Fourth Tide Turning ☠ Written | Video

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[Jack has been spending a great deal of time at House Seven, looking after Buffy. There are occasions though when he manages to slip off to Cullen House; he has to keep an eye on the place, after all, and is slowly but surely stocking up on necessary non-perishable supplies for the winter that he and Katie McCoy can share. Firewood. So many things

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"She wants so very badly to fill him up with cookies," he murmured, following along in her wake. "You know? There's no other child here that I'd really let serve on my crew. Katie was different. She could take care of herself, always."

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He had nothing to say to that. If she had been afraid of him, it would have broken his heart.

[slaying]

She allowed the non-icing side to get nice and soft and chewy and appleish. It had been a while since their silences had fallen so...awkwardly upon them.

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"I actually...I ran from her when I first saw her," he admitted quietly, trying to get the measure of Buffy's mood. His heartbeat ratcheted up a few notches. "I thought she was...someone else."

[slaying]

"What?"

She looked up; sharp and fast. "Why? Who?" Katie? -- well, that would make more sense had the timeline been reversed.

What little girl would make Jack Sparrow turn and run...Oh. It was only a sliver of a hunch but Buffy dealt with it by not tearing her gaze off of Jack for a moment.

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A weak laugh. "Maybe that's why she wasn't afraid of me, lass. Maybe because she terrified me. And Murphy, well...he knew."

[slaying]

"Knew what, exactly?"

Probative. Testing.

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"He knew it was Jilly. He scented her out and led me right to her."

[slaying]

"...But you didn't."

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He shook his head and dunked another Oreo, finding that a very useful way to keep his naturally nervous hands occupied.

[slaying]

"...Who, Jack? Who did you think she was?"

His behaviour, she felt, confirmed it. But she wanted to hear the name from his lips.

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"Joyce."

[slaying]

Primly, Buffy set aside her half-finished cookie. And then she straightened with her arms extended behind her -- propping herself up against the lip of the counter. Elbows locked.

"That," she jerked her head down the hallway that lead to Jilly's bedroom. "That's what you think she loo--would look like?"

A useless question. If he had already owned up to the case of mistaken identity then it must follow that there was some similarity there. But asking easier questions made the hard subject a little less hard.

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"Beautiful," he answered. "Sometimes she's got golden hair and dark eyes and sometimes she's got dark hair and curls. Sometimes. And from a distance...I thought..."

It didn't matter anymore, surely, that little aching error; a simple trick of the twilight did not matter here in the warm kitchen with Buffy and stacks of cream-filled cookies.

[slaying]

"Joyce," she tried the name out -- feeling precarious. Certainly precarious enough to come down with a case of the blurts: "Giles...when he -- when he came back from his last kidnapping, he..."

Hmm. No. She frowned. This was a terror-inducing topic. "And you ran away?"

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Giles whatnow? Hmm.

"I thought she was there to haunt me," he said in a very carefully measured tone. "For..."

No---no, he couldn't go into the topic of giving up again. He couldn't discuss choosing the Black Pearl and his world over an opportunity to go to Buffy's, if it should arise. He hadn't thought any of it through clearly enough yet. And the guilt? The guilt was horrible, and Joyce seemed like a manifestation of that.

"IonlyranawayalittleandMurphypulledmeback."