Chapter One:
The office was an eclectic mix of ancient and modern. The desk was clearly an antique, as were the glass-front bookshelves that lined one side of the room – but there was a fully-equipped smart board on one wall, beneath which sat a computer desk and, above that, video conferencing cameras. There were maps and charts pinned to an enormous cork board behind the desk and a second board sporting a collection of photographs next to the smart board. The wall which concealed the door was made entirely of mirrored glass, reflecting both the office and its determinedly focused occupant.
He wasn’t a young man, by any measure. Nor was he old, in the way that some men get old long before their time. His dark hair was cut in a short, practical style. There was a sprinkling of grey in it, twisting through his locks like fine threads of silver, but the lines on his face seemed to have been written more deeply by life and experience than they had by the passage of years His high forehead conveyed an impression of intelligence, as did the glasses which sat perched on the bridge of his nose; his patrician features were the kind that inspired admiration and trust. His white shirt was crisp and dignified, although someone who knew nothing of his history might be a little startled to find Scooby-doo adorning his tie. Those who did know tended to smile at his tie pin which consisted of a little silver stake nestled in front of a simple cross. His jacket – which was the same smart charcoal grey as the rest of his suit - was hanging on a hanger from the coat rack in the corner. The antique umbrella stand next to it held, not just a large black umbrella, but two broadswords, a rapier and what looked like a quarterstaff.
The desktop was groaning with paper. Several large leatherbound volumes occupied one corner. There were three open boxfiles lying beside them. A pile of wallet files lay to the man’s left and a second pile, somewhat taller than the first lay to the right. In the middle was a sprawl of pages, the wallet they had occupied lying open beneath them. The man was frowning at one particular page on which someone had sketched a series of arcane-looking symbols.
The door in the middle of the mirrored wall opened cautiously, admitting a well dressed woman in her mid- to late thirties. She smiled at the man’s concentration and walked across to stand in front of the desk, throwing a quick glance to check how she looked over her shoulder before she completed her advance.
"Four o'clock, Rupert."
“Hmm?” The man didn’t even look up.
“It's four o'clock. It’s Friday, our operational status is an unexciting green, and the day staff are going home.”
“They are?” Rupert Giles looked up, to find his office manager smiling down at him with her usual amusement. Jane Thackery wasn’t a notably pretty woman, but she had a warm and encouraging smile. She was also extremely efficient, well-liked among her fellow workers and an absolute genius when it came to organising the logistics of an organisation whose influences spanned the world. “Good lord. I hadn’t realised it was so late. It hardly seems like an hour since lunch.”
“Well, you did have rather a late one,” Jane laughed, and he had to smile, acknowledging her point. He’d had four meetings that morning, one of them a virtual one with the New York office; he’d finally managed to snatch a sandwich sometime after two o'clock.
“I suppose I did. Thank you for that, by the way. I thought Westfall was never going to stop talking.”
“We were taking bets on it in the outer office. Do you want me to call your car?”
Giles looked down at the sprawl of paper and sighed. “What do I have booked for Monday?”
“Meeting of the planning committee at ten, finance forecast at twelve, lunch with some of the senior students at one – and your usual class at two. The archbishop can’t get here until four-thirty, but I said that wouldn’t be a problem.”
“Jane,” he said with quiet admiration, “you are a marvel. And if you weren’t already married …”
“You’d be way down on the list, Rupert, and you know it. I know better than to ruin the perfect boss by turning him into a husband.” She glanced down at the papers. “Car for four-thirty? Mr Wells has operational duty this weekend, so you might want to check in with him before you go. These,” she decided, flipping the box files shut, “can be passed down to Martin now you’ve had a chance to see them. I’ll take those … “ She pointed at the taller pile of files. “And the rest can wait until Monday. Have a good weekend.”
It was an order, not a request. Giles half opened his mouth to protest it, then shut it again with a smile. Arguing office hours with Jane was like arguing with a slayer on a mission; it was possible to persuade them to see your side of things, but direct confrontation was never the way to go about it. Jane wasn’t a slayer – unlike many of his staff – but she had one for a sister, and she knew all about the burdens of duty and responsibility. This was actually one argument he had no intention of starting, let alone winning. Free evenings were few and far between in the week. A whole weekend was a luxury he rarely managed– but his Friday nights were sacrosanct. Subject to serious emergencies, slayer-related prophecies or and an impending apocalypse, of course.
“You too,” he said and meant it.
“I have the in-laws,” Jane grimaced, only half in jest. “I’m looking forward to an early start on Monday.”
“They can’t be that bad, surely?” Giles closed the file in front of him, hesitated for a moment, and then initialed the box marked ‘approved’ on the top right hand corner of the wallet. She snorted, reaching to gather up the completed files.
“Depends. I’ve never quite persuaded myself to ask Anna if they might be candidates for the Slayer hit list, but there are days I’d swear my mother-in-law is part demon. There isn’t some kind of test I could do, is there?”
“Several,” he smiled, pushing back in the chair and stretching the accumulated kinks out of his shoulders. “But I doubt any of them would prove positive. I’ve met Dean, remember? If there’s demon blood in his family, then it’s well buried.”
“If anyone would know …” she teased. “Go home, Rupert. The world doesn’t need saving today and you need some down time. Leave everything to us lesser mortals. We can cope without you, you know.”
It was his turn to snort – a soft, self-deprecating, huh of sound that was part laugh and part sigh. “I do wonder, sometimes,” he muttered, then smiled. “You’re right, as always, Jane.” He got to his feet with a lithe, almost cat-like stretch that easily belied the number of candles on his last birthday cake, and strode across to pick up his jacket. “Tell the girls I’ll be out front in half an hour. And get someone to return those volumes to the library, will you? Grigsby will be wondering where they are.”
“Rupert.” Her admonition was amused. “You didn’t. That poor man …”
He slid into the jacket and used the mirrored wall to adjust its fit, tugging it down until it lost every hint of wrinkle. “His requisition system is archaic and unnecessary. Willow offered to chip every valuable volume, and barcode the rest. Checking things out ought to be as easy as flashing a library card. Besides,” he added, arching an eyebrow in her direction. “I like to keep him on his toes. A little paranoia is healthy in a librarian. It’ll make sure he keeps track of everything.”
“One of these days,” she warned, “someone’ll figure out how you do it. The security in there is airtight and magic proof – and yet you waltz in, help yourself and never, ever get caught on camera.”
“I have my ways,” he said, exchanging an enigmatic smile with his reflection. “Have a good weekend, Jane. I’ll see you on Monday.”
He held the door open for her as they left, a chivalry she didn’t protest since her arms were full of files, but she paused to speak to the secretary in the outer office and he strode into the main reception area alone. Not for long though; as soon as his lanky frame emerged from the inner sanctum a slim figure uncurled itself from the chair by the door and bounced into step beside him. She was young – looking barely eighteen at first glance – and her long dark hair was tugged up and back into a practical ponytail. She was dressed in dark denim; tight jeans and a short boxy jacket. There were trainers on her feet and under the jacket she was sporting a blood red t-shirt with a slogan that declared ‘I hunt, you pray.’
“Anything planned for the weekend, Angela?” Giles asked, as if it were everyday routine to acquire a Slayer as an attentive shadow. As a matter of fact it was; the New Council protocol required that he be accompanied by at least one bodyguard at all times. Establishing the sanctuary of his office was an exception that had required great tact, diplomacy – and a moment of allowing Ripper to surface in his full and furious display. The three slayers who’d witnessed it had been shaking for a week; Buffy, he’d been informed, had made them repeat the story five times before she’d stopped laughing. If Giles wants some privacy in his office, then I guess you should let him have it, she’d told the Head of Council security, before adding: I just want you to keep him safe. Not smothered.
It was too late for that, of course, but Buffy wasn’t aware of the fact, and he’d have felt petty drawing it to her attention. A position on his personal staff was one that the girls fought over – quite literally on a couple of occasions – and those that won the coveted prize took great pains in ensuring that they faithfully discharged their duty.
“I got a date.” Angela was a fairly new addition to his flock of watchdogs. She’d achieved high marks in her initial assessment, passed through basic training with flying colours, and graduated to full slayer status with the highest marks in her cohort. For all that, she was a little more hot-headed than her assessors liked; after much heated argument about how long she – or her designated Watcher – would last if she were assigned a place in the field, Giles had stepped in to suggest a compromise. She’d joined his staff, was spending time in the company of older and more experienced slayers, and was occasionally sent on special missions just to let her blow off steam. She reminded him of Faith in her early days, although he’d never told her so; he suspected that she’d have taken it as a compliment rather than a warning, and he’d resolved to redirect her energies in more subtle ways instead.
“Really? Anyone I know?”
She threw him a look. “You in the habit of hanging out in the King’s Head?”
He returned the look with one of his own; one of the withering ones that he’d perfected over long years of dealing with the Scooby gang. “Of course not.” He held the look for a beat before adding warmly: “You know very well that my local is the Green Dragon. I wouldn’t be caught dead drinking the rat's piss they call beer in the King’s Head.”
Angela laughed, which turned several heads as they stalked through the hallways. The day staff were, indeed, hurrying home. Lawyers and clerks, secretaries and administrators, personnel officers, accountants and asset managers were milling into friendly clumps as they left their offices, greeting colleagues and discussing their impending weekend plans. Most of them muted their voices into respectful silence as he walked past; he was, after all, the boss. One or two were nodding quiet acknowledgement of his presence, or offering him friendly good wishes for the weekend. It was another part of that strange routine which had become part of his life; this sense of command, of being in charge.
He hated it with a passion, which was one of the reasons why he was so good at it; the one thing he was determined never to let happen was to let the all the anxious admiration and fearful respect turn him into a clone of Quentin Travers.
“I don’t drink the beer.” Angela, like all of her fellow slayers, was oblivious to the everyday office politics of the merely mortal. Giles was very grateful for that. He hand-picked their Watchers to match that determined self-confidence, sending out teams supported by trained and dedicated advisers, rather than unprepared academics or ambitious would-be politicians. One Watcher to every five slayers, these days. Never again would any of them be an instrument. Not while he had any say in the matter, at least. “They do these great toasted sandwiches. And their chips are to die for.”
“I sincerely hope not,” he observed dryly and she grinned.
“Met this guy there.” Her remark was meant to be offhand, but the tone of her voice suggested it was anything but. “Cute.” She paused and then added a little embarrassedly: “If you like ‘em in glasses.”
Giles nobly suppressed a smirk. He’d had a lot of practice at that. “Nothing wrong with needing glasses, Angela.” He threw her a sideways glance over the rims of his own, and she blushed, despite an obvious effort not to.
“Do you?” she asked curiously. “Need ‘em I mean? Because – I’ve seen you fight without them and … you didn’t look like you did.”
He reached out to push open the ornately panelled door at the end of the hall and she ducked under his arm and started walking backwards so that she could study his answer and their surroundings at the same time. He wasn’t in the habit of discussing matters quite that personal with his staff, but the question suggested that the young woman was exercising her observational skills, and that was something he wanted to encourage. “You have … perfect vision, don’t you?”
She reacted with the you gotta be kidding me look he expected; Buffy would have said duh - and for a moment he missed the sound of it, that sense of comfortable banter that had once been such an important part his life. Angela, for all her devil-may-care attitude, was no Buffy, and none of the others in his little entourage had yet found the courage to sass him back the way he would have preferred. The truth was that, despite their close - and occasionally too close – involvement in his life, they all still regarded him with more than a touch of awe. He was their employer, their teacher, their mentor, sometimes their confidante, often their father-confessor – but he had yet to become their friend. And for a man who’d learned to value friendship above all the other gifts the world had to give, that occasionally made dealing with them a little wearing on the soul.
“Of course you do. I, on the other hand …” He came to a halt and tugged the glasses from his nose, studying the way the clarity of the lenses gave way to the muted, slightly blurred perceptions of his natural eyesight. He could see perfectly well – well enough to function, that was, and certainly well enough to fight, should the occasion demand it – but everything was in soft focus, all the hard edges a little smudged. Seen in that way, the girl – like all his girls – glowed with a particular kind of beauty - and not just because a slayer’s aura was a lot easier to read than most. “Imagine you were looking at me under water,” he suggested. “Or through a … a pane of glass smeared with grease. Everything that little bit out of focus. And then imagine spending the hours I do reading books and manuscripts. Peering at handwritten texts or even carved inscriptions.” He replaced the glasses, blinking a little as everything swam into full focus again. “Not everyone is blessed with a slayer’s gifts. Some of us … lesser mortals, require assistance from time to time.”
“You know,” Angela observed thoughtfully, “you have such great eyes, Mr. G. It’s a real shame covering them up. You ever consider wearing contacts?”
He blinked a second time, thrown by the unexpected compliment. A fairly innocent and honest one, going by the way she’d said it. “I do,” he found himself confessing. “But … usually only at the weekend. If I’m – um – riding. O-or out for the evening.”
There. She had him stuttering as if he were back in Sunnydale, for heaven's sake. What was it about the directness of slayers that unnerved him so much?
Or was it just that he was so unused to being asked personal questions? He’d been so busy being Head of the New Council that he hadn’t had much time to pursue a personal life away from it – as far away from it as his slayers would allow, that was – and his friends, his family, were never around long enough to re-accustom him to their easy assumptions of familiarity.
Maybe he was just getting old …
“Oh, yeah.” Angela’s face had lit up with a bright smile, clearly remembering the last expedition to the Green Dragon - and beyond. “You should wear ‘em more often. Or would that ruin the image?”
“I have no idea what you mean,” he responded tartly, although he did, and it would, and both of them knew it.
“Maybe I should get Malik to try them.” They’d nearly reached the end of the administration block, and his attentive escort dove forward to check that the connecting walkway was free from potential danger or obstruction.
“How well do you know him?” Giles suppressed a sigh at the need for such attentive security, firmly reminding himself of what had happened to the last Head of the Council.
“Well, I don’t. Not really.” She held the door open as he walked through, then fell back into step beside him. “I mean – a couple of drinks kind of stuff, but … this is our first date.”
“I see.” The walkway had once been open to the air, a pillared path leading to the old school changing rooms. There’d been a time when he’d run barefoot across these very flagstones, his rugby boots hung around his neck so that he didn’t damage the studs; now he strode down them in smart Italian loafers, with walls of reinforced glass between him and the world. “In which case I recommend that you refrain from making … personal suggestions until you know him better. A young man on his first date is … likely to be anxious about making a good impression. Telling him you want change him before you’ve had a chance to … get to know him …”
She thought about that while she bounced ahead to check the entrance into the school itself. There’d been one occasion when, in hurrying to make a meeting, he’d been unintentionally swamped by gaggle of oblivious students and his duty slayer had practically hospitalised the lot of them. These days the girls double-checked before they let him enter the school. Whether that was for his safety, or that of everyone else, was hard to say.
“All clear,” she reported, repeating her previous chivalry; he’d long since got over the irony of having pretty young women hold doors open for him, although his inner gentleman still bristled a little whenever they did it. “You saying I should find out if I like him the way he is before I try and change him into something he’s not?”
Giles smiled, thinking that if he could teach just one of his girls that particular lesson before she learned it the hard way, he’d save both her, and several young men, a great deal of grief. “Exactly. The reverse is equally true, of course. But you’re a slayer. And the days of anyone molding slayers into anything other than what they want to be …”
“Long over,” she capped, grinning at him. “Got it, Mr G. Thanks. You’re pretty cool, you know?”
“For an old man?” he couldn’t help but question, and she laughed.
“The old man, Mr G. The one and only. Head honcho. Numero Uno. The boss, el jefe, the man with the power, the Watcher’s Watcher, the Guy In Charge.” The capitals were emphasised with relish. “You’re the Man. And the man … is kinda okay. For a man.”
“Thank you,” he said dryly. “I think.”
“Girl powwerrr,” she growled, flexing herself into a parody of a muscleman pose. “We got it, you … teach us what it means. And how to make it work for us. You know,” she considered, giving him a thoughtful look. “When I first came here? I was one scared kid. I’d hurt somebody I never wanted to hurt. Because I didn’t know. Because I didn’t understand. And then you stood up in front of me - in front of the whole cohort - and you told us what we were and why we were, and how we could use it to make a difference … That was the day I became a slayer. Not before. Before I was … just a punk kid with a bit of demon in me. I’ve never forgotten that and I never will.”
He was touched by her earnestness, and a little surprised at her vehemence. “I’m not the only one that gives that message,” he said, thinking – not just of Xander and Andrew’s dedication to the slayer’s cause – but of all the young men and women that he’d help take up the Watchers’ mantles that their parents and grandparents had bequeathed them.
“True,” she shrugged. “But it’s your message, Mr G. We all know that. Just like we know that Buffy Summers is the Slayer and you’re her Watcher. Like I said. You’re the Man. Where we going, anyway?”
“War room,” Giles said, grateful for the sudden change in subject. The last place he wanted to be was standing on a pedestal, and yet that seemed to be exactly where people were putting him these days. It was nice to know that Angela seemed to think that he’d earned her respect, but he wasn’t sure he deserved it for the reasons she was giving. There were days he had to make some very hard decisions about what happened to these girls; decisions of the life-or-death kind – and he never failed to feel sick with guilt on the occasions when some of those he sent out didn’t come back.
The fact that they would never let him go with them only made it worse.
“Cool.” She changed direction accordingly, leading the way down the stone corridors, and Giles let some of his worries slip away, drinking in the atmosphere and savouring the memories that belonged to it. This was his world, not the bureaucratic bustle of the newly-built administrative building. This was a world of learning and study, of dedication and determined preparation. This was what the reformed Council was all about; training the warriors for a war the world remained blissfully ignorant of.