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The photos had surfaced at Buffy’s thirty-fifth birthday party—a present from Xander, which accounted for the fact that they weren’t cutely arranged in a scrapbook or carefully placed in a photo album or something. No, these were still in the yellowing envelope from the development place, shiny and pristine in a way that suggested they hadn’t been touched since Xander got them back. No one had been too surprised at his laughing admission: he’d found them in his old high school backpack, the one shipped away with the rest of the Sunnydale stuff he’d gotten out of town before the First hit, and all of that stuff had been in storage for years so of course he’d had no idea they were there.
“Kind of a mystery,” he’d said with a little grin. “Like a little time capsule. You wanna open them now or later?”
And Buffy, seeing the date on the photos, realized with a small jolt that they had been taken only two weeks before her seventeenth birthday. She’d laughed it off during the party, of course, rattled off some half-truth about not wanting everyone to see her get all sappy, but the fact of the matter was that she wasn’t totally sure if she was really ready to see stuff from that time period. Thinking about the girl she had been before Angelus—sunny and warm and scared and open—was such a painful, private process. Not exactly the kind of mood that you wanted to be in on your birthday, especially one as happy as thirty-five. Every year was a new record set for the oldest Slayer in history.
So the pictures were tucked away for what ended up being five more years. Initially, the plan was to set aside a special day to open them all—maybe call Dawn over when she was done, bump shoulders on Buffy’s tiny couch and watch some of Mom’s favorite movies together. But real life was distracting and busy, and an old envelope of photos wasn’t exactly high on the Buffy Priority List, so it stayed in the drawer she’d carefully hidden it away inside until a few months after her fortieth birthday.
It took her a moment to remember what the envelope was, and after a sheepish, laughing exhale, Buffy decided that now was as good a time as any. Sitting down at her kitchen table, she opened the photos, letting them spill out in front of her.
God, they’d been so young. Willow looked so baby-faced and tiny; she suddenly understood why it had been so easy for Giles not to see the kind of danger they were all dancing around with a girl like that. Xander, being the photographer, was conspicuously missing from most of the photos, but he showed up in a few that looked a little more aesthetically pleasing. Taken by Giles, probably, or—
No. Wait. A shot of Giles, framed perfectly, in a way that didn’t at all fit with the wobbly, off-center feel to the photos that Xander had taken. He was grinning at the camera, eyes sparkling with unhidden delight. The other photos had him grudging and hesitant, smiling somewhat reluctantly—but he was lit up like a Christmas tree, here, all of his focus on whoever was holding the camera. Buffy hadn’t seen him smile like that since—
oh.
The realization hit her hard. Without really thinking about it, she began to sort the photos—some of them Xander’s, some of them taken by the suddenly not-so-mysterious other photographer. She’d give them to Giles, maybe—he’d gotten so good at reading between the lines, and this seemed like the kind of thing he’d want, anyway. It wasn’t like Buffy could keep these, not when they made her throat feel all tight.
Like—there was a shot of her, artsy and well-lit, orangey late-afternoon light streaming in from the library windows. It was clear that she’d been asked to pose, and god, now she was remembering—the laughter from Willow and Xander, the dramatic way Ms. Calendar had snapped the photo, darting rapidly back and forth like a fashion photographer. Give me style, give me flair— even Giles had been laughing, but he’d always laughed if Ms. Calendar was being silly and over-the-top. He’d roll his eyes if they were being silly—he’d never stopped doing that—but Ms. Calendar always got a breathless giggle that had disappeared from his emotional rotation not long after she had.
And a shot of Giles at the computer, his brow furrowed. Written on the back in Xander’s handwriting—save for Ms. C. In Buffy’s memories, she’d always remembered Giles as so obviously old, even when she was sixteen; even now, he still felt like more of an adult than her somehow. But he was her age in this photo, hair only inching towards the salt-and-pepper look he’d rocked back when she was in her twenties. If she saw this guy in a bar, she’d smile a little and head over to swap stories with him, not—not expect him to know everything in the world. God.
And there, Willow and Xander posed with comic solemnity, Willow wearing Ms. Calendar’s leather jacket with her hair teased out a little. Both of them were suppressing smiles, and a faint, rosy blush lingered on Willow’s cheeks, her eyes trained on the camera with a kind of furtive appreciation. There, Giles looking up at Buffy with a sweet, bright smile, both of their faces cast in a warm light by the glow of the library lamp. There, Cordelia perched daintily atop the library counter, applying makeup: it looked like one of those photos you’d see in a magazine. Buffy wondered if Ms. Calendar had been a photographer, or maybe just liked taking photos, and realized with a sharp pang that this was the first time she had wondered something like that about Ms. Calendar at all.
She swallowed, then kept looking, because there had to be one with Ms. Calendar somewhere. But Xander, it seemed, had been more interested in pictures of Willow and Buffy and Giles (with Cordelia thrown in here and there), and Ms. Calendar hadn’t taken any photos of herself. She thought there was a flash of dark hair in one of the photos that was too long to be Xander, too short to be Cordelia—thought she saw a floral sleeve in the corner of another that was a little too blouse-y to be Willow or Cordy—but none of Ms. Calendar in her entirety.
Maybe she was wrong. It had been so many years ago, after all. Maybe it was a day when Ms. Calendar wasn’t in the library, maybe Giles had taken some of the artsy shots and Buffy had taken some of the others, maybe Ms. Calendar had left her jacket and Willow had tried it on, because all of that made so much more sense than all of these photos just missing Ms. Calendar. She’d been there. She’d been a part of them, even if it had been twenty-some years since anybody had even said her name out loud. It felt wrong not to have her in these photos—
And then Buffy saw it. Xander had clearly only intended to take a photo of her, but she’d been leaning over to take some microwavable popcorn from a bag next to Ms. Calendar. Buffy’s focus was on the popcorn, Ms. Calendar’s on a book she was sharing with Giles (whose shoulder was the only part of him in frame), so it didn’t exactly have the kitschy, posed feel that Ms. Calendar’s photos had. It was just—them.
Buffy looked at herself—baby-faced and bright-eyed in a way that she knew wouldn’t last for all that long. This was two weeks before everything went to hell, after all. She looked at Ms. Calendar, and noticed with another pang that though Ms. Calendar’s eyes were on the book, her hand was nudging the bag of popcorn closer to Buffy, who was stretching somewhat dramatically across the table to reach it. Baby Buffy wouldn’t have noticed a thing like that. Forty-year-old-Buffy had forgotten this entire day, and Ms. Calendar’s laughter, and the way she’d taken pictures of them with her eyes shining.
Mostly, when she thought of Ms. Calendar, she’d thought of Ms. Calendar like she’d seen her in high school—an adult, worlds older than her, who had known right from wrong and stepped right into wrong without batting an eye. When she was sixteen, adults knew everything, or at least worlds more than her, but Ms. Calendar—Ms. Calendar was in her early thirties at most. Ms. Calendar had always seemed like she was trying too hard to be one of the kids, back when Buffy was in high school, but now—
“She was so young,” said Buffy in a tiny voice.
In her memories, it had been hazy and easily glossed over: in a photo, it was indisputable. Buffy was now over a decade older than Ms. Calendar would ever get to be.
How are we feeling about a cinematic hair flip?
Like I’m gonna get hair in my face and block the camera’s view of my absolutely excellent lip gloss choice.
Mm. Fair point.
“Hey, Giles,” said Buffy. She thought she could feel her heartbeat in her ears. “This is…kind of a weird question, but do you…want some of those old photos Xander gave me?”
“I…what?” said Giles, looking up from his book. He could clearly sense that something was up with Buffy, but she guessed he was having kind of a hard time figuring out why she’d be so nervous about asking. “I-I suppose I could look at a few—”
“Here,” said Buffy, and handed him the small stack of photos that Ms. Calendar had taken. Not of Willow and Xander—just of him. There hadn’t been too many, probably because Ms. Calendar had known that Xander would see any developed photos, but there had been enough for her to notice how he looked at the camera, and how the camera looked at him. She didn’t feel right keeping photos like that.
“W-well,” said Giles, his bemused frown lingering as he surveyed the photos—and then she saw the moment when it clicked. His fingers tightened around the shots, his breath hitching as he stared at his own expression. Always a smart guy, that Giles.
“There are…more,” said Buffy timidly. “Not of you, but of…the rest of us.”
Giles’s eyes snapped up to Buffy’s. He wasn’t saying anything at all. He never talked about Ms. Calendar, ever, but that look in his eyes—
“Of Jenny?” he said.
For a moment, Buffy was almost afraid to speak. Then, tentatively, she said, “Do you remember that day Ms. Calendar bogarted Xander’s camera for the afternoon? She took a bunch of those shots, so she’s not in most of them, but I think there are—” she took a nervous breath, “—one or two of her. Took me a while to find them, but—”
Giles didn’t seem able to say anything at all.
“I can…I mean, if you don’t—”
“No, I want them,” said Giles.
Buffy hesitated. “Giles. I don’t know if I ever—”
“She would never have blamed you, Buffy.”
God, he was always like this. Always able to turn it around, know what she was thinking, steer it away from him and how he was very obviously hurting. But the ache in Buffy’s chest was decades old, and the comfort of their old pattern was too soothing for her to break free for his sake. “You think?” she said, trying to smile.
“Jenny thought…very highly of you,” said Giles, and almost smiled. “If anything, I think she’d be quite happy to see the woman you’ve become.”
She wasn’t totally sure if he was just saying that to make her feel better, or if he really believed it. He’d known Ms. Calendar so much better than she had; he’d been in love with her in the same way she’d been in love with Angel. But it did feel better, kind of, imagining that bright, laughing lady looking at her the way she had when she’d snapped that photo. So she let herself imagine it a little longer.
Okay, big smile, Buffy, like it’s your birthday and all the vamps in the world are on FIRE. Oh my god, don’t laugh, you’ll spoil the mood—
What mood are you—hahahaha—going for? Absurdist chic?
Exactly that. You get me. She gets me, Rupert.