Drabble: When the Spell Lifted (Rupert Giles/Anya Jenkins, PG, Length: 100)

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Title: When the Spell Lifted
Author: feliciacraft
Characters/Pairing: Rupert Giles/Anya Jenkins (BtVS)
Setting: End of Tabula Rasa (Season 6)
Prompt: Last line from previous drabble to be used as my first line: He didn’t like it.

When the Spell Lifted

He didn’t like it, the return of his memories, an onslaught of experiences intimate and foreign: of youthful aspirations turned unfinished business buried deep; of a tumultuous liberation twined with innocence lost; of expectations and responsibilities, duty and loyalty, and always the mission, above all.

He missed it already: the gutted version of himself unburdened by his past; the warmth of her body pressed into his own — the quiet reassurance of another’s love firmly in possession, knowing not their shared history, but that whatever it’d been, whatever it’d be, they’d face it together.

Now. What’d he gained, but more loss?