strangetrip | [For Carlos] Happy Anniversary

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[For Carlos] Happy Anniversary

Time always seemed to get away from Buffy, especially when days flowed into months and months flowed into a year. It didn’t seem possible that she had been in the Inn for a little over a year. A year without her friends. A year without her mom. A year without Giles. She wondered what they were all doing. She still missed them, a lot, but it was also a year of new friends. A year of Carlos.

The year had been eventful to put it mildly, but she wanted to do something special with Carlos. Buffy hadn’t wanted to do it Valentine’s Day, there was too much complex feels about that and the Cupid magical whammy of last year. The day after was perfect. It was like an anniversary of actual feels rather than of manufactured ones.

Because she liked Carlos, Buffy didn’t offer to cook and because he cooked, she didn’t want to go to the restaurant. It would be too much like a busman’s holiday for him. Instead, they’d agreed on a picnic under the stars. Nice, romantic and neither one had to cook. When she’d gone to get a bottle of wine for them, she’d heard the news that Wyatt had left, which only confirmed that life was short. Something Buffy and Carlos were well aware of in their lives back home. Carpe diem.

She shifted the basket to her other hand as she knocked on Carlos’ door. Buffy planned to seize the day or at least as many opportunities as possible before Fate stepped in and kicked her in the teeth like with Kitty and Wyatt.

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He barked out a laugh, before lounging on the blanket. "Chicken, fifty ways. This place is frustrating at times," he commented. "There are lots of other lovely ingredients to use, and what do we get? More chicken."

He looked at the basket. "This looks good though."

"Not chicken." She grinned at him as she began to lay out the food. "I bribed for mutton." It was something different, and something that she'd had before. "I might have to do dishes for a week." She was kidding, the chef that she'd asked had been happy to do something different.

"Mutton?! Not something I've had for a while," he said, reaching into the basket to help her set out the food. "Eh, dishes aren't so bad. It could have been worse." But he knew the chef, and knew she wouldn't have to do them.

"Sure if you have a dishwasher they're easy." She teased as she finished up the food. "But by hand?" Buffy did a mock shudder. "That's when you wish you had a sibling that you could put it off on."

Carlos laughed as he sat down on the blanket. "That's where being part of a large family paid off. Once I started being able to do magic, I could generally get out of any chore simply by showing off the magic."

"Now see, I had to keep being Slayer a secret so I couldn't even have done that if I had a brother or a sister. What kind of showing off of magic did you do?" She asked as she handed him a plate to fill up.

"Well, I was supposed to keep being a wizard a secret, but it's a little hard when strange things start to happen around you," Carlos said with a laugh. "I started dissolving things. Like garden walls. At first I didn't realize what was happening, but I gradually figured it out and started playing with it. At least, until I got taken on by my mentor."

"Sounds like me." Buffy said as she started to fill her plate. "My first Watcher told me I was a Vampire Slayer. I thought he was a crazy old man. Then we were in a cemetery and he told me I'd know what to do. That was my first training. I guess if the Slayer instinct didn't kick in I would have died and they would have gone on to the next one. I missed the heart with the stake my first strike, but I pulled it out and then got it. That was my practice."

Buffy could smile now about it now, but she'd been freaked out at the time.

"When did your mentor show up?"

Carlos grinned, stretching out on the blanket and watching Buffy. "I dissolved a wall in my grandparents garden," he said with a shake of his head. "Looking back there were other little signs that made sense in hindsight. But my grandmother knew someone who knew someone and that's how I met my mentor." He smiled slightly thinking of the man who had agreed to take on a rambunctious child. "I thought it was the coolest thing ever."

"Was your grandmother magical, too?" Buffy wasn't sure how it worked exactly. Willow wasn't born with magic but she could do spells. "Is that how she knew someone that knew someone?"

"I don't think so - at least she wasn't a full blown wizard. She might have had some level of magic, there are a lot of minor practitioners out there. We can't track them all if they want to be undercover." He paused. "She just seemed to know everyone. It was her way."

Buffy thought that sounded nice. She didn't remember her grandmother, either one. They'd both been gone when she was old enough to know them.

"That sounds nice. I mean someone that seemed to know everyone. She sounds really grandmother-y."

Carlos laughed. "She is a force of nature," he pointed out. "Mexican families are large, close knit things. You need an abuelita to hold it together." He looked at Buffy. "I take it you didn't have a large family?"

"Nope, just me and my mom." Buffy shook her head. While it was said easily, there was a lot of pain underneath it.

"My parents got a divorce when I was just starting high school and dad didn't hang around after that." Well once, but after that one birthday ice skating thing, not so much.

He couldn't imagine what that would be like, but he could see the pain that it caused Buffy, and he leaned over, brushing a lock of hair away from the side of her face and kissing her forehead to try and reassure you. "I didn't mean to bring back bad memories," he said quietly.

Buffy closed her eyes for an instant, savoring his kiss and tender touch. It was really nice and something she hadn't really experience in over a year. "You didn't. I mean yeah they are bad memories. I have dad issues." That was an understatement. "But I also have a really great guy that took dad's place. Giles, my Watcher. He's my male role model."

Forgetting the uber ooky Ripper making out with young her mom, Giles was really the male father figure for her. They might not be related by blood but she would do anything for him. Almost anything. Angel/Angelus was another issue. She still felt guilty that she couldn't kill Angelus for him for Jenny.

"Uh, that sounded better in my head, but you know what I mean. He's my second dad." More of a father than her father.

"Watcher? Is that a Slayer thing?" he asked, latching onto a subject she seemed happier with. "I'm glad you managed to find someone who was able to help. That's not always easy to find."

"It is. The one thing the Watcher Council did right was pair Giles and me up." Though she suspected that had more to do with Giles than with the council.

"He's the best, but I'm biased."

He smiled in return. He got it, in many ways. "When you find the right mentor, it's the best thing that could happen to you." He wasn't as close to his wizard mentor as Buffy was with Giles, but he still felt affection for the now elderly wizard.

"Yeah it is." Buffy agreed. "Tell me about your mentor. What were they like? Are you still close even though you might not need him as much as in the beginning?" She smiled slightly, "sorry, that's a lot of questions."

And she might have been asking the last one out of personal fear.

Carlos leaned back slightly on his elbows, relaxing as they talked. "When I was twelve, he was the oldest person ever," he replied, laughing slightly. "But he was kind, and made sure that I wasn't scared by what I was capable of. He means a lot to me. I see him less now, but mostly because I'm normally so busy, and all over the world. But when I was injured, I was able to go and see him, catch up with him, ground myself all over again."

He'd needed it.

Something in Buffy relaxed that she hadn't known was bothering her as she listened to Carlos. She would have Giles in her life no matter what. She smiled, watching him talk about his mentor.

"He sounds great and I totally get needing to recharge with someone that really gets you."

Even if you only saw your mentor once in every 10 years, it was easy to fall back into the old relationship, he found, and it was something he treasured. "Yeah, he was just what I needed at the time. Being hurt so badly kind of knocked me back a bit."

Buffy lay down next to Carlos on the blanket, her head cradled in the palm of her hand as she rested on her elbow.

"What happened to you? If you want to talk about it, I mean."

"I got into a fight with some Fomor - kind of weird, frog-like men, supernatural creatures that are vicious. I came off second best in the fight." Not something that happened often, but he was just out-manoeuvred. "I'd been recovering for a year before arriving here."

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