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The soft sounds of casual conversation and lightly clattering cups and silverware surrounding the pair seated in the back corner of the Espresso Pump seemed exceptionally loud, in the harsh, bitter silence that had fallen over them, following the Watcher’s troubling revelation.

Giles carefully studied the girl’s wide-eyed, shocked expression – aware that she was really much more than the girl she appeared to be, and wary lest she should lose control of her emotions and react with some form of violence – with which he would certainly be less than prepared to deal with.

Anya – or Anyanka, he supposed might be the better name for her now that she was a vengeance demon again – simply stared ahead of her with wide, stricken green eyes, focused somewhere around his chest, as she visibly tried to process the disturbing news he had just given her.

Giles cleared his throat a bit self-consciously, glancing downward and wishing that he had taken better advantage of the training facilities at the Council’s headquarters in London, although he knew that really, she was not even seeing him, her thoughts lost in the pain of finding that the young man she had loved for so long was -- *allegedly* -- capable of such cruelty as had been committed against Spike.

“Anya,” he asked quietly, uncertain whether or not it was wise to interrupt her reverie. “Are you quite all right, my dear?”

*Anyanka is really quite a lovely name, much more appropriate to her than Anya,* he mused even as he spoke, with a force of effort drawing his gaze away from her full, slightly parted lips, now trembling in a way that made her appear terribly vulnerable, and more than a little alluring.

*Bloody hell!* he abruptly cut off that line of thinking, his ice blue eyes rising to meet her slightly vacant, heartsick gaze, just as she raised her eyes to hers.

*Get it together, man! You aren’t supposed to be thinking of her in this way – you’re only here to help her get through this, and deal with this – in a way that does *not* involve the destruction of human life or property. What you are *not* here to do is to notice how flawless her complexion appears in this soft lighting – how very green her eyes are, and how they sparkle with the…*

*…tears.*

Giles’ gaze softened with compassion, and it was suddenly not all that difficult to push aside the sudden – and very disturbing – way that his body and mind were taking notice of the vengeance demon as a *woman*, rather than just as “Xander’s ex-demon fiancée.”.

“It can’t be true – can it?” Anya asked, her voice barely over a whisper, her wide emerald eyes, glimmering with unshed tears, pleading with him to tell her it wasn’t so. “I mean – Xander never liked Spike. He was always mean to him, and he *did* try to kill him that night – but – surely he wouldn’t…”

Anya paused, taking in a deep breath in an attempt to control her emotions, rising in intensity as she spoke – but then, she suddenly deflated all at once, weary and defeated as she looked back up at Giles.

“Who am I kidding?” she sighed. “Of course he would do a thing like this!”

Giles’ eyes widened in surprise at her unexpected words. “Excuse me?”

“He can really be incredibly petty and cruel when he feels that he’s been slighted in some way,” Anya explained matter-of-factly. “That night when Spike and I got ridiculously drunk and had sex on the table at the Magic Box…”

Giles winced slightly at the mental images he really wished he did not have to have imprinted on his mind, and tried to keep them at bay by deliberately focusing on the rest of her words.

“…Xander would have killed Spike that night, if Buffy and I hadn’t stopped him. And I don’t know how many times he talked about how much he hated Spike, how much he wished that Buffy would just dust him – about what he thought Spike deserved to have happen to him…”

A troubled frown creased Giles’ brow at the disturbing story her words painted for him, as he shook his head in dismayed disbelief. “Yes, but -- *wanting* something and carrying it out are two very different things, Anya. We must be very cautious. This is *Xander* we’re talking about…”

“I know very well who we’re talking about,” Anya reminded the Watcher, an irritated look on her face as she interrupted him. “We’re talking about the man who abandoned me and shattered my heart into a million pieces…”

“Yes, but Anya,” Giles broke in, shaking his head, his tone understanding, but slightly impatient, “he had his reasons for that, wrong though they may have been. I know that you were very close to him, but so was I, dear, you must remember. And he never struck me as the kind of person who could be capable of such violence…”

“He struck *me* as that kind of person,” Anya shrugged slightly, her expression darkening as she looked down at the table between them for a long moment, before adding with uncharacteristic softness, “once.”

A slight puzzled frown began on the Watcher’s face – and then froze as the soft sadness in her voice, and the wide-eyed, vulnerable expression in her eyes told him more than he wanted to know about just what she was saying.

“Anya,” he said, a slightly dangerous edge to his carefully controlled voice. “Are you telling me that *Xander* -- once dared to actually *strike*…”

“It was only the once,” Anya spoke up nervously, glancing up to meet his eyes for just a moment before looking away again, her eyes darting back and forth as she hurriedly spoke, “I’ve granted wishes for women who’ve been through much worse, it was really nothing, just a one time kind of thing where he lost his temper, that’s all…”

Giles’ eyes widened as he realized that she was admitting to the suspicions he had hoped his mind was inventing – hoped against hope that she was not actually saying that Xander had gone so far as to hit her.

“Remember that one time, when we were having a Scoobie meeting, and Buffy was telling us about that one cross-dressing demon that she killed on patrol, and how she’d never seen a leather bustierre that large before, and I told her that *I* had, when me and Xander were playing this game, where he dressed up as a…”

“*Yes*, Anya,” Giles cut her off almost desperately, his eyes tightly shut as he leaned his head forward in his hand, not sure which image he was trying harder to keep from his mind. “I do remember, my dear, but what on earth does that have to do with…”

“That was the night he did it.”

A heavy silence settled between them for a long moment, as Giles raised his eyes slowly to meet hers again, serious and concerned.

“Like I said – it was just the once. He was – terribly embarrassed that I mentioned our sexual practices in front of his friends. He always was. I just – keep forgetting what things are supposed to be private, and what things aren’t, and he just – he just lost it.”

“He beat you?” Giles’ voice was chillingly soft, his eyes glittering with a silent storm of fury, as he studied her unusually self-conscious demeanor, the hurt that lingered in her eyes while telling the story.

“He *hit* me,” she corrected quietly. “Once. That was all. And, he was immediately very apologetic, promising that it would never happen again, that he was so sorry, that he would make it up to me if it was the last thing he did. He swore he’d never hit me again…”

Although he was quite certain that as far as he was concerned, the answer did not matter, Giles asked her softly, “And did he? Ever hit you again?”

Anya shook her head, a sad, wistful expression on her face as she remembered. “No. He never did.” She paused, before clarifying with a little shrug and a bittersweet smile, “Two weeks later – he left me at the altar.”

After a moment’s weighted silence, Giles spoke up again, his voice gentle and full of a deep regret that was not really his to bear. “I’m so terribly sorry, Anya. If I would have seen it…I would have…”

“I’m not saying this for sympathy,” Anya interrupted, her voice calm and clear and certain as she met his eyes bravely, a solemn intensity in her gaze. “Come on, Giles, I know that any woman has to be an idiot to stay with a man who hurts her – and I may have walked down that aisle alone, but I *did* walk down that aisle – two weeks after he slapped me across the face.”

She paused, considering her words before she went on, “I didn’t tell you this to say, ‘Oh, look, here’s another reason Xander needs to be punished’. I just – I wanted you to know that – he *is* capable of being violent. He – he said he loved me…and he *hated* Spike. So – if he’d hit *me*, over something I said…what do you think he’d do to *Spike*, for – well, for all the reasons he thinks he’s got the right to hate him?”

Giles drew in a slow, deep breath, his eyes widening as he took in what she was saying. “Dear Lord,” he murmured softly, shaking his head slightly in dismay as he realized that she was right.

“It hurts,” Anya admitted with a nod. “I – I wish it surprised me more – but it just doesn’t. I wish that he *wasn’t* capable of something like what happened to Spike – but he is. I knew it already; I think I kind of knew it was him whenever we found Spike in those caves – I just – didn’t *want* to know it – you know?”

Thinking of Buffy, and Dawn, and his own desire to somehow clear the boy, Giles nodded. “I do know, Anya,” he replied. “I just – wanted you to know, before Buffy or Angel – or bloody hell, even young Dawn for that matter – do something to – to set things right, as they see it, for Spike. To – avenge what was done to him. I didn’t want you to be – unprepared.”

Anya nodded, a soft, slightly shy smile coming over her face as she looked into his deep blue eyes with surprise and gratitude – obviously stunned to have been the object of his concern.

“Thank you,” she said softly. “But – you don’t have to worry about how I’ll feel about it. A thousand years working vengeance, you kind of get a feeling for justice – and how some things just have to be punished. If Xander really did this to Spike – he deserves whatever they decide to give him. And while I don’t exactly want to take part in it – unless I have to – I won’t stand in their way.”

With a new respect in his eyes for the ancient vengeance demon, who now was both blessed and cursed with the fragile heart of a human woman, Giles smiled gently, encouragingly at her, as he laid the money for both of their drinks on the counter and stood, offering her his hand to help her to her feet.

They just stood there for a moment, unexpectedly lost in each other’s intensely studying eyes – each caught completely off guard by the sudden connection that seemed to have formed between them.

Giles opened his mouth as if to speak, shaking his head slightly in a sort of wonder – and then shut his mouth again, looking away with a little smile.

“What?” Anya demanded, a bit defensively.

“Nothing,” he attempted to assure her, as they headed toward the door.

“No, what?” she persisted, her many years of dealing with the various treacheries of men, as well as her own recent experience with such treachery, making her anxious and self-conscious, and desperate to know what it was that he had just barely stopped himself from saying. “What were you going to say about me, Rupert Giles?”

Giles paused at the door, turning slightly to face her, a slightly wistful expression in his eyes, as he opened his mouth – hesitated again – and then finally responded in a soft, thoughtful voice, not quite meeting her eyes.

“In all honesty, Anya – I was simply wondering – what it might have been like, had we done this before…”

At her slightly blank, puzzled look, he continued with a self-deprecating little smile, “Gone for coffee like this – just to talk. You’re really an – an extraordinary woman…Anyanka,” he confessed quietly, her old name somehow slipping out without his really meaning for it to. “And a man like me simply can’t help but wonder – what things might have been like, had we done this – without a crisis to force us to – and perhaps, before you’d become involved with a high school student more than a thousand years your junior.”

Anya was wide-eyed, startled and a bit taken aback by his unexpected words. She blinked, taking it in, before a slow smile spread across her lips.

“You’re only just *less* than a thousand years my junior,” she reminded him with a teasing smile that did not quite mask her pleased blush at his attention.

“Still,” he pressed, with a little half shrug to concede her point, “the difference is slightly less…and a man…well, he can’t help but wonder, that’s all.”

Offering her his arm, like a proper English gentleman, Giles led her on through the door and out onto the sidewalk, heading toward the small apartment where she was currently staying.

They were halfway there when Anya spoke again, breaking the silence in a voice that was low, and husky with pleasure and promise, as she answered his wonderings softly and wistfully.

“I think – I think it would have been nice. Very nice.”

Giles suppressed a smile of amusement and pleasure at her words, but did not respond at all, as they kept walking.

Anya suddenly pulled them both to a stop, turning slightly to face him with solemn, intent emerald eyes, making it clear before she spoke that she had something more to say.

“I think – it still could be.”