Chapter Text
“What's this?” Giles asks, holding it up. Staring successively at the thing itself and the girl who has handed it to him.
“It's your costume,” Willow explains. As though it should have been obvious. “You know, for Halloween.”
“It's a hat,” Giles points out by way of rebuttal. What else is there to say? Except perhaps, 'Why the devil would I want to take part in your silly American tradition of carrying over the things of childhood well into middle age.' Which of course he cannot say. No one could, looking into those desperately hopeful eyes.
“It's an 'Indiana Jones hat',” she further clarifies, searching his face for a sign that this, at least, he is able to understand.
Giles smiles obligingly and puts the hat on his head. “Right then,” he says with a nod of acceptance. But after a moment, doubtfully, “Shouldn't there be more to it? Safari attire or a whip or something?”
Willow smiles, her eyes twinkling with just a hint of mischief, “Not in the library, Dr. Jones.”
And that's that. Off she scampers. Off to shepherd other, younger children safely through what is, in Sunnydale, perhaps the only safe evening of the year.
Giles reaches up a hand to remove his 'costume'. At the last second, he changes his mind. It has made her so happy to see him put it on. And it is a rather amusingly perceptive choice. Indiana Jones. Undeniably a genuine scholar, yet quintessentially something else altogether.
Evidently at least one of his young comrades in arms has gathered that he isn't, strictly speaking, an actual librarian, even if his Slayer hasn't. Unless, of course, he is reading too much in. As the desperately lonely and misunderstood are often wont to do.
Rupert sighs and reaches again for the hat. He leaves it on again. It's nice to pretend for a bit anyway.