Giles/Anya... Was it foretold?

If you look back at the first BTVS ship you ever shipped, what moment instantly springs to mind?  What moment is there, sticking out from all others and doesn't let you forget that you fell in love with that pairing?  As a B/A shipper, that moment was in 'The Harvest' - the moment when Buffy asks Angel if he knows what it's like to have a friend.  He doesn't and you can see from that moment on, that if they're not going to be friends, they're going to at least be something. 

As a C/A shipper, that moment for me is in 'To Shanshu In LA' - where I realised that when Angel said he needed Cordy back, he really DID need Cordy back.  To me, these moments are obvious.  They're the moments that make me go 'aww' when I see them again, the moments that make me think that a beautifully written relationship has stemmed from this one event.

So, my point - because I do actually have one, is that there was one of those moments for Giles/Anya.  It's an obvious one, granted - but it's still there.

Before Tabula Rasa, in BTVS S6, I'd never even considered Giles/Anya together.  I'm willing to admit that.  Before Tabula Rasa, I was a complete Xander/Anya shipper and then, it happened.  The kiss... Ok, not just the kiss, the whole thing.  The being married, the perfect set up that they already have with the shop and the bickering over who gets what in what looked amicably like a divorce settlement (no pun intended lol) - the whole episode made me think... What if...

Of course, by the time Hell's Bell's came around, the slightly disheartened Giles/Anya shipper in me was looking for all the fic I could find where Giles/Anya could get together, because - well, talk about depressed as HELL... Giles/Anya were perfect for each other, and Anya was going to screw it all up by marrying sweet but slightly boneheaded Xander... I should've known by the title, that things weren't going to bode well... Then, it happened.  Sweet, but slightly boneheaded Xander caved... His marriage to Anya was over and the Giles/Anya shipperette in me came into full force... I wrote fic, I READ fic - I looked for everything I could find post-Hell's Bell's that would let me indulge in my little Giles/Anya fantasies and before I knew it, there I was, the full-blown Giles/Anya shipper... :)

So, the title of the essay - the whole 'Was It Foretold' thing... Well, think about it.  In Season 6, we have Giles/Anya, thinking that they're married because of a spell done by Willow in what we know only as desperation... Then, if you look at the fact that the same thing happened in Season 4 with Buffy/Spike and now there's a relationship, the brain starts to kick into overdrive...

"Maybe Giles/Anya are meant to be!"  Says the Giles/Anya shipper in you, "We all know Joss likes to screw with us.  He puts Anya through unbearable emotional pain, then, he puts Giles through the other kind of pain, the physical kind, claps his hands, puts them together at the end of the world and then has Anya saying the words, 'Don't die!  Not yet, there are things I want to tell you'.."

It's basic Buffy/Spike foreshadowing.  We're not saying we want the heartache that some of the Buffy/Spike relationship provided, but look at the signs!  They're all there!!!  And when you can finally say that?  You know for certain that it's good to be a Giles/Anya shipper!