Title: Taint of Memory

Author: Vesica

Rating: PG-13

Pairing: Giles/Mina (LXG)

Disclaimer: Not Mine. Like we didn't all know that!

A.Notes 1: Response III to Jinni’s Odd Couple 200 word challenge.



Why do the stars always seem brighter in England? He sat unmoving, not feeling the night air turn him to gooseflesh. It no longer felt like home. Home was there—in Sunnydale. The days passed well enough, but night fell and his mind wandered. Wondering. Worrying. Was he right to leave? Could he live with himself if he was wrong, if she died?

A cold hand, gently tracing his spine, jolted him from his fretting. Of course, at night there was her.

“Awake again?” her voice a gentle caress. “Let it go.”

He laughed but it came out hollow, bitter, from squeezing past the guilt. “Is that why our paths keep crossing? To help forget all the old sins?”

“Perhaps-” she paused, carefully forming each word. “Come back to bed.”

Standing abruptly, he angrily tossed back the linens he had been sitting atop. “You needn’t enthrall me, Mina. You always win in the end, always have.”

Curling around the calming cool of her, he murmured sadly, “Between us we have lifetimes of transgressions to escape, don’t we, old friend?”

“That we do,” she sighed, holding him tighter, nibbling along his jaw. “Help me forget for a while, Rupert? Like always?”