readied the tea leaves in the strainer.

"Do you want to know the future Rupert?" she asked softly as he put the sugar and milk on the table in front of her with a plate of biscuits.

"Will I want to know?" he asked as he poured the water into the tea pot.

He turned and put it on the table in front of her and then sat down as she reached forward for a biscuit, "Some of it yes, some of it no" she said as she ate.

"Would you want me to change any of it?" he asked as he shifted forward in his chair to lift the strainer from the pot, sitting back in surprise when Buffy beat him to it. He watched as she dunked the strainer a few times then lifted it out of the water and held it until it had stopped dripping, placing it back on the tray next to the kettle. She poured his, adding the right amount of sugar and milk before handing it to him and pouring her own.

"No, I wouldn't, not even the really shitty parts" she said quietly.

He took a sip of his tea and sat back, "Tell me" he said. Before she could start the library doors opened and they heard Willow call out for Giles.

He was watching her face as she organized her thoughts and caught the ripple of pain pass over her features at the sound of Willows voice, "I can't see her Rupert" she said looking at him, her wide pleading chameleon eyes, blue in this light, were filled with a deep seated pain that he couldn't explain.

He nodded and put his cup back on the table, standing he said, "I'll take care of it" brushing his hand over her hair trying to comfort her but at the same time ease his own heart and reassuring himself that this was really happening.

"Willow, could you perhaps come back later?" he asked as he left his office, "Buffy and I are trying to sort through some issues, as you call them, and would like to do so in private"

"Oh so that's why she wasn't in homeroom" Willow said her eyes lighting up with understanding, "Okay, is it gonna take long 'cause I can hack the schools database and change her attendance mark, take notes in our classes too"

"I don't know but that would be very much appreciated thank you Willow" he said giving her a grateful smile, "and when you see Xander can you let him know as well?"

"Sure I can do that" she said nodding her head, her short red hair bouncing around her face.

"Thank you" he said, watching her leave before turning and entering his office.

He found Buffy hugging her legs to her chest, her chin resting on her knees with a blank look on her face, "What happens to Willow Buffy?" he asked gently, sitting next to her on the couch.

"She dies" she whispered back to him, turning her head to look at him, her cheek squashed against her knee causing her to mumble, "So does Mom. I knew I would see Will today and I thought I could handle it, maybe I will be able to now I've heard her voice"

Giles wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her to him, "I think you should start telling me your story" he said hiding the shock he felt at hearing about the deaths in their future.

"The new Watcher is Wesley Wyndam-Price and he's a bumbling idiot who has no frigging idea what life is like in the field and is completely fucking clueless about living on a Hellmouth" she said with a laugh pulling back from his arms, "Faith goes bad and joins the mayor but we win anyway and I graduate" she said reaching for her tea.

"The mayor?" Giles asked doing the same, "Is he evil then?"

"Oh yeah, big time. He's over a hundred years old and built this town for demons to feed on and all because he wants to ascend as a demon"

"Ascend as a demon?" he asked intrigued at this information.

"Means he'll become a true demon, a snake actually but we blow him up along with the school. Angel leaves and starts his own detective agency in LA, Wes ends up working for him, so does Cordy"

"If that's the case we could start working against him now, it's not often we get a heads up like this. Are you sure you don't want to change anything?"

"It's tempting but it could change something in the future, a bad guy could get away or someone could die who wasn't meant to. Plus I wouldn't know what I'm going back to, if I go back" she said thoughtfully, looking out of the office window for a minute before turning back to him with a sad smile, "The first year of college blows by the way"

"Why what happens?"

"We drift apart. I get used and then find someone I thought was normal but turned out to be part of a military monster squad that experimented on demons, one of the professors at the college turns out to be a scientist who plays Frankenstein and builds a monster from human, demon and machine parts. It was fun taking him down, brought us all back together again and Spike comes back but it'll be okay 'cause the military neuter him and he helps, kind of" she said with a roll of her eyes and a smirk.

"You're not going to give me specifics are you" he said with a frown.

"Nope 'cause you will try and change things and I don't want you to, I like where we are now"

"And where are we now?" he asked raising his eyebrow at her.

"I'll get to that, eventually" she said smirking at him. She would never admit it to the him she was married to but she missed this part of him sometimes, the quiet reserved secretive guy who was secretly in love with her, "I will say this though – I know your secret"

He choked on the tea he had just drunk and looked at her with alarm as a blush started to spread over his face, "W…what secret?"

"You have more than one? I'm shocked Mr Giles" she teased, her eyes alight with amusement. "Anyway back to my story. My second year at college we meet Dracula, that was kinda cool even though he tried to convince me I was like him"

"Dracula is real!" Giles said in surprise as he took their tea things back over to his little sink.

"Yep and Oz leaves to learn to control his wolf which nearly kills Will and us" she said taking another biscuit from the plate, "I gain a little sister who isn't really my sister thanks to some monks and we have to fight a Big Bad who wants to use her to open a doorway" she paused then and looked at him sadly, "Mom gets sick and dies a few months later and I quit college to look after my not real sister. Will turns out to be gay and meets a really nice girl she falls in love with after Oz left and she gets hurt by this Big Bad making Will go all avenging Wicca on her ass"

"Willow becomes powerful then?"

"Big time. You get hurt quite badly when old fashioned knights on horse back attack us and Big Bad captures little sister. We go to the rescue and kinda win"

"'Kinda win' What does that mean?" he asked warily.

"I beat the Big Bad, you finished it off because I couldn't, I rescue little sister but the end had started so I had to make a decision, the only one I could make"

"And how did that end?"

"I died"

"You died!" he said his face losing its colour, "b..but you s..said you were fr...from twenty years in the future"

"I am, Will brought me back three months later and you have to let her bring me back" she said gripping his hands tightly between her own, "You had just left for England when she did it but you came back and could tell straight away something wasn't right but I didn't tell you, any of you, what was wrong until Xander called a demon that made us sing our deepest darkest secrets and you all found out that I was in Heaven"

"And she pulled you out of there" he said his voice taking on a dangerous tone.

"Don't Rupert, it works out in the end and you have to let it play out exactly as it did for me, I'm only telling you this because I'm hoping there's something in my history, somewhere, that gives me a clue about why I'm here and I need to know how I get back" she said seriously still holding his hands.

"What happens next?" he asked after a few minutes, visibly calming himself down.

"You leave me, go back to England" she said simply causing him to blink at her in her shock.

"I would never do that!" he said gripping her hands tighter in his own.

"You do and for good reason, I wasn't dealing with anything, leaving it all to you, even little sister" she said taking her hands away and standing to pace the small room, "I went to a very dark place and started sleeping with Spike, stopped paying attention to anything anyone else was doing and completely missed Willows problems and caused little sister to feel neglected but I woke up when college boyfriend came back and got my shit together just in time to get shot"

"Who shot you?" he asked confused by her rambling.

"Doesn't matter" she said waving her hand in the air dismissively, "Wills girlfriend got shot too but she died and Will went psycho, went after the guy who did it and killed him then tried for the other two who were working with him. I ended up fighting her and she had just thrown me across the room with a blast of magic when you show up and stop her from killing me. Xander stops her from ending the world and you take her to a coven in England to help her deal"

"The one in Devon?" he asked watching her pace. The amount of questions he had kept growing as she kept speaking. Why did she call him Rupert? What was wrong with Willow that he had to take her to the coven? Why would he ever think leaving her would be a good idea? He switched his attention back to Buffy as she wrung her hands in front of her.

"That's the one and they helped but she had to come back early because the First Evil started chomping and we had to get ready for the biggest fight we've ever faced. Potentials showed up at the house from around the world after their Watchers sent them to us before they were killed by the bringers, you came back with a few and told us the council was destroyed. You and another guy tried to kill Spike behind my back and we fell out, then a mission went wrong and Xander got hurt along with a few of the potentials, some died and then you all ganged up on me and kicked me out of the house, making Faith leader"

Giles was horrified by what he was hearing and vowed to change some of the things that would happen to her, not allowing her to be kicked out of her own house at the very least.

"You can't" she said and he looked up to find her staring at him fondly.

"I can't what?" he asked standing up and refilling the kettle.

"Change anything, even that"

He turned to look at her with astonishment, "How did you know..."

"What you were thinking?" she finished for him with a knowing grin, "I know you that's how"

"And how do you know me so well?" he asked turning his back to her and rinsing out the strainer, drying it to be used again. He turned back to her when she remained silent.

"Because after we defeat the First and destroy the town we end up dating and eventually we get married" she said with a smile that would ordinarily have dazzled him with its brightness.

Instead he stared at her, his mouth open in shock and dropped the cup he was holding.