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London Headquarters, Watcher's Council. Tuesday 28th August 2001, 9 a.m.
"Mr. Giles, good morning. You know why you're here?"
"I was told it was for…debriefing"
"Yes, our seniors do seem fond of the military metaphor. Please, sit down. My name is Robert Parker. Dr Parker if you insist, though I imagine you are used to informality after all your years in America."
The man seated behind the cluttered desk was of indeterminate age, with iron grey hair and chocolate brown, patient eyes. He shrugged uncomfortably in his tweed jacket and looked at his visitor with genuine interest. This man did not look like someone who had lived five years on a Hellmouth, battled demons hand to hand, been tortured and betrayed, but who had been the rock on which the Slayer had taken her stand against evil. The words 'I thought you'd be taller' floated irreverently into Parker's mind and he gave an involuntary amused snort. Rupert Giles was a good head taller than him.
"Excuse me? Something humorous, Dr Parker?"
The tone was cool but he suddenly felt judged and found wanting.
<<I really don't want to be in the position where *he's* interviewing *me*. Time to establish some boundaries, I think. This man could dominate a conversation, a situation if he chose. But it's not good for him to be this in control, not even of himself>>
"Forgive me, wool-gathering, how rude of me. Now, Rupert, - I may call you Rupert?"
"As you wish, Dr. Parker."
<<God, he really wasn't going to be offering anything anytime soon >> Parker folded his hands in front of him and leaned forward, projecting friendly concern.
"We have of course reviewed all your Watcher diaries and received your final report, which may I say, was admirable in its detail of the Slayer's final days, the motivation behind her sacrifice, and possible ramifications for the future."
"She…we…I found the previous accounts unsatisfactory. The diaries are kept to increase and pass on knowledge."
"The Watcher Diaries, perhaps, have done no more than that. But why keep a regular diary? To record one's own experiences, feelings, motivations? Teenagers in particular seem to do that. I'm sure Buffy Summers' diary would make interesting reading, if she kept one."
Giles shifted in his seat for the first time, and looked sharply at his interviewer.
"You don't have it? Didn't take her papers? When we returned to the house after t-the" He paused, cleared his throat , "the f-funeral, her room had been ransacked. Everything that she had ever written, her schoolwork even, had gone. I assumed it was Council procedure."
"If so, I have seen none of it. Others may wish to analyse, to catalogue the late Slayer's thoughts and beliefs. My business is with you, Rupert."
"Catalogue! You can't catalogue a life!" Giles said in disbelief.
"I think you might find some disagreement from the fellows in Records and Archiving, but rest assured I don't mean to trivialise Miss Summers or her remarkable achievements. Nor yours."
"Dr Parker, I had a very long flight at the weekend, and an early start this morning. I am somewhat fatigued. Kindly get to the point."
"I don't imagine you've been sleeping too well either," ventured Parker.
"Yes, well, er, transatlantic flights play havoc with the pattern of one's days"
"I mean, since it happened. I very much doubt you've had a full night's sleep since Buffy died."
It was a low blow, the first lancing of a wound that hadn't closed, not by a long way. Giles' face drained of colour and his eyes closed briefly. When he opened them again he looked wary.
"I thought I came here to find out where I go next, what I do, and that you're here to tell me, not hold my bloody hand and ask me how I'm coping. I thought I'd left all the navel gazing behind in California. Next you'll be telling me I'll be seeing a psychiatrist for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or whatever the fashionable term is these days. I can still do my job, my duty."
"Not everyone in this building would agree. You want the plain truth, Rupert? You shall have it. I *am* a psychiatrist, though unlike most of my profession, I don't count a belief in Vampires and Demons as evidence of paranoid delusions. You are talking to me because certain members of the Council believe that you have been less than honest with them, that your fitness to act as a Watcher has been called into question and that you should not be reassigned on any council business until I pass you as fit to do so. That do for starters?"
In one violent movement Giles rose from his seat, slammed both fists on Parker's desk top and brought his furious face to within a few inches of the other man's. For the first time in a long while Parker was afraid for his physical safety. He reared back, clasping the edge of the desk with both hands and the front legs of his chair left the floor.
"Let me get this straight" Giles hissed." They sent me here to be taken apart and cleaned like a broken timepiece, then you put back all the bits back in the Council-approved order so I work "properly" again?"
"Rupert, please try and remain calm. I'm here primarily to help *you*."
"Suppose I don't want help, don't need it. Suppose I just want to get on with my life without being made to live the whole sodding mess in Sunnydale over again for someone else's entertainment. Suppose you get a life, and leave mine alone!"
He strode to the door, flung it open and was about to leave when the sound of Parker's chair righting itself and his quiet "Aren't you forgetting something?" stopped him.
"What?" His tone was still belligerent but he was listening now, though he still didn't turn back into the room.
"Unless I am to take this as your resignation, you wish to remain a Watcher, do you not? I meant what I said before. I'm your key to that."
Giles' back straightened and he took a deep breath, letting it out slowly in a long sigh. He repeated the process once, twice, then turned back with a composed expression and returned to his seat.
"Alright, I'll talk to you. But I don't want any Freudian claptrap about my mother and I don't ever want to hear you say you "understand what I'm going through" because you damn well don't". He raised his chin defiantly and looked long and hard at his interviewer. There was a challenge there, but a chink in the armour too. Rupert Giles would not ask for help no matter how badly he needed it, but he might leave an opportunity for someone else to take the initiative.
"First of all I want to say that I don't think you're "broken". But I do think you're hurting, it fact it would be extraordinary if you weren't. The… young people in Sunnydale, Buffy's friends, were they "there for you", as I think they would say?"
Giles contemplated his hands, which were clasped tightly on his crossed knee.
"They…tried to be. Willow especially, and Tara in her way - she doesn't say much but she has a kind heart. But they all needed me to be strong for them. It's what I do…what I did."
"Did you have anyone else?"
Giles smiled ruefully
"Spike offered to go and get rat-arsed with me at Willy's Bar. None of the others are old enough to drink. But seeing some of what he drinks there makes me puke".
"Spike? Oh yes, William the Bloody. A neutered vampire, something of an anomaly."
"Neutered? Don't ever let him hear you use that word. He might not be able to kill you himself but he's not above hired help. As for anomalies, the whole of Sunnydale seemed to see one after another of them for five long years." All at once he seemed to turn inward, to retreat into the world of those five years.
"Yes, and in many ways none more extraordinary than your Slayer."
That restored Giles' attention.
Buffy. It always came back to her. It had to. Whatever the official Council line might be, Parker knew that the active Slayer was at the centre of the network of communications, paper trails, passwords and personnel. Between the world and the Evil, the Slayer. Between the Slayer and the world, her Watcher. He'd known many of these men and women and respected almost all of them, especially the ones he'd seen in this very office after the death of their Slayers; all of them proud of, as well as battered by, the girl's life and her end. Some of them bore wounds without and within, wounds that could only be bound, and scars he could not erase. They were *not* parts of a machine, but individuals every one, unsung heroes whose own refrain seemed always to be "If only I could have prepared her better, she might not…"
As good a place to start as any.
"I imagine that after five years Buffy's death must have been hard for you to accept. You had already taken her through so much. To be unable at last to prevent.."
"No".
Parker looked up, surprised, from the middle distance he had been addressing in the hope of neutralising the sting and avoiding any implication of blame.
"I'm sorry?"
"I said, 'No'. Buffy *chose* to make the gift of her life, of her death. She was not defeated in battle. I do not believe I failed her, not then. I gave her the information she needed to make her choice, and she made it. She was not a child." His voice was strong, proud.
"Indeed not. The longest-lived active Slayer this century."
There was an extended silence. In theory, Parker had all day, in fact as long as it took, but now he seemed to have come to a full stop on the guilt trail, he could not put off the unavoidable any longer. He was after all paid by the Council, sworn to their service and prepared, after his own fashion, to do their bidding. He took a deep breath.
"Tell me about your relationship with Miss Summers."
Giles' eyes narrowed.
"I was her Watcher".
"I mean your *personal* relationship. As human beings, not as colleagues. As man and gir..woman" << I really must stop making this man angry. Wounded and cornered; a dangerous combination>>
"None of your damn business". As soon as he said it, Giles realised what it must sound like. But it seemed that someone on the Council had come to their own conclusions anyway.
Parker reached for the stack of papers in front of him and extracted a folder. The legend "Special Operations" was stamped on the cover. He really didn't want to do this. As if active Watchers didn't have enough to put up with keeping their own records and putting in reports on every conceivable subject, they had to be kept tabs on clandestinely as well.
"At midnight on August 14th 2001 the Watcher Rupert Giles was observed in a clearing in Breakers Woods apparently performing an as yet undetermined magic rite, possibly connected to the loss of his Slayer three lunar months previously. It is recommended that further investigations be made as to the nature and purpose of his actions at such time as he may present himself in person to the Council of Watchers."
Parker stopped reading aloud from the document and looked at Giles with compassion. It was possible that this man had lost a great deal more than a colleague, and that he was to be censured for the attachment even if not the loss. He half expected another explosion but instead Giles laughed bitterly.
"No wonder half your Watchers end up needing to see a shrink. How does it go? 'Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not following you.' Well I hope whichever *spy* it was enjoyed seeing me in Breakers Woods without a stitch on."
The other man smothered a grin. The report had actually omitted that particular detail. It had included some of the items gathered, but had been unable to identify their connection to a single known ritual. Nor was it obvious which herbs had been used in the potion.
"So what exactly were you trying to achieve?"
"Again, none of your business. Didn't work anyway," he added in an undertone.
"Rupert, I'm a psychiatrist *and* a Wiccan. Of some experience actually. The Council need to know what you were doing and why you felt you needed to. If we can work out together why it didn't 'work' as you put it, perhaps we can also find you some resolution in all this."
Giles passed a hand over his face, covering his mouth with his fingers and closed his eyes for a moment, considering. Then he seemed to come to a decision, squared his shoulders and met Parker's gaze openly.
"I wanted to take some of the pain away," He said simply." I knew I'd miss her, mourn her, but it was…it filled me. Choked me, tore at me every day, as if I was being eaten alive. It didn't seem normal. I did some research; concocted a composite spell in the hope that I could go some way towards cleansing my soul."
Parker hesitated before asking what to him was the obvious question. Things were clearly not quite as it appeared to his superiors.
"You didn't try Handfast Severance?" The Special Ops rep had tried to connect Giles' rite to that ancient resort of bereaved spouses and lovers, but without success.
"No, that's for people who have…we weren't…"Giles stopped, stunned. "I see. They think I betrayed my trust, my guardianship. They think I *slept* with her - and you do, too." He leaned forward, emphasisng his words with a jabbing forefinger. "Listen carefully, Dr Parker. I.Never.Touched.Her. Never asked to. Never let myself think…"
"Perhaps that's the trouble."
Giles stood up and walked to the window, looking out at the wet London streets, constantly washed by the rain but never really clean. He knew the feeling. Leaning his forehead against the windowpane he began to speak, at first quietly, tiredly so that Parker had to strain to hear, but rising to a crescendo of scorn.
"What the *hell* do you people want from me? Damned if I did and damned if I didn't! I'm well aware that you psychiatrists seem to think that chastity is a disease. The Council, on the other hand, think an unmarried Watcher should be a eunuch. Can you make up your collective minds and send me a telegram when you're done?"
"What you do about your sexual needs is a choice. A way of life is never a disease. I can't say what your relationship with Buffy Summers ought to have been, that was between the two of you. But that you didn't apparently think about the sexual dimension, did not let yourself consider the possibility, might be at the root of the failure of the spell, and why you're obviously still suffering now, perhaps beyond your ability to bear."
"What I have done about m-my… 'sexual needs' for the past year and a half, has been keep them to myself, in both senses of the phrase. I'm not a man who finds celibacy easy, despite what "the gang" in Sunnydale believe." A corner of Giles' mouth quirked upward." I used to think like them when I was their age. Anyone over forty, hell, over thirty, was dead below the waist. I know better now. As for suffering, what can you do, if the Powers would not? I might as well go back to trying some hefty doses of single malt anaesthetic again."
"You loved her very much."
"I just *told* you…"
"Rupert, you were dismissed once for what was deemed "inappropriate emotional attachment", essentially for loving her. That was nearly three years ago. I would expect that such an attachment would continue, indeed grow as you kept working together. You maintained close contact with Buffy when officially there was no reason to. I probably don't need to tell you what interpretation was put on that by your superiors."
"I stayed because I was needed. Did you ever meet the lackwit they sent to replace me? He's redeemed himself a little since, but then? He'd have got her killed."
"So there was nothing in it for you but duty?"
"For me? I don't know how much you know about me, Dr Parker, but I once spent four years doing everything I could think of to escape my destiny as a Watcher because I knew that there would be precious little in it "for me". I'm not appealing for sympathy here, but over the last five years, I have been bereaved, lonely, betrayed, disappointed, bored beyond belief and hurt time without number in ways I would once scarcely have believed possible. Sometimes all that kept me going was my oath and the conviction that I *could* make a difference."
"The ritual you attempted was for the loss of your role as Watcher in the field, then?"
"No. Over the past year, we had moved closer, begun to relate as adults. She came to see that there was more to her life than a series of disconnected fights to the death with vampires and demons. By the end she knew her significance ran far deeper than that. I was proud of her and of my part in helping her to become what she was."
"If it had been no more than that the spell should have worked". Parker countered. "What did you actually do? Can you show me?"
Giles set his chair to one side and knelt on the plush forest green pile of the carpet. For a second he had a vision of the tall pine trees and the remembered feel of last years' needles stabbing his bare knees. "I think I'll dispense with the sky clad element of the ritual just now, since no actual magic is to be done", he said dryly "Besides, in my paranoid way, I can easily envisage that your office is bugged".
Parker began to like this man as well as admire him. He also suspected he might be right about the surveillance. Coming out from behind the desk, he perched on the front edge and watched as Giles laid his left hand on his own chest, over the heart, and extended the other to arms length, palm turned up in the traditional gesture of supplication. He closed his eyes as he began to recall.
"I had stripped myself of worldly trappings, down to the clothes on my back, gone to a centre of power to channel the energies there to my healing, and anointed myself with an Ointment of the Soul, a mixture of earths and herbs particular to my essence. I placed around me a protective circle of all the things that had meant most to us - tea and books and weapons and - a stuffed pig, of all things! I called to the Powers to witness the truths of my heart and beseeched them to leave me only enough of my feelings for her to keep her memory always with me".
Parker nodded to himself. So far, he understood the intent, and began also to see where perhaps the rite had fallen short.
"Which language did you use for the incantation? Latin or Greek?"
"Greek". Giles opened his eyes again and looked enquiringly up at Parker.
"A wise choice. Latin for rhetoric, the law, science, analysis. For summary, and construction. But for poetry and the secrets of the heart, give me Greek every time. The four words for love; Agape, Storge, Phileo, Eros. In my experience both personal and professional, they can coexist -often do- in the same person, the same relationship, and the exact mix rarely stays static. Almost always the balance is different in two individuals who share a loving connection whatever its nature, but usually they learn to accommodate that, or they separate. If the connection is broken,especially by death, healing can only come if the survivor knows what has been lost."
Giles did not get up, but sat back on his heels, hands in his lap, twisting his signet ring as he glared angrily.
"You think I don't? I knew her, Dr Parker, perhaps as well as anyone. We'd been through everything from multiple apocalypses to multiple choice SATs. We lost and found each other a dozen times. I saw her grow and mature through this hellish year, her mother dying so suddenly, her sister turning out to be a deadly mirage, her lover betraying her with a vampire whore. We were closer than ever before. *I know what I lost.*"
"I did not say whom, but what. I believe, and I am sure you will be able to confirm whether I am right, that when you asked the Powers to take away the pain of your love which now lacked its object, you named only three of the four loves."
Giles nodded mutely.
"So, the girl whom you had sworn to protect and nurture before she was born, to put her interests before your own, became the girl you met, protected and guided, whose family you and her friends became. She grew into an adult whom you had to let make her first steps to independence, whom you grew to love as a friend."
"That sounds like our story, all right. Charity, Family, Friendship."
Parker hopped nimbly off the desk edge and sat crosslegged on the floor opposite Giles.The two men regarded each other steadily.
"And Eros? The Blind Archer? The finger of fate? The lightning strike?" he asked intently.
"My young friends in Sunnydale would say it just happens, or it doesn't. There was no thunderbolt for us. No Eros." But Giles did not seem convinced. He had seen and experienced too much of the kaleidoscope of human love in his forty five years. In the end, 'falling in love' could be a choice, too.
"I think we are older and wiser than they are, Rupert. You've been straight with the Council, followed their rule in this. But you've been less than honest with yourself,and until you make a reckoning with the Powers for the unexpressed desire as well as the lost reality, you won't find peace. All the other loves you could give her, you did, and this too, if you'd chosen to tell her."
Giles turned his head away, taking off his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose hard with thumb and forefinger to stem the tears that threatened to flow. It was bad enough that he had to open his soul to this fellow. Damned if he was going to cry too. He rose to this feet and turned his back. Parker stayed where he was; if Giles was going to face this, he didn't need an audience. Just someone to prime the pump, and it looked as if the spring was finally going to be tapped.
Taking a minute to be certain he was in control of himself, Giles began to speak.
"All right. The truth. Yes, sometimes I did think of her that way. She was a beautiful young woman and did nothing to hide it. More than that, in that last year, I was able to forgive her for many of the mistakes, the wounds that still festered from all our tangled dealings while she was growing up. I knew I had changed over those years. How could I deny her the right to do the same? But she was still fresh, uncorrupted despite everything. I thought my feelings cheapened what we had. I knew what she needed me for, and it wasn't that. I wondered sometimes if it wasn't just the…deprivation talking. We spent a lot of time together, but she would never….besides, she deserved better. This body's seen a lot of wear - a lot of women, come to that - and there are dark places in my soul that I don't want to visit myself. I'm not offering anyone else a guided tour." Ben's bloodied face, struggling for breath, suddenly flashed in his memory and he shuddered. Only the last of many shadows.
"Too late now anyway" he finished in a whisper.
Both men jumped as three sharp raps sounded on the door. At Parker's call to "Come in", an impeccably suited and well spoken young man put his head round the door jamb. He was scarcely more than a boy, and one who'd just left a very good school at that.
"Excuse me, Mr Giles? Could you come to the telephone in the Chairman's office? There's an urgent call for you from the United States. A Miss Summers."
END (for now)