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hobgoblinnThat would be me, looking in the mirror today.
Writing is frustrating. I have rewritten the same scene 4 times now-- all different ways, but absolutely of a piece when you average in the suckage factor.
What really gets me is-- the story to this point isn't that bad. I'll post up to where the suckage gets to truly hooverlike proportions-- maybe some feedback will jar something loose. If you can't bring yourself to read a WIP, especially since my last took 3 years to get finished-- don't worry. I won't be offended in the least. Maybe you can indulge in some drive by writing therapy, instead-- what helps you in these situations?
I will say that I'm proud of one thing-- I'm still writing every day. Even if it sucks, I'm making the effort.
This will start a little ways back from where the last part ended, just to give a running start, and because I edited it a bit for the better. Hope everybody else's St. Nick's Day is going better than mine.
“So, what went wrong? In particular?” Willow asked.
“Before or after Ellen asked me what a Slayer was?” Giles asked rhetorically, taking another sip. He sank down on the couch and focussed his gaze on the glass in his two hands, resting on his knees.
“Oh,” Willow said in a small voice.
“And she wanted to know ... if ‘apocalypse’ was even a word.” Tears were spilling down his cheeks now, and he made no effort to wipe them away. “Dear God, Willow....”
Willow came over to him, cleared a space across from him on the coffee table, and took the glass from his hands as she sat down. Laying it aside, she took his hands in hers.
“Oh Giles,” she sighed. “What did you tell her?”
“What could I tell her?”
There was nothing else to be said to this, so Willow didn’t try. They sat for a long while instead, just facing each other, holding hands. Nothing romantic in it. Just two old friends, there for each other. The gradual peace which had settled over them was shattered by Giles’ cell phone, beeping from his inside coat pocket. He disengaged his right hand and pulled it out, thumbing the button as he raised it to his ear. “Giles here.”
Willow gripped his hand a little tighter, then felt him relax as he heard the caller’s voice. “Lillian,” he said. He gave a slight smile, listening. Willow thought to let him go and give him some privacy, but he grasped her hand a little tighter and said “No, I understand. In fact, a friend of mine,” here he met Willow’s eyes and gave a faint grin, “was only now reminding me, that we’ve all been through rather a lot in the past few days.”
Willow concentrated on Giles’ fingers in hers, not dead and cold as they had been at the recent funeral. It felt good, his wanting her here with him. Like they were friends again.
“Yes, we’ll be by tomorrow,” Giles was saying. “My Slayer, Buffy is flying in from Rome in the morning. I’d like her to be party to any discussions we have about this situation, if that’s all right with you....” He paused, listening, then said, “ I’m sure we can persuade Andrew to occupy Ellen while we....” He chuckled. “Yes, I will speak to him about being a little more circumspect about his choice of conversation topics.... Right. Well, then. I’ll see you tomorrow. You too. Sleep well.” He thumbed the phone off and replaced it in his pocket, then gathered both of Willow’s hands again in his own and took a deep breath.
“See Giles? Breathing. Works wonders.”
He laughed then, the first real laugh she’d heard from him in... a very long time. He stood up, and she stood with him. He released her hands, gave her a quick one armed hug. “Thank you, Willow,” he said quietly. He gave her a fatherly kiss on the crown of her head. Then he released her and turned toward his desk, as if a little embarrassed at the unaccustomed display of affection.
He began sorting through the mail piled on his desk. “What time does Buffy’s plane get in, again?” he asked casually.
Willow suppressed a smile. As if he didn’t have it all memorized down to the second, along with the flight and terminal numbers, airline, and baggage claim. “Ten-thirty,” she answered aloud.
He nodded absently, looking now at the package he’d drawn from its place at the bottom of the pile. “Wonder what this is,” he mused aloud. He peered at it more closely, noting, as Willow had, the lack of return address on it. He glanced over at her as if to see what she made of it.
“I was sort of hoping it might be chocolate.”
Giles was cutting the string binding and tearing open the brown parcel paper beneath. “But oh, what a surprise,” she continued in a voice thickly laden with good humored sarcasm, looking over his shoulder as he pulled the red leather bound volume from the wrapping. “It’s a book.”
Giles shot her a dark look, but there was that old hint of amusement flickering behind his expressive eyes, too. Another thing she hadn’t realized how deeply she’d missed, until that moment, getting it back. She blinked back the sudden emotion. She wondered how much of this change was seeing Lillian again, and meeting Ellen, and how much was the fact that Buffy would be here by this time tomorrow.
****
Giles examined the book carefully, almost reverently. “I haven’t seen a copy of this in ages,” he said. “I thought they were all destroyed when....” He expression turned momentarily bleak, recalling the loss of the Council and, more to the point, its Library. Then he flipped open the cover and began to skim through its pages eagerly.
The book occupied all Giles’ attention for the remainder of the evening, and if it couldn’t quite push out the nervous anticipation he felt at his Slayer’s impending return, it was able to come close. Willow worked nearby, organizing the research notes to date with color coded headers at the top of each page: “Past”, “Future”, “Multiple Slayers”, “Inconclusive”, “Mistaken.” But as she worked, Willow began to notice a definite undercurrent of worry from her companion. At last, Giles set aside the book and began to polish his glasses, unconsciously falling back on his old mechanism for stress relief.
“What’s wrong?” Willow asked, looking up from her notes.
“I’m not entirely sure,” Giles replied, replacing his glasses and leaning back in his chair to survey the tomes stacked on the coffee table behind him. He frowned. “Have you seen my Ars Arundel recently?”
“On the kitchen table, maybe?” Willow suggested. “Why?”
But Giles was already halfway down the hall. He returned a few moments later with a new book open in his hand, flipping through it purposefully. His eyes stopped on a particular passage and he touched it with one trembling finger. “Good Lord,” he breathed, his face suddenly very pale. Willow took the book from his suddenly nerveless hands and skimmed the page he’d been looking at.
“Fire and Thunder from hell shall engulf the Observers, puffed up in the pride, and bring their tower to ruin...” she read aloud. Her eyes flicked to Giles’ face, full of sadness for the memories this must have brought up. “It’s about the Old Council, isn’t it?” He nodded but could not bring himself to speak. She glanced back down at the text and frowned. “But... the demon hordes stuff at the end-- maybe that’s what would have happened? If we hadn’t beaten back the First?”
Giles found his voice. “Perhaps. I had seen this prophecy before, though there is, as you see, no timetable with it. I’ve been assuming just what you suggest-- that we stopped at least a part of it from coming to pass by our actions in Sunnydale. But take a look at this.” He passed her the red leather volume, and pointed out a passage near the bottom of the left hand page.
It was old-- 16th century, she guessed. Stilted, but still readable English. It looked to be a succession of ramblings by an obscure visionary. The passage Giles pointed out used strikingly similar images to describe the fall of a Watchers’ Tower, complete with its being overrun by demon hordes. It was specific enough describing the demons that Willow had no doubt she could make an identification in a matter of minutes, even without her database.
But there was a curious additional reference to the Confessio Amantis, and to a time when this would occur-- phase of the moon, number days prior the Winter Solstice.... They were actually coming up on that time now. Willow looked up in shock.
“Giles-- these time references-- that’s not when the First destroyed the Old Council, is it?”
“No. And what do you make of the reference to the Confessio Amantis?”
Willow was not much of a Literature scholar, but she had a head full of odd, thoroughly useless trivia. “Um-- the title means “The Lover’s Confession”. Runs through this guy’s various sins against Love. The poet was a contemporary of Chaucer, though not as well known today. John Gower.” Her eyes widened a little.
“And the new Council Headquarters, is, coincidentally, located on Gower Street,” Giles finished for her.
*****
Despite a rather late night, during which Giles and Willow had both set in motion the evacuation of the New Council Headquarters on Gower Street and continued cross referencing the prophecy about its destruction, they were both out very early the next morning to meet Buffy’s plane. Early enough that they had plenty of time to kill in one of the ubiquitous airport coffee shops. Giles replaced his cell phone in his pocket after fielding the umpteenth question that morning about the safe transport of some of the more volatile magical artifacts the new Council had managed to acquire.
“How’s it going?” Willow asked him as he turned back to the coffee cup and barely touched danish on the table between them.
“What? Oh, fine, fine,” he replied distractedly. She felt him pulling his wandering thoughts together, then he elaborated, “We do have a little time, if our calculations are correct-- a week or two perhaps. And of course, our resources are not nearly so extensive as those of the....” He stopped, and she knew he would never really be able to think of or mention of Old Council, much as he had detested it at times, without that painful pause, that memory of lives, traditions, friends and enemies lost.
Willow smiled patiently. “Yes, Giles, I know we’re got time. I was asking more how things are with You.”
“What? Oh. Never better,” he replied, nervously flicking his eyes up again toward the clock on the wall over the doorway behind her. Willow followed his gaze, saw that they had half an hour left, at least.
Giles turned his eyes back to her and said, with some asperity, “And you might perhaps glean more information if you were a little more specific in your questioning.”
Willow grinned. “Yeah, right. Like you’d tell me anything at all, then.” The grin faded, and she said more gently, “If it’s any consolation, she’s nervous, too.”
Giles looked up, a little startled, and starting to be a little angry as well. “What, you can read her from this far away? And isn’t that a little invasive?”
“Yes, it would be, if I were doing it. But as it happens, Giles, I talked to her at some length last night. You’re not the only one with a cell phone.”
“Oh.” Giles looked a little abashed at that, and turned back to his coffee. The silence lengthened between them for a few minutes. Then Giles said, “I think I would prefer for Buffy to communicate any relevant thoughts or feelings she may have to me herself.”
There was another ‘as if’, but Willow didn’t say that aloud. Instead she said simply, “I’d like that too,” and let him make of it what he would.
Giles drained his coffee cup, glanced at the clock again, and rose. “We should probably be heading down to the gate,” he said. He paid the tab and they stepped out into the broad concourse and began strolling briskly toward the far end of the terminal. Their Watcher credentials had gotten them easily into the passengers only area and even allowed them to bypass most of the security checkpoints. So they were standing at the window when Buffy’s plane taxied up and docked at the ramp.
The moved to an area adjacent to the flow of passenger traffic and watched as people began to disembark. Willow caught a glimpse of blond hair through the crowd of mostly dark business overcoats and briefcases, and beside her, she heard Giles’ breath catch as he saw her, too. “Buffy!” she called happily. “Over here.”
Buffy slipped easily through the chaotic bustle until she was standing before them. She gave a bright and not entirely convincing smile. “Hey, a welcoming committee and everything! Where’s the apocalypse?” Willow did not have to read her thoughts to catch the swift flicker of concern as she took in at a glance how Giles had deteriorated since she’d left over a year ago-- more grey at the temples, appreciable weight loss, color better than when Willow had arrived, but still not entirely healthy. She shot Willow a quick mental message, a reproachful “We’ll talk,” even as she set down her awkwardly over-packed carry-on.
Giles found his voice, even though it cracked a little as he spoke. “Buffy.” He looked lost, then, as if he’d suddenly fallen into a dream, as if he couldn’t quite believe his eyes.
Buffy ignored his courteously distant outstretched hand and pulled him into a close but careful hug, as if she were afraid he might break. He stiffened for a moment, blinked, then wrapped his arms around her and embraced her with all his still not inconsiderable strength, as if he might never let go.
“Hey Giles,” she breathed in his ear. “Breathing, becoming an issue.” She said it teasingly, but there was a quaver in her voice too, as she added, “I’ve missed you.”
He released her, ran his fingers through his hair, and looked at the ground as if embarrassed at the unaccustomed display. Buffy turned and caught Willow in another enthusiastic embrace. Then she looked at both of them as she hefted her bag back to her shoulder. “So guys. I’m here. What’s the sitch?”
***
“Well,” Giles began, happy to have something else to concentrate on, “the ‘sitch’ as you put it, has just gotten a little more complicated.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” Buffy said. “Willow filled me in last night. Never rains but it pours.” She paused with a frown. “What does that even mean, anyway?”
Giles ignored the question with the skill of long practice. “Well, then, you know that we’re evacuating the new Council Headquarters....”
“Shame,” Buffy commented. “I liked that place.”
“...And we’re working quietly with the local authorities on an evacuation plan for the surrounding area. We’ll cordon it off and have a few contingents of Slayers standing by, just in case the demon hordes mentioned in the prophecy really do come ‘boiling up from hell.’”
Buffy nodded, taking all the information in, even as they walked along towards the baggage claim area. “So, pretty much just another day at the office, huh?”
Giles pressed his lips more tightly together, as if irritated by her flippancy. Willow studied him for a moment, then said brightly, “Y’know what? I think I’ll just catch the Tube back. I’ve got a couple of things I need to take care of. You two go get lunch, and I’ll meet you back at the office later this afternoon.” She smiled inwardly at the matching looks of betrayed shock and panic on her friends’ faces. In this, at least, she had managed to unite them.
“But wait,” Buffy said desperately. At the same moment, Giles began, “There’s no need...” They stopped and looked at each other a little ruefully.
Willow smiled. “Have fun. I’ll see you later.” And she was off through the crowd, quickly lost to sight.
Giles looked after her wistfully, then gave Buffy a wry, sidelong grin. “I, um, I suppose we shall have to ‘bond’ now, shall we?”
Buffy chuckled. “Looks like it. Think she could have been a little more subtle about it?”
Giles gave a rude snort. But some of the tension had eased between them. They continued on to the baggage claim and retrieved Buffy’s suitcases, both a little grateful that the bustle and noise made it impossible for them to carry on any kind of conversation.
Once out in the car park, however, the silence grew uncomfortable. For Giles, at least, the problem was the vast number of topics which might conceivably start yet another row with his Slayer. “How was Rome?” might be read as an oblique reference to her well-known affair with the Immortal. Asking about her Slayer duties there might be taken as a comment on her not being here at headquarters, taking her rightful place as the eldest of the Slayer sisterhood. Then Giles remembered something from almost a lifetime ago. He opened the door for Buffy and said, “So. How do you feel about Mexican?”
***
“I still can’t believe there’s a Mexican restaurant in London,” Buffy said, snagging another tortilla chip from the bowl between them an dipping it in the salsa.
“Buffy, I’ll have you know London is a very cosmopolitan city, “Giles said in mild reproof. Then there was an uncomfortable silence, as Giles worried he’d crossed inadvertently into the unsafe topics area once again.
Buffy studied him closely, shrewdly. But when she spoke, it was not to start another argument about her life’s choices. “You look really tired,” she said, in a conciliatory tone. And then more brightly, quickly heading off the defensive look in his eyes, “And, hey, you’re a dad. I always thought you’d make a great one. I mean, look at Xander.”
Giles turned his eyes downward to focus on his hands, folded primly on the table before him. “I don’t know about that.”
Buffy said quietly. “Well, I do. And I know it wasn’t my fault, your being called. But I’m sorry. That you missed out on that life.” She sighed heavily. “Once again, Buffy manages to leave a trail of havoc and ruin in the lives of the people she loves.”
Giles looked up at that, startled. “Nonsense,” he began heatedly, but she silenced him with a gentle look.
“Yeah, it is, Giles. And I’m sorry. It’s taken me a long time to get this, but I’ve finally figured out that I can’t fix the past. Only do my best, here and now.” She gave a small smile. “And you know who taught me that?”
He shook his head wordlessly.
“You did.” She drew a deep breath, then changed the subject. “So, what’s this Ellen kid like?”
Giles blinked in wonder at how his Slayer had grown up. “I, um, I scarcely know yet, myself,” he admitted.
“I’m looking forward to meeting her this afternoon. And her mom.”
Giles nodded. “I’m not sure how much I want to tell them just yet, though. Lillian didn’t... um... react terribly well when my calling was revealed to her. She’s come now because she didn’t know where else to turn, but finding that her daughter is also tainted by this world-- I honestly don’t know how she will react to that.”
Buffy observed his nervous fingers as they unconsciously shredded the paper napkin which had been laid out under his water glass, before he had moved the glass aside. It sat now, creating a water ring on the wooden table of their booth. “Yeah, I bet that will be tough,” she agreed. “How are you doing with that?”
He avoided her eyes. “My feelings hardly enter into it, do they? She will be presented with the same choice as Amanda, and Dana, and Felicia, and she will fight, and she will....” He broke off, blinking hard.
Buffy opened her mouth to try to say something comforting, but just then their food appeared. Giles turned to his plate as if grateful for the distraction. After a few minutes, he regained enough composure to ask, “How’s Dawn?”
Buffy grimaced. “A handful.” She grinned a little as her tone wrangled a brief chuckle out of Giles. She went on, “I’m beginning to understand the sending young girls off to the convent mentality.”
“What’s she got up to now?” Giles asked in some alarm.
“She keeps finding all these references to ancient, dangerous artifacts in her studies, and then, does she tell her big sis about them? No way. I had to rescue her last week from this creepy toad goddess worshipping bunch of losers that got pissed when she tried to break in their temple and steal their magic *buffy mutilated word* stone.”
Giles quickly hid a grin. “I believe that would be a *correct word* stone.”
“Yeah, that. And she’s too old to punish, or ground, or hell, even spank. She says she wants me to treat her like a grown up, but....”
Giles eyed her sympathetically. “It’s hard to stand by and watch someone you care about making choices that might get them hurt,” he said at last, carefully. Buffy glanced up and their eyes held for a long moment. All was not forgiven or forgotten between them. But as they drove over to the Council after lunch, there were the seeds of a new understanding, and a new respect. *suckage begins in earnest....*
****
It was almost 2:00 by the time Giles and Buffy strode through the front hallway of the now evacuating Council Headquarters. A very organized chaos was unwinding around them, as teams of Watchers and Slayers and moving company employees packed up plastic moving crates and began staging them for transport. Andrew, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt instead of his usual somber suit, glanced up over some notes he was making on a clipboard. His eyes lit up to see Giles, then the expression switched to abject terror as he registered the identity of the young woman at Giles’ side. But he swallowed bravely and called out, “Hey Mr. Giles. Ms. Summers.”
He came over and said, “Willow’s up in your office with Ms. Bramwell. She said to send you on up when you got here.”
Giles asked, looking around, “And Ellen?”
“Stacey’s got her in the kitchen helping out with making cookies. What is it about Slayers and sugar...?” His eyes darted to Buffy, worried he might have offended her. Again. He seemed to do that a lot. But she just grinned.
“Gotta love that Slayer metabolism,” she said. “Hey Andrew.”
He relaxed a little. But Giles had gone a little pale, and looked around as if for an excuse to linger. “So, everything’s proceeding well, I trust? No problems?”
Buffy took his arm and steered him firmly through the chaos. “I’m sure Andrew has everything under control, don’t you Andrew?” She shot him her sweetly venomous smile as they passed, and Andrew hastened to agree.
“Oh, yeah, everything’s great. We should be out of here with a couple of days to spare, at least. We’re on it, yes, Sir. And um.. Ma’am.”
Buffy gave him a wry smile and guided Giles on to the lifts in the hallway. Once the doors had closed on them, she turned to him and asked, “What’s the matter with you? Why’re you so nervous?”
“I’m not nervous,” he denied automatically. Buffy just fixed him with her *you have got to be kidding me* gaze, and he looked away. “All right. Nothing at all to be nervous about. Lillian will no doubt take the news that her daughter’s going to be a Slayer someday quite well. And then, well, Ellen doesn’t know yet, who I am, but in the unlikely event she finds out, what with her mother still speaking to me after what we’re about to tell her....” Sarcasm dripped from his tongue. But then he sighed, let it go. “I can’t help feeling that I’m going to make a monumental fool of myself in front of them both and....”
“And they’ll find out you’re human? Yeah, you’re right, Giles, that would be a catastrophe.” She laid a strong hand on his folded arms, gave a gentle squeeze. “And they’ll both get over it. You’ll build whatever relationship you’re meant to have, with both of them, one minute at a time. Just like we did.”
It was on the tip of Giles’ tongue to point out how swimmingly well that had been going lately, but Buffy read his look and stopped him with one of her own. “Hey. I’m here now, aren’t I?” And there was no reply Giles could make to that.
Willow and Lillian were chatting quietly in the waiting area outside his office as they entered. “Hey Giles,” Willow said on catching sight of them. Lillian smiled up him, too, though there was also a worried, tense look behind her eyes as she stood up with Willow.
Giles cleared his throat. “Lillian, I’d like to present my Slayer, Buffy Summers. Buffy, Lillian Bramwell.”
Lillian extended a polite hand in greeting. “Pleased to meet you,” she said, a little stiffly.
Buffy returned her gaze a little sadly, almost apologetically. “Likewise.”
Willow said, “Um... Conference Room 2 isn’t scheduled to be packed up until tomorrow morning. I was thinking we might go there?” Giles nodded and held the door back into the corridor for them, touching Buffy’s lower back briefly as he ushered her out with distant courtesy. They filtered into the conference room and to the chairs on either side of the long, dark table.
“Well, Giles said, as they were seated, falling back into his Chairman persona as a kind of anchor against what he feared was ahead, “Let’s get started, then, shall we?”
Lillian spoke. “Ms. Rosenberg-- all right, Willow, has been filling me in a little. Something about a prophecy, and this building not being safe any longer. What are we going to do? Where else can we go?”
“I had already planned to send you home in a few days, and to place you under the protection of a rotation of Slayers. It’s a little sooner than I’d planned, but the house has been thoroughly checked for mystical and mundane traps, and our best people have set protective wards. So you should be reasonably safe there. Certainly more safe there than here, in about a week’s time.”
Lillian did not look entirely convinced, and in fact the reference to what would be happening here in another week made her look positively alarmed. Buffy spoke up grimly reassuring. “I’ll be heading up the watch myself. If you’ve got a couch I can sleep on during the day, I can promise you between myself and the other Slayers on guard, nothing’s going to get in. Not alive, anyway.”
Lillian nodded tentative acceptance at that. “All right. We’d be delighted, that is, you’re most welcome to....” She trailed off, the gracious courtesy of her British upbringing failing her as she tried to navigate the proper thing to say to someone proposing to camp out in your house and protect you from creatures that weren’t supposed to exist. She sighed and changed the subject.
“Um, yes. But have you determined why someone, or something,” she winced a little distastefully, “would be after my-- our daughter?” She glanced at Giles, who had closed his eyes as if trying to control some deep pain. “Rupert? What is it?” He found a spot on the wall to fix his gaze upon, and she said, more sharply, “Rupert? Tell me.”
Willow spoke up. “It is possible that someone’s figured out Ellen’s blood connection to the Head of the Watcher’s Council. Anyone who knows Giles would know that the fastest way to an early and very messy death would be to harm one of his own, but....”
“Which would include everyone in this room,” Giles interrupted in a soft, steely voice. “There are far more visible and obvious targets, and until yesterday, Ellen’s heritage was a secret, even to me.”
Lillian was beginning to hit that slow boil of anger Giles recalled from their sometimes stormy courtship. But she controlled herself enough to say, “Well, if it’s not that, what else could it be?”
Buffy asked, “Ms. Bramwell, how much do you know about Watchers? Or Slayers?”
“Far more than I’d like,” she replied candidly. “Rupert tried to explain it all long ago, but until yesterday I had little desire to understand any of it.” Her tone suggested the desire part was still at a pretty low ebb, and would have been nil if not for the present crisis. She added reluctantly, “I do seem to recall there being but a single Slayer, though. ‘One girl in all the world’, or some rubbish of that sort. Apparently that wasn’t strictly accurate.”
“It was at the time,” Buffy said, bristling a little at the implication that her Watcher had lied about this detail. “It changed a couple of years ago, when we found a way to give all the girls who were in the Slayer line, who were Potentials, the Slayer powers which had always gone to just one, when the previous one died.”
“We needed an army, you see,” Giles said, in a soft, distant voice filled with deep sadness. He studiously avoided all their eyes as he continued, “We were all gathered together in one place, with the opposing army also massing there, about to overrun us. It would have been, quite literally, the end of the world.”
Lillian looked around the table. “But what does this have to do with Ellen?”
Willow looked at Giles, but he seemed to have spent himself on that explanation. So she ventured, “The thing to understand about Watchers and Slayers is that the bloodlines are separate. Nobody knows how the Slayer powers are distributed by the Powers that Be, but we do know that no Slayer has ever borne a child who’s part of the Watcher Line. It’s a calling, in the blood. The few children who’ve been born to Slayers have never had that calling, even if they did other work for the Council, and neither have any of their children. And it’s the same with Watchers. None of their descendants have ever been part of the Slayer line. The magic that created the Slayer, eons ago, was set up so that it would never happen.” Willow paused, then concluded quietly, “But now, it has.”
Lillian said, quietly, dangerously, “What are you saying?”
Giles rubbed his hand wearily across his mouth, then turned a face as outwardly calm as he could manage to bear the brunt of her gaze. “Ellen is a Potential. She is too young to have yet faced the choice we gave all the others, but at some point in the future, she may choose to take the Slayer power, as all the other Slayers have. She’s as much an impossibility as the Virgin Birth. And that is something that’s bound to attract unwanted attention, from anything sensitive or learned enough to recognize it for what it is.” He waited then with a fatalistic air, knowing what little closeness and affection had survived their acrimonious parting and long years of separation, was about to be shattered.
Lillian stared incredulously at him. The she spat out, “You bastard! This is your fault! I didn’t know anything about this crazy world of yours, and now....”
Buffy rose smoothly and interrupted Lillian in mid rant, before she could get any more wound up. “Willow, Giles, would you excuse us for a moment?” Giles exited with grateful cowardice, Willow more thoughtfully. As the door clicked shut behind them, Buffy turned back to Lillian and eyed her steadily for a long moment. Then, “I know how you feel,” she began.
“How could you possibly know anything about what I’m feeling?” Lillian burst out. “It’s not your daughter being chased around by these insane creatures that shouldn’t even exist! It’s not your daughter being sucked down into ....” She paused for breath, and Buffy launched herself into the gap.
“No,” she agreed quietly, “It’s not my daughter. It was me. When I was fifteen years old. I lost my friends, my dad, and for a while, my sanity. Know what kept me alive? Ellen’s father. That man out there, I happen to know for a fact would give absolutely anything, including his own life, to keep you two safe, and out of this dangerous world.” She realized as she spoke, that he had done that for her, too-- given up their relationship as Watcher and Slayer to let her go off and have a normal life.
Lillian looked stunned. “You were fifteen?” she asked weakly.
“Yeah. And my mom reacted a lot like you are now, when she found out a couple of years later. She wanted it not to be true, too. I guess watching those you love go off into danger is a lot harder than being the one who goes.” Again, she had a sudden flash of insight as she said aloud something she’d always known, but never given enough thought. She was suddenly ashamed.
Lillian mulled it over. “Where’s your mum now?” she asked quietly.
“She died. Natural causes, nothing to do with this supernatural craziness. It was just her time.” It still hurt, even after all these years. She smiled, “I’m sorry you can’t meet her. I’m not sure, but I bet she said all this stuff, and more, to Giles, back when she found out what I was. Poor Giles.” Another entry in the Buffy book of regrets.
Lillian finally ventured, “But Ellen’s so young....”
“Yeah, she is. But then, Giles found out about his calling when he was about her age.” She grinned a little. “He was pretty ticked. He wanted to be a fighter pilot, he said. Or a grocer.”
Lillian giggled a little, picturing the serious little boy she’d seen in family photos when they’d been together. Then the smile faded. “He never had a choice,either, did he?”
“Nope,” Buffy agreed. “That’s why the first rule he insisted on, when we started the new Council, was that Everyone gets a choice. There are a few Slayer-gifted girls out there living perfectly normal lives-- well, except for being able to always get the sticky lids off of jars, and to kick muggers’ asses. We give them a little training to help them control their strength, tell them what to call us for if something nasty starts bothering them, and let them go their way. We’ve even got one thinking about a career in the majors, once she finishes college.”
Lillian looked puzzled. “Majors?” she repeated, for all the world in that instant as blankly as Giles had said it when Xander had reported it to him. Buffy laughed.
“Baseball. You know, America’s game. She might change her mind, I don’t know. But she has the luxury none of us had-- to choose the life she wants, going in with her eyes wide open. Lots of the new Slayers like being able to do what other people can’t, to help people and save the world once in a while.” Buffy reached over and laid her hand over Lillian’s trembling ones. “And I happen to know that Rupert Giles would give his own life to make sure Ellen has that choice too, even if she weren’t his daughter.”
**story ends**
The part I can't get is the next bit, after this where they talk to Ellen. I can't find a convincing way to handle it. And the characters are doing very credible impressions of sock puppets. Wooden sock puppets even....
Sigh. All right, back to it.
UPDATE: Okay, I see something. When I stay close to Giles' and Willow's point of view, it flows a lot better. Buffy's not bad, but the further I get from how things are going for Giles and Willow, the worse it becomes. There's a moral there, somewhere. Must ponder....
Oh, and here's the count as of yesterday:
Writing is frustrating. I have rewritten the same scene 4 times now-- all different ways, but absolutely of a piece when you average in the suckage factor.
What really gets me is-- the story to this point isn't that bad. I'll post up to where the suckage gets to truly hooverlike proportions-- maybe some feedback will jar something loose. If you can't bring yourself to read a WIP, especially since my last took 3 years to get finished-- don't worry. I won't be offended in the least. Maybe you can indulge in some drive by writing therapy, instead-- what helps you in these situations?
I will say that I'm proud of one thing-- I'm still writing every day. Even if it sucks, I'm making the effort.
This will start a little ways back from where the last part ended, just to give a running start, and because I edited it a bit for the better. Hope everybody else's St. Nick's Day is going better than mine.
“So, what went wrong? In particular?” Willow asked.
“Before or after Ellen asked me what a Slayer was?” Giles asked rhetorically, taking another sip. He sank down on the couch and focussed his gaze on the glass in his two hands, resting on his knees.
“Oh,” Willow said in a small voice.
“And she wanted to know ... if ‘apocalypse’ was even a word.” Tears were spilling down his cheeks now, and he made no effort to wipe them away. “Dear God, Willow....”
Willow came over to him, cleared a space across from him on the coffee table, and took the glass from his hands as she sat down. Laying it aside, she took his hands in hers.
“Oh Giles,” she sighed. “What did you tell her?”
“What could I tell her?”
There was nothing else to be said to this, so Willow didn’t try. They sat for a long while instead, just facing each other, holding hands. Nothing romantic in it. Just two old friends, there for each other. The gradual peace which had settled over them was shattered by Giles’ cell phone, beeping from his inside coat pocket. He disengaged his right hand and pulled it out, thumbing the button as he raised it to his ear. “Giles here.”
Willow gripped his hand a little tighter, then felt him relax as he heard the caller’s voice. “Lillian,” he said. He gave a slight smile, listening. Willow thought to let him go and give him some privacy, but he grasped her hand a little tighter and said “No, I understand. In fact, a friend of mine,” here he met Willow’s eyes and gave a faint grin, “was only now reminding me, that we’ve all been through rather a lot in the past few days.”
Willow concentrated on Giles’ fingers in hers, not dead and cold as they had been at the recent funeral. It felt good, his wanting her here with him. Like they were friends again.
“Yes, we’ll be by tomorrow,” Giles was saying. “My Slayer, Buffy is flying in from Rome in the morning. I’d like her to be party to any discussions we have about this situation, if that’s all right with you....” He paused, listening, then said, “ I’m sure we can persuade Andrew to occupy Ellen while we....” He chuckled. “Yes, I will speak to him about being a little more circumspect about his choice of conversation topics.... Right. Well, then. I’ll see you tomorrow. You too. Sleep well.” He thumbed the phone off and replaced it in his pocket, then gathered both of Willow’s hands again in his own and took a deep breath.
“See Giles? Breathing. Works wonders.”
He laughed then, the first real laugh she’d heard from him in... a very long time. He stood up, and she stood with him. He released her hands, gave her a quick one armed hug. “Thank you, Willow,” he said quietly. He gave her a fatherly kiss on the crown of her head. Then he released her and turned toward his desk, as if a little embarrassed at the unaccustomed display of affection.
He began sorting through the mail piled on his desk. “What time does Buffy’s plane get in, again?” he asked casually.
Willow suppressed a smile. As if he didn’t have it all memorized down to the second, along with the flight and terminal numbers, airline, and baggage claim. “Ten-thirty,” she answered aloud.
He nodded absently, looking now at the package he’d drawn from its place at the bottom of the pile. “Wonder what this is,” he mused aloud. He peered at it more closely, noting, as Willow had, the lack of return address on it. He glanced over at her as if to see what she made of it.
“I was sort of hoping it might be chocolate.”
Giles was cutting the string binding and tearing open the brown parcel paper beneath. “But oh, what a surprise,” she continued in a voice thickly laden with good humored sarcasm, looking over his shoulder as he pulled the red leather bound volume from the wrapping. “It’s a book.”
Giles shot her a dark look, but there was that old hint of amusement flickering behind his expressive eyes, too. Another thing she hadn’t realized how deeply she’d missed, until that moment, getting it back. She blinked back the sudden emotion. She wondered how much of this change was seeing Lillian again, and meeting Ellen, and how much was the fact that Buffy would be here by this time tomorrow.
****
Giles examined the book carefully, almost reverently. “I haven’t seen a copy of this in ages,” he said. “I thought they were all destroyed when....” He expression turned momentarily bleak, recalling the loss of the Council and, more to the point, its Library. Then he flipped open the cover and began to skim through its pages eagerly.
The book occupied all Giles’ attention for the remainder of the evening, and if it couldn’t quite push out the nervous anticipation he felt at his Slayer’s impending return, it was able to come close. Willow worked nearby, organizing the research notes to date with color coded headers at the top of each page: “Past”, “Future”, “Multiple Slayers”, “Inconclusive”, “Mistaken.” But as she worked, Willow began to notice a definite undercurrent of worry from her companion. At last, Giles set aside the book and began to polish his glasses, unconsciously falling back on his old mechanism for stress relief.
“What’s wrong?” Willow asked, looking up from her notes.
“I’m not entirely sure,” Giles replied, replacing his glasses and leaning back in his chair to survey the tomes stacked on the coffee table behind him. He frowned. “Have you seen my Ars Arundel recently?”
“On the kitchen table, maybe?” Willow suggested. “Why?”
But Giles was already halfway down the hall. He returned a few moments later with a new book open in his hand, flipping through it purposefully. His eyes stopped on a particular passage and he touched it with one trembling finger. “Good Lord,” he breathed, his face suddenly very pale. Willow took the book from his suddenly nerveless hands and skimmed the page he’d been looking at.
“Fire and Thunder from hell shall engulf the Observers, puffed up in the pride, and bring their tower to ruin...” she read aloud. Her eyes flicked to Giles’ face, full of sadness for the memories this must have brought up. “It’s about the Old Council, isn’t it?” He nodded but could not bring himself to speak. She glanced back down at the text and frowned. “But... the demon hordes stuff at the end-- maybe that’s what would have happened? If we hadn’t beaten back the First?”
Giles found his voice. “Perhaps. I had seen this prophecy before, though there is, as you see, no timetable with it. I’ve been assuming just what you suggest-- that we stopped at least a part of it from coming to pass by our actions in Sunnydale. But take a look at this.” He passed her the red leather volume, and pointed out a passage near the bottom of the left hand page.
It was old-- 16th century, she guessed. Stilted, but still readable English. It looked to be a succession of ramblings by an obscure visionary. The passage Giles pointed out used strikingly similar images to describe the fall of a Watchers’ Tower, complete with its being overrun by demon hordes. It was specific enough describing the demons that Willow had no doubt she could make an identification in a matter of minutes, even without her database.
But there was a curious additional reference to the Confessio Amantis, and to a time when this would occur-- phase of the moon, number days prior the Winter Solstice.... They were actually coming up on that time now. Willow looked up in shock.
“Giles-- these time references-- that’s not when the First destroyed the Old Council, is it?”
“No. And what do you make of the reference to the Confessio Amantis?”
Willow was not much of a Literature scholar, but she had a head full of odd, thoroughly useless trivia. “Um-- the title means “The Lover’s Confession”. Runs through this guy’s various sins against Love. The poet was a contemporary of Chaucer, though not as well known today. John Gower.” Her eyes widened a little.
“And the new Council Headquarters, is, coincidentally, located on Gower Street,” Giles finished for her.
*****
Despite a rather late night, during which Giles and Willow had both set in motion the evacuation of the New Council Headquarters on Gower Street and continued cross referencing the prophecy about its destruction, they were both out very early the next morning to meet Buffy’s plane. Early enough that they had plenty of time to kill in one of the ubiquitous airport coffee shops. Giles replaced his cell phone in his pocket after fielding the umpteenth question that morning about the safe transport of some of the more volatile magical artifacts the new Council had managed to acquire.
“How’s it going?” Willow asked him as he turned back to the coffee cup and barely touched danish on the table between them.
“What? Oh, fine, fine,” he replied distractedly. She felt him pulling his wandering thoughts together, then he elaborated, “We do have a little time, if our calculations are correct-- a week or two perhaps. And of course, our resources are not nearly so extensive as those of the....” He stopped, and she knew he would never really be able to think of or mention of Old Council, much as he had detested it at times, without that painful pause, that memory of lives, traditions, friends and enemies lost.
Willow smiled patiently. “Yes, Giles, I know we’re got time. I was asking more how things are with You.”
“What? Oh. Never better,” he replied, nervously flicking his eyes up again toward the clock on the wall over the doorway behind her. Willow followed his gaze, saw that they had half an hour left, at least.
Giles turned his eyes back to her and said, with some asperity, “And you might perhaps glean more information if you were a little more specific in your questioning.”
Willow grinned. “Yeah, right. Like you’d tell me anything at all, then.” The grin faded, and she said more gently, “If it’s any consolation, she’s nervous, too.”
Giles looked up, a little startled, and starting to be a little angry as well. “What, you can read her from this far away? And isn’t that a little invasive?”
“Yes, it would be, if I were doing it. But as it happens, Giles, I talked to her at some length last night. You’re not the only one with a cell phone.”
“Oh.” Giles looked a little abashed at that, and turned back to his coffee. The silence lengthened between them for a few minutes. Then Giles said, “I think I would prefer for Buffy to communicate any relevant thoughts or feelings she may have to me herself.”
There was another ‘as if’, but Willow didn’t say that aloud. Instead she said simply, “I’d like that too,” and let him make of it what he would.
Giles drained his coffee cup, glanced at the clock again, and rose. “We should probably be heading down to the gate,” he said. He paid the tab and they stepped out into the broad concourse and began strolling briskly toward the far end of the terminal. Their Watcher credentials had gotten them easily into the passengers only area and even allowed them to bypass most of the security checkpoints. So they were standing at the window when Buffy’s plane taxied up and docked at the ramp.
The moved to an area adjacent to the flow of passenger traffic and watched as people began to disembark. Willow caught a glimpse of blond hair through the crowd of mostly dark business overcoats and briefcases, and beside her, she heard Giles’ breath catch as he saw her, too. “Buffy!” she called happily. “Over here.”
Buffy slipped easily through the chaotic bustle until she was standing before them. She gave a bright and not entirely convincing smile. “Hey, a welcoming committee and everything! Where’s the apocalypse?” Willow did not have to read her thoughts to catch the swift flicker of concern as she took in at a glance how Giles had deteriorated since she’d left over a year ago-- more grey at the temples, appreciable weight loss, color better than when Willow had arrived, but still not entirely healthy. She shot Willow a quick mental message, a reproachful “We’ll talk,” even as she set down her awkwardly over-packed carry-on.
Giles found his voice, even though it cracked a little as he spoke. “Buffy.” He looked lost, then, as if he’d suddenly fallen into a dream, as if he couldn’t quite believe his eyes.
Buffy ignored his courteously distant outstretched hand and pulled him into a close but careful hug, as if she were afraid he might break. He stiffened for a moment, blinked, then wrapped his arms around her and embraced her with all his still not inconsiderable strength, as if he might never let go.
“Hey Giles,” she breathed in his ear. “Breathing, becoming an issue.” She said it teasingly, but there was a quaver in her voice too, as she added, “I’ve missed you.”
He released her, ran his fingers through his hair, and looked at the ground as if embarrassed at the unaccustomed display. Buffy turned and caught Willow in another enthusiastic embrace. Then she looked at both of them as she hefted her bag back to her shoulder. “So guys. I’m here. What’s the sitch?”
***
“Well,” Giles began, happy to have something else to concentrate on, “the ‘sitch’ as you put it, has just gotten a little more complicated.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” Buffy said. “Willow filled me in last night. Never rains but it pours.” She paused with a frown. “What does that even mean, anyway?”
Giles ignored the question with the skill of long practice. “Well, then, you know that we’re evacuating the new Council Headquarters....”
“Shame,” Buffy commented. “I liked that place.”
“...And we’re working quietly with the local authorities on an evacuation plan for the surrounding area. We’ll cordon it off and have a few contingents of Slayers standing by, just in case the demon hordes mentioned in the prophecy really do come ‘boiling up from hell.’”
Buffy nodded, taking all the information in, even as they walked along towards the baggage claim area. “So, pretty much just another day at the office, huh?”
Giles pressed his lips more tightly together, as if irritated by her flippancy. Willow studied him for a moment, then said brightly, “Y’know what? I think I’ll just catch the Tube back. I’ve got a couple of things I need to take care of. You two go get lunch, and I’ll meet you back at the office later this afternoon.” She smiled inwardly at the matching looks of betrayed shock and panic on her friends’ faces. In this, at least, she had managed to unite them.
“But wait,” Buffy said desperately. At the same moment, Giles began, “There’s no need...” They stopped and looked at each other a little ruefully.
Willow smiled. “Have fun. I’ll see you later.” And she was off through the crowd, quickly lost to sight.
Giles looked after her wistfully, then gave Buffy a wry, sidelong grin. “I, um, I suppose we shall have to ‘bond’ now, shall we?”
Buffy chuckled. “Looks like it. Think she could have been a little more subtle about it?”
Giles gave a rude snort. But some of the tension had eased between them. They continued on to the baggage claim and retrieved Buffy’s suitcases, both a little grateful that the bustle and noise made it impossible for them to carry on any kind of conversation.
Once out in the car park, however, the silence grew uncomfortable. For Giles, at least, the problem was the vast number of topics which might conceivably start yet another row with his Slayer. “How was Rome?” might be read as an oblique reference to her well-known affair with the Immortal. Asking about her Slayer duties there might be taken as a comment on her not being here at headquarters, taking her rightful place as the eldest of the Slayer sisterhood. Then Giles remembered something from almost a lifetime ago. He opened the door for Buffy and said, “So. How do you feel about Mexican?”
***
“I still can’t believe there’s a Mexican restaurant in London,” Buffy said, snagging another tortilla chip from the bowl between them an dipping it in the salsa.
“Buffy, I’ll have you know London is a very cosmopolitan city, “Giles said in mild reproof. Then there was an uncomfortable silence, as Giles worried he’d crossed inadvertently into the unsafe topics area once again.
Buffy studied him closely, shrewdly. But when she spoke, it was not to start another argument about her life’s choices. “You look really tired,” she said, in a conciliatory tone. And then more brightly, quickly heading off the defensive look in his eyes, “And, hey, you’re a dad. I always thought you’d make a great one. I mean, look at Xander.”
Giles turned his eyes downward to focus on his hands, folded primly on the table before him. “I don’t know about that.”
Buffy said quietly. “Well, I do. And I know it wasn’t my fault, your being called. But I’m sorry. That you missed out on that life.” She sighed heavily. “Once again, Buffy manages to leave a trail of havoc and ruin in the lives of the people she loves.”
Giles looked up at that, startled. “Nonsense,” he began heatedly, but she silenced him with a gentle look.
“Yeah, it is, Giles. And I’m sorry. It’s taken me a long time to get this, but I’ve finally figured out that I can’t fix the past. Only do my best, here and now.” She gave a small smile. “And you know who taught me that?”
He shook his head wordlessly.
“You did.” She drew a deep breath, then changed the subject. “So, what’s this Ellen kid like?”
Giles blinked in wonder at how his Slayer had grown up. “I, um, I scarcely know yet, myself,” he admitted.
“I’m looking forward to meeting her this afternoon. And her mom.”
Giles nodded. “I’m not sure how much I want to tell them just yet, though. Lillian didn’t... um... react terribly well when my calling was revealed to her. She’s come now because she didn’t know where else to turn, but finding that her daughter is also tainted by this world-- I honestly don’t know how she will react to that.”
Buffy observed his nervous fingers as they unconsciously shredded the paper napkin which had been laid out under his water glass, before he had moved the glass aside. It sat now, creating a water ring on the wooden table of their booth. “Yeah, I bet that will be tough,” she agreed. “How are you doing with that?”
He avoided her eyes. “My feelings hardly enter into it, do they? She will be presented with the same choice as Amanda, and Dana, and Felicia, and she will fight, and she will....” He broke off, blinking hard.
Buffy opened her mouth to try to say something comforting, but just then their food appeared. Giles turned to his plate as if grateful for the distraction. After a few minutes, he regained enough composure to ask, “How’s Dawn?”
Buffy grimaced. “A handful.” She grinned a little as her tone wrangled a brief chuckle out of Giles. She went on, “I’m beginning to understand the sending young girls off to the convent mentality.”
“What’s she got up to now?” Giles asked in some alarm.
“She keeps finding all these references to ancient, dangerous artifacts in her studies, and then, does she tell her big sis about them? No way. I had to rescue her last week from this creepy toad goddess worshipping bunch of losers that got pissed when she tried to break in their temple and steal their magic *buffy mutilated word* stone.”
Giles quickly hid a grin. “I believe that would be a *correct word* stone.”
“Yeah, that. And she’s too old to punish, or ground, or hell, even spank. She says she wants me to treat her like a grown up, but....”
Giles eyed her sympathetically. “It’s hard to stand by and watch someone you care about making choices that might get them hurt,” he said at last, carefully. Buffy glanced up and their eyes held for a long moment. All was not forgiven or forgotten between them. But as they drove over to the Council after lunch, there were the seeds of a new understanding, and a new respect. *suckage begins in earnest....*
****
It was almost 2:00 by the time Giles and Buffy strode through the front hallway of the now evacuating Council Headquarters. A very organized chaos was unwinding around them, as teams of Watchers and Slayers and moving company employees packed up plastic moving crates and began staging them for transport. Andrew, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt instead of his usual somber suit, glanced up over some notes he was making on a clipboard. His eyes lit up to see Giles, then the expression switched to abject terror as he registered the identity of the young woman at Giles’ side. But he swallowed bravely and called out, “Hey Mr. Giles. Ms. Summers.”
He came over and said, “Willow’s up in your office with Ms. Bramwell. She said to send you on up when you got here.”
Giles asked, looking around, “And Ellen?”
“Stacey’s got her in the kitchen helping out with making cookies. What is it about Slayers and sugar...?” His eyes darted to Buffy, worried he might have offended her. Again. He seemed to do that a lot. But she just grinned.
“Gotta love that Slayer metabolism,” she said. “Hey Andrew.”
He relaxed a little. But Giles had gone a little pale, and looked around as if for an excuse to linger. “So, everything’s proceeding well, I trust? No problems?”
Buffy took his arm and steered him firmly through the chaos. “I’m sure Andrew has everything under control, don’t you Andrew?” She shot him her sweetly venomous smile as they passed, and Andrew hastened to agree.
“Oh, yeah, everything’s great. We should be out of here with a couple of days to spare, at least. We’re on it, yes, Sir. And um.. Ma’am.”
Buffy gave him a wry smile and guided Giles on to the lifts in the hallway. Once the doors had closed on them, she turned to him and asked, “What’s the matter with you? Why’re you so nervous?”
“I’m not nervous,” he denied automatically. Buffy just fixed him with her *you have got to be kidding me* gaze, and he looked away. “All right. Nothing at all to be nervous about. Lillian will no doubt take the news that her daughter’s going to be a Slayer someday quite well. And then, well, Ellen doesn’t know yet, who I am, but in the unlikely event she finds out, what with her mother still speaking to me after what we’re about to tell her....” Sarcasm dripped from his tongue. But then he sighed, let it go. “I can’t help feeling that I’m going to make a monumental fool of myself in front of them both and....”
“And they’ll find out you’re human? Yeah, you’re right, Giles, that would be a catastrophe.” She laid a strong hand on his folded arms, gave a gentle squeeze. “And they’ll both get over it. You’ll build whatever relationship you’re meant to have, with both of them, one minute at a time. Just like we did.”
It was on the tip of Giles’ tongue to point out how swimmingly well that had been going lately, but Buffy read his look and stopped him with one of her own. “Hey. I’m here now, aren’t I?” And there was no reply Giles could make to that.
Willow and Lillian were chatting quietly in the waiting area outside his office as they entered. “Hey Giles,” Willow said on catching sight of them. Lillian smiled up him, too, though there was also a worried, tense look behind her eyes as she stood up with Willow.
Giles cleared his throat. “Lillian, I’d like to present my Slayer, Buffy Summers. Buffy, Lillian Bramwell.”
Lillian extended a polite hand in greeting. “Pleased to meet you,” she said, a little stiffly.
Buffy returned her gaze a little sadly, almost apologetically. “Likewise.”
Willow said, “Um... Conference Room 2 isn’t scheduled to be packed up until tomorrow morning. I was thinking we might go there?” Giles nodded and held the door back into the corridor for them, touching Buffy’s lower back briefly as he ushered her out with distant courtesy. They filtered into the conference room and to the chairs on either side of the long, dark table.
“Well, Giles said, as they were seated, falling back into his Chairman persona as a kind of anchor against what he feared was ahead, “Let’s get started, then, shall we?”
Lillian spoke. “Ms. Rosenberg-- all right, Willow, has been filling me in a little. Something about a prophecy, and this building not being safe any longer. What are we going to do? Where else can we go?”
“I had already planned to send you home in a few days, and to place you under the protection of a rotation of Slayers. It’s a little sooner than I’d planned, but the house has been thoroughly checked for mystical and mundane traps, and our best people have set protective wards. So you should be reasonably safe there. Certainly more safe there than here, in about a week’s time.”
Lillian did not look entirely convinced, and in fact the reference to what would be happening here in another week made her look positively alarmed. Buffy spoke up grimly reassuring. “I’ll be heading up the watch myself. If you’ve got a couch I can sleep on during the day, I can promise you between myself and the other Slayers on guard, nothing’s going to get in. Not alive, anyway.”
Lillian nodded tentative acceptance at that. “All right. We’d be delighted, that is, you’re most welcome to....” She trailed off, the gracious courtesy of her British upbringing failing her as she tried to navigate the proper thing to say to someone proposing to camp out in your house and protect you from creatures that weren’t supposed to exist. She sighed and changed the subject.
“Um, yes. But have you determined why someone, or something,” she winced a little distastefully, “would be after my-- our daughter?” She glanced at Giles, who had closed his eyes as if trying to control some deep pain. “Rupert? What is it?” He found a spot on the wall to fix his gaze upon, and she said, more sharply, “Rupert? Tell me.”
Willow spoke up. “It is possible that someone’s figured out Ellen’s blood connection to the Head of the Watcher’s Council. Anyone who knows Giles would know that the fastest way to an early and very messy death would be to harm one of his own, but....”
“Which would include everyone in this room,” Giles interrupted in a soft, steely voice. “There are far more visible and obvious targets, and until yesterday, Ellen’s heritage was a secret, even to me.”
Lillian was beginning to hit that slow boil of anger Giles recalled from their sometimes stormy courtship. But she controlled herself enough to say, “Well, if it’s not that, what else could it be?”
Buffy asked, “Ms. Bramwell, how much do you know about Watchers? Or Slayers?”
“Far more than I’d like,” she replied candidly. “Rupert tried to explain it all long ago, but until yesterday I had little desire to understand any of it.” Her tone suggested the desire part was still at a pretty low ebb, and would have been nil if not for the present crisis. She added reluctantly, “I do seem to recall there being but a single Slayer, though. ‘One girl in all the world’, or some rubbish of that sort. Apparently that wasn’t strictly accurate.”
“It was at the time,” Buffy said, bristling a little at the implication that her Watcher had lied about this detail. “It changed a couple of years ago, when we found a way to give all the girls who were in the Slayer line, who were Potentials, the Slayer powers which had always gone to just one, when the previous one died.”
“We needed an army, you see,” Giles said, in a soft, distant voice filled with deep sadness. He studiously avoided all their eyes as he continued, “We were all gathered together in one place, with the opposing army also massing there, about to overrun us. It would have been, quite literally, the end of the world.”
Lillian looked around the table. “But what does this have to do with Ellen?”
Willow looked at Giles, but he seemed to have spent himself on that explanation. So she ventured, “The thing to understand about Watchers and Slayers is that the bloodlines are separate. Nobody knows how the Slayer powers are distributed by the Powers that Be, but we do know that no Slayer has ever borne a child who’s part of the Watcher Line. It’s a calling, in the blood. The few children who’ve been born to Slayers have never had that calling, even if they did other work for the Council, and neither have any of their children. And it’s the same with Watchers. None of their descendants have ever been part of the Slayer line. The magic that created the Slayer, eons ago, was set up so that it would never happen.” Willow paused, then concluded quietly, “But now, it has.”
Lillian said, quietly, dangerously, “What are you saying?”
Giles rubbed his hand wearily across his mouth, then turned a face as outwardly calm as he could manage to bear the brunt of her gaze. “Ellen is a Potential. She is too young to have yet faced the choice we gave all the others, but at some point in the future, she may choose to take the Slayer power, as all the other Slayers have. She’s as much an impossibility as the Virgin Birth. And that is something that’s bound to attract unwanted attention, from anything sensitive or learned enough to recognize it for what it is.” He waited then with a fatalistic air, knowing what little closeness and affection had survived their acrimonious parting and long years of separation, was about to be shattered.
Lillian stared incredulously at him. The she spat out, “You bastard! This is your fault! I didn’t know anything about this crazy world of yours, and now....”
Buffy rose smoothly and interrupted Lillian in mid rant, before she could get any more wound up. “Willow, Giles, would you excuse us for a moment?” Giles exited with grateful cowardice, Willow more thoughtfully. As the door clicked shut behind them, Buffy turned back to Lillian and eyed her steadily for a long moment. Then, “I know how you feel,” she began.
“How could you possibly know anything about what I’m feeling?” Lillian burst out. “It’s not your daughter being chased around by these insane creatures that shouldn’t even exist! It’s not your daughter being sucked down into ....” She paused for breath, and Buffy launched herself into the gap.
“No,” she agreed quietly, “It’s not my daughter. It was me. When I was fifteen years old. I lost my friends, my dad, and for a while, my sanity. Know what kept me alive? Ellen’s father. That man out there, I happen to know for a fact would give absolutely anything, including his own life, to keep you two safe, and out of this dangerous world.” She realized as she spoke, that he had done that for her, too-- given up their relationship as Watcher and Slayer to let her go off and have a normal life.
Lillian looked stunned. “You were fifteen?” she asked weakly.
“Yeah. And my mom reacted a lot like you are now, when she found out a couple of years later. She wanted it not to be true, too. I guess watching those you love go off into danger is a lot harder than being the one who goes.” Again, she had a sudden flash of insight as she said aloud something she’d always known, but never given enough thought. She was suddenly ashamed.
Lillian mulled it over. “Where’s your mum now?” she asked quietly.
“She died. Natural causes, nothing to do with this supernatural craziness. It was just her time.” It still hurt, even after all these years. She smiled, “I’m sorry you can’t meet her. I’m not sure, but I bet she said all this stuff, and more, to Giles, back when she found out what I was. Poor Giles.” Another entry in the Buffy book of regrets.
Lillian finally ventured, “But Ellen’s so young....”
“Yeah, she is. But then, Giles found out about his calling when he was about her age.” She grinned a little. “He was pretty ticked. He wanted to be a fighter pilot, he said. Or a grocer.”
Lillian giggled a little, picturing the serious little boy she’d seen in family photos when they’d been together. Then the smile faded. “He never had a choice,either, did he?”
“Nope,” Buffy agreed. “That’s why the first rule he insisted on, when we started the new Council, was that Everyone gets a choice. There are a few Slayer-gifted girls out there living perfectly normal lives-- well, except for being able to always get the sticky lids off of jars, and to kick muggers’ asses. We give them a little training to help them control their strength, tell them what to call us for if something nasty starts bothering them, and let them go their way. We’ve even got one thinking about a career in the majors, once she finishes college.”
Lillian looked puzzled. “Majors?” she repeated, for all the world in that instant as blankly as Giles had said it when Xander had reported it to him. Buffy laughed.
“Baseball. You know, America’s game. She might change her mind, I don’t know. But she has the luxury none of us had-- to choose the life she wants, going in with her eyes wide open. Lots of the new Slayers like being able to do what other people can’t, to help people and save the world once in a while.” Buffy reached over and laid her hand over Lillian’s trembling ones. “And I happen to know that Rupert Giles would give his own life to make sure Ellen has that choice too, even if she weren’t his daughter.”
**story ends**
The part I can't get is the next bit, after this where they talk to Ellen. I can't find a convincing way to handle it. And the characters are doing very credible impressions of sock puppets. Wooden sock puppets even....
Sigh. All right, back to it.
UPDATE: Okay, I see something. When I stay close to Giles' and Willow's point of view, it flows a lot better. Buffy's not bad, but the further I get from how things are going for Giles and Willow, the worse it becomes. There's a moral there, somewhere. Must ponder....
Oh, and here's the count as of yesterday:
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26,591 + 5,408 (20.3% more) |
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-06 04:25 am (UTC)One thing that sometimes works for me is to just write the bad scene and then press on and write the rest of the story and then come back to it. Somehow having the rest of the story done makes writing the bad scene easier.
This is good though. Looking forward to more.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-06 10:06 pm (UTC)I look forward to getting to know you better.
Hob