The English Way

Dedicated to Melissa a.k.a. appomattoxco on the occasion of her birthday

Giles took a deep sip of his bourbon, resisting the temptation to knock it straight back, and raised his eyes to the battered clock behind the bar. Normally, he drank single malt, but today was no normal day. He sipped again and somehow the glass was empty. The barmaid seemed to hesitate when he lifted his arm, his index finger indicating his desire for one more. She was probably worried that he would be an obnoxious drunk and was trying to work out whether she would have better luck cutting him off now, while he might still be reasonable enough to accept her judgement, or whether to keep plying him with alcohol until he was incapable of being a threat to anyone.

"Don't worry. I'm not going to cause any trouble. It's not done, not the English way," he tried to reassure her. "We don't make a scene. We send flowers." The woman looked dubious but decided to pour him a fresh glass anyway. His mind wandered as she took his money and worked out his change. 'Does she like them?' he wondered. 'Does she look at them and think, maybe in another time, another place they would have been for us? Is her hair still blonde or did she decide to go for the contrast of Gothic black?'

Black to suit his mood. It stood to reason they'd be beautiful, all his girls. Dawn and Willow and Tara. Buffy, the reason he'd left, and, Anya, the reason he could never go back.

He imagined them with their hairs piled high and in silk 'Audrey Hepburn' dresses in cream and dusky pink. The wedding had been due to take place at noon. According to the clock behind the bar it was half past eight. It should be safe now to place his call to the reception hall. He wasn't, yet, so drunk that he would blurt out his wish that he could have stayed in the memory free world of Willow's spell, and the temptation to launch into a transatlantic Dustin Hoffman impression had surely passed. By now she'd be Anya Emanuella Jenkins Harris.

The phone, when it rang, was answered by a woman whose voice Giles didn't recognise. "Anyanka doesn't want to speak to anyone, least of all a man."

In the background he could hear what sounded remarkably like the snuffling noise he had heard Anya make on occasion when she was crying. They could, of course, be tears of happiness, but Giles was sceptical. "Madam, if you do not pass the phone to Anya immediately, I will be on the next transatlantic flight and I will shove it so far up your behind that your ears will ring."

Hallie only hesitated for a fraction of a second before she handed the phone over to Anya. "There's an obnoxious Englishman on the line for you."

Giles listened while Anya hiccoughed and sniffed her way through the day's events. Unlike Buffy and the others, he made no excuses for Xander, but roundly cursed him for a fool.

The words were out of his mouth before he had time to consider the consequences. "Why don't you come here? I could take some time off. We could do some sightseeing or even go to Paris..."

His voice died away as Anya remained silent. For what seemed like minutes there was nothing but a long-distance crackle on the line.

Her voice when she finally did answer was subdued. "I think I might like that, Rupert."