Part Three:
He’d never given the interior of the croft much thought before; its Spartan furnishings had served his basic needs and he’d fitted its spaces well enough, spending as much of his time outdoors as he did in. When he was home, he didn’t need much more than the warmth of the bed, the convenience of a tabletop or two and a space in front of the fire to sit and work once the sun went down. Now, looking round his sanctuary, he realised how small and cluttered it seemed. Books, papers and artefacts loomed out of the semi-gloom, piled higgledy-piggledy on every surface; trays of potsherds, bones and as yet unidentified items jostled for space beside his crockery, his fishing gear and his digging tools; the laundry basket was overflowing and he hadn’t bothered to make his bed. Hadn’t made it, it fact, for days. Sleep was something he sought when his body refused to function without it. The duvet that lay sprawled across the feather mattress was as rumpled and askew as the rest of his life.
Giles heart sank at the sight; had he fallen so low, that he would endure such conditions without even noticing the fact? The glance he threw towards the young woman beside him held more than a little mortification. What would Buffy think, finding him living in such neglected disarray?
It was hard to tell from her expression. Her face was pinched and pale, partly because of the cold and the crying, although more, he suspected, from her long struggle with despair and dismay. She slipped out from under his arm and went to stand by the fire, reaching cold hands to warm them against the flicker of flame. She was shivering, he realised, shivering with the kind of deep-seated chill that would take more than a few friendly embers to dispel. He cursed himself for his selfish distraction, hastily closed and bolted the door and then reached to drag a blanket out of a nearby chest, bringing it over to drape it around her shoulders with gentle care.
“We need to get you out of those wet things,” he said worriedly, concerned that she might already have taken harm from the onslaught of the weather. She didn’t respond for a moment; she was staring into the fire as if mesmerised by it, staring with an intensity that sent a shiver down his spine. “Buffy?”
“Is the fire warm?” she murmured, pushing her hands closer to the blaze. “Is it? Everything I touch seems like ice …”
He caught her fingers before she could sink them into the flames, turning her away from the fire as he wrapped his hands around her own. Her skin was cold and clammy, like a dead thing; for a moment his heart skipped an anxious beat, echoes of a long held nightmare clutching at his soul. Had she been returned to life? Or had she come back as something else, a revenant from the grave, summoned into unlife, like the creatures she had once hunted and slain?
“You’re just cold,” he told her anxiously, pushing that shiver of fear aside with determination. Whatever she was, she was Buffy – and hadn’t he felt her heart beating against him when she’d held him, out on the beach? Beating like a wild, frightened thing, pounding itself against her ribcage as the storm of her emotions raged through her soul? “C-come on,” he chivvied gently, reaching under the blanket to start undoing buttons and ease sodden cotton off her shoulders. “Let’s get you out of these r-ridiculous clothes and into something a little more sensible, shall we? I have … I- I probably have something you can wear …”
She didn’t resist his attentions, but nor did she move to help him. She simply stood there, watching him as he carefully peeled the rain soaked material away from her clammy skin. It could have been an utterly embarrassing moment for both of them – but somehow it felt right and natural to be attending to her like this. He had spent too many hours, in the long months since her fall, wishing that he had found some way to let her know just how precious she had been to him – and this simple gift of care, this expression of tender concerns, seemed liked a blessed penance; the very least that he could do.
“Are they?” she asked a little worriedly as he encouraged her to step out of the sodden dress and let him take it away. “Ridiculous? My clothes, I mean.”
He scooped up the flimsy fabric, letting it hang, dripping and mishapen from his hand. It had been, he realised, a very attractive garment once; one well suited to grace her figure and enhance her elfin beauty. “Well,” he allowed reluctantly, “perhaps not in Southern California … but on the Sully? In mid-January? Quite ridiculous. Unless, of course, making a fashion statement is more important than keeping all your fingers and toes.”
She nearly smiled at that; a soft, hesitant twist of her lips that turned his heart over. “A person needs toeness,” she said. “Fingerness too. Preferably ten. Of each.”
“Indeed,” he agreed, tossing the damp bundle onto the flagstones beside the fire and turning back to help her with the next layer. She bit her lower lip as unhooked her delicate bra and helped her wriggle free of its confines. Being that naked – with him – was clearly beginning to register; when he turned to add the garment to the growing pile she carefully pulled the blanket in around her and huddled into it as if to say ‘enough’. He didn’t press the point, but pulled across the padded chair and settled her into it, blanket and all.
“Giles?”
“Mmm?” He’d crouched down to give the fire a poke, stirring up the heat before adding a fresh layer of peat and coal.
“Aren’t you – shouldn’t you … you were out in the rain too, you know. You’re all … soggy. Wet beardness and kinda steamy.”
He frowned, glancing down at his wool-clad arm to see what she was talking about. Sure enough, his outer layer was steaming gently, the moisture in it reacting to the heat from the fire. “Bugger,” he murmured, hanging the poker back on its hook and reaching - almost without thinking - to investigate the state of his beard. The result was a small shower – and a gulping half-giggle from Buffy, who’d clearly caught the look that had chased across his face. Giles gave her an anxious glance, then grimaced and stood up, silently berating himself for getting distracted again, even for a second or two. She needed him to be focused; he needed to get her warm and dry, for her to be safe and sheltered from the storm.
Whether that be the howl of the wind and the rattling impact of the rain on the roof – or the boiling turmoil that sat behind her eyes.
“I won’t be a moment,” he promised, stepping over to grab a couple of clean towels from the rail by the sink. “Here. Dry your hair. I’ll be right back.”
He was peeling himself out of the sodden sweater as he spoke, throwing it – and the equally sodden shirt beneath it – onto the already overflowing laundry pile. He kicked out of his boots, leaving them to softly steam by the fire, and strode across the room to find clean dry clothes for the both of them. He was acutely aware of Buffy’s eyes on him as he did so. She was watching him with a disturbing intensity, the towel he’d given her still lying in her lap, and her hands clenched convulsively into its softness. It hurt to see her like this, to see her so unsure of herself, so distraught and disconnected – but if what she’d said was true …
He shivered, recalling her words with an almost physical stab of pain.
I was in Heaven, and they tore me out of it.
He couldn’t begin to imagine what that might be like. How it might feel to have achieved a state of bliss, only to be ripped away from it – to be forced back into the demands of life, just when you were finally done with it.
Finally at peace.
Lightning flared through the windows, briefly painting them both with harsh white light before plunging them back into candle-lit cosiness. The shiver became a cold hard hand, clenched in his guts. A surge of anger and disgust spiralled up from it, upping his heart rate and tensing every muscle. He knew who’d done this. Who’d led the well-intentioned and utterly unthinkable deed. How dare she? What thoughtless, foolish arrogance had made Willow think that she had the right to make such a choice? Did she give no thought to consequence? Make any kind of effort to determine where Buffy was before she called her back?
The low growl that escaped his throat was involuntary; an expression of fury and frustration that counterpointed the rumble of overhead thunder. There was, inevitably, just a little self-recrimination added into the mix. If he’d stayed, would this have happened? Would Willow have come to him, given him a chance to prevent such utter foolishness?
Or – he glanced at the pale figure shivering by his fire – would he, distraught with grief, riven heart and soul, have chosen to help her instead?
The anger dissipated as quickly as it had come. He couldn’t be sure of his answer to that and - knowing that he might have been tempted, knowing that the depth of his pain might have overruled his judgment – he couldn’t truly condemn the young witch for following the wishes of her heart.
But he would speak to her about it.
Once he’d assessed the damage she’d caused, and done what ever he could to resolve its consequences.
One thing at a time, he told himself firmly, throwing open the chest at the foot of his bed and starting to rummage through it while he briskly towelled his hair and beard dry and kicked out of his damp jeans in order to climb into dry ones. He didn’t even give a second thought to what he was doing. He could hardly be self-conscious about stripping off in front of Buffy when he’d just helped her undress – especially when the reasons for doing so were exactly the same. Somehow, somewhere, they seemed to have got past the issues that would have added awkwardness to the situation. Maybe her dying had done that; or maybe it was just realising that she was more important than an imposition of cultural proprietary that had no relevance in their relationship anymore. He’d held her dead body in his arms, had helped to wash and dress it ready for burial. In death she’d stripped him to the soul; what was there to worry about in the simple exposure of his skin?
It only took a few moments before he was back at his Slayer’s side, his arms outstretched to offer her what he’d found; a clean pair of flannel pyjamas, a pair of long woollen socks and one of the two heavy Aran sweaters that he’d acquired since coming to the Sully. The second was already wrapped comfortably around him, creating a welcome layer of warmth over the soft t-shirt he’d found to slip over his head.
Buffy frowned warily at the pile, reaching a tentative hand to feel the textures of flannel and wool. “Oh,” she registered, turning the cautious touch into a scrunching grab. “It’s all soft. I thought – it looked … “
“Scratchy?” he supplied unable to help his quiet smile at her expression of surprise. “Far be it for me to disillusion you, Buffy, but … um … while I may be living the life of a hermit, hair shirts are strictly optional.”
“Really?” She came the closest to offering him a true smile that he’d seen since she arrived. “I mean – you don’t – well, I always thought … the authenticity thing, you know? Doing it … right?
Giles didn’t know whether to feel affronted, that she thought him to be defined by such pedantry – or amused at the image of himself that her words conjured up. He did have a tendency to insist on attention to detail, didn’t he …? He sighed, letting both emotions go, letting them slide away with only a moment of regret. There had been a time when he might have risen to the challenge, might have been spurred into offering up the expected banter and engaging her in vigorous repartee – but his soul was battered, his spirit numb, and he really had no heart for the game.
Not for the moment, at any rate.
“Right?” he questioned softly. “Nothing’s been right since …” He left the thought where he found it, seeing the pain stir in her eyes – and feeling it twist in his heart. “But - you’re here now.” The sheer wonder of saying it choked his voice and sent shivers though his soul. “That’s all that matters. That, and getting you warm,” he added, dragging himself determinedly back to practical concerns. Buffy stared at him for a moment, her fingers still clenched around the softness of wool and flannel.
“Can you do that?” she asked eventually, the words filled with impossible hope and the terrors of despair. “Can you make me warm again?”
Thunder muttered overhead, a soul shivering, low voiced rumble of sound. The weather outside was wild and dangerous, a howl of ice filled wind and bitter, furious rain. But the roof was sturdy and the croft had weathered far worse weather than this. There were no terrors in the storm that raged around them both; it was the one that tore at his slayer’s heart that sent a shiver of fear through the Watcher’s soul. Her face was painted with the flicker of firelight; gold shimmered in her hair, reflecting from the soft glow of the lamps. Her eyes were deep pools of sky grey and sea green, echoing sights and experiences he had no way to comprehend. She was a ghost, an impossible creature – and she was Buffy; the centre of his world. His duty. His destiny.
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “But, if you’ll let me … I’m willing to try.”
He talked to her while he helped her dress – then and afterwards as he bustled through banking up the fire, making soup and then sharing it with her, a solid mug of comfort that she clutched in her chilled fingers. The soup tasted of cream and spice and happier days; the words tasted like a half forgotten memory, the rich depths of his voice and the sense of safety that it wove around her. She savoured them both, slowly and with almost guilty pleasure; she knew she didn’t deserve this, didn’t merit his care or his affection. But he offered her both without hesitation, pouring them over her like a healing balm. Healing, she suspected, for both of them; he spoke with an open honesty that would have had no place in the guarded, wary world that they had once shared. Sunnydale had been a place of secrets and secrecy; she’d known her Watcher well, but she’d known very little about him. Here, in this quiet sanctuary, besieged by storm and isolated from the world, he gifted her with himself, filling the threat of silence with revealing words and wry observations.
He talked of the Sully, of his life on its windswept hills and its sea washed shores; about living rough and coping with the issues of isolation. About the largesse the island offered him; about taking eggs from the cliffs, scavenging for wild herbs and long hours fishing out in the bay. He told her about the crayfish that lurked in the rocks at the foot of the headland, and the taste of wild oysters gathered at low tide. He spoke, too, of days of hunger, of times when his stores ran low and the weather chained him the island so that he was forced to ration what little he had. He’d even, he said, run out of tea once; a horror he narrated with earnest self mockery. She had to laugh at that, at his words and his expression, seeing the quiet twinkle lurking in his eyes. It felt good to laugh. The smile he found to answer it was even better.
Moment by moment he did what she’d asked him to do; he made her feel warm again. Not just warm to the skin, however cosy and comfortable it felt to be wrapped in his trappings, but a deeper, more fundamental warmth; one that eased the ache in her heart and soothed the anguish of her soul. There were no demands and no expectations; just the words, washing over her. She immersed herself in them, drinking them in as if each syllable were as precious as raindrops landing on a parched earth.
The hammer of the storm slowly grew quieter, the shouts of thunder turning into muttered, distant rumbles and the howl of the wind slowly died away, leaving whisper of the rain to become a gentle backdrop to the gift of his litany.
Over the soup he spoke about his work, telling her about the study he was pursuing in the ruins – the cataloguing of stone, the unearthing of old bones and the discovery of precious treasures. Not vessels of gold or silver, but the tiny fragments that evoked the past; the shreds of cloth, shards of pottery, glass beads and disintegrating metals that wrapped their buried owners in the echoes of their lives. She listened with genuine fascination as he related the legends and the histories that those echoes were confirming. They weren’t his usual topics; instead of legends of monsters or the horrors of prophecy he gave her spiritual tales, stories of the monks and nuns who had come to the island hoping to find themselves. The ruin on the hill was that of a monastery, built to house those who’d lived and prayed among the island’s silences; it had been founded by a woman now hailed as a local saint, an Abbess said to have the power to speak to the dead and to bring peace to unsettled spirits. She had come to the Sully, it was said, seeking refuge from the evils of the world; she’d set up the altar stone from her old priory at the heart of the island – and ever since then, the legend said, no evil creature had been able to set so much as a foot on the Sully’s sacred stones.
Others, he said, had followed her over the years; seekers of truth, men and women in search of a closer rapport with God …
“Refugees from pain,” he concluded softly, watching her with haunted eyes. “Those in need of sanctuary.”
She put down her now empty soup mug and reached to hug the blanket more tightly around her shoulders. “Did they find it?” she asked, remembering how she had felt stepping down into the bay – the sense of sanctity and the weight of ancient sorrows underpinning it. No evil creature can set foot here … It might be a legend, but there was a great deal of truths in legends – and here she was, curled up inside Giles’ sweater, sitting safe inside his croft. The island had not rejected her. She didn’t think she was evil, but then she’d come back so empty, had felt so twisted and wrong…
“Maybe,” her Watcher sighed softly, staring over the rim of his mug and into the shimmer of flame. “I know I did.”
His words – so soft, so sorrowful, so resigned– raked claws of anguish across her soul. The day before she’d have reacted with an inward flinch and withdrawn even further into herself, seeking to escape the inevitable sense of guilt and pain. But here, cradled in the warmth he had given her, safely anchored in the loving harbour of his heart, she could finally accept that there was no escape from those feelings. That they were part of the healing process, vital steps in the journey she had been asked to make. A journey he had been taking ahead of her, torn by grief and burdened by regret and remorse.
Buffy slid from the chair and joined him on the floor, moving to wrap her arms around him. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, laying her cheek against his shoulder. His immediate reaction was wary surprise - after which he quirked a quiet smile behind his beard, curled his arm around her waist and tucked her in comfortably beside him.
“Don’t be,” he said. “You did what you had to. As did I. You gave your life to save the world. I took one for the same reason.”
He took …?
Buffy lifted her head to stare at him. He was still gazing into the fire, his eyes clouded with memory and his focus distant.
“Yours was the nobler deed, I have to say. Something to be proud of …” His voice tailed off into pensive silence. She went on staring.
Ben.
He killed Ben …
It wasn’t hard to figure out. She’d left Glory’s mortal prison lying in the dirt, battered and bleeding from her attack – and when she’d come back from … well, from where she’d been, there’d been no sign of him, or her for that matter. She’d never asked about his fate. Never even thought to question what had happened after she’d gone. Glory had been defeated, and she wasn’t coming back. It was only now that she realised why.
A part of her wanted to be angry. Wanted to push away from him with accusation and condemnation in her eyes. He had killed. Killed a helpless man in cold blood. He had death on his hands and the strength of will to commit murder.
The old Buffy might have reacted badly to that realisation. Might have reared back and lashed out, angry at him and angry at herself because he had been right. Because he’d been driven to do the one thing that she could never do. But the new Buffy – the one that had been ripped from heaven and suffered the sorrows of the world – simply tightened her hug, pressing closer with a shiver of distraught sympathy. ‘Death is your gift,’ the first Slayer had said. Her gift to the world, to her sister? Or had it been his gift to her? His acceptance of a burden she could never carry.
He would have killed Dawn …
If he’d had to. If it had been the only way. He’d faced the truth of all that, and he would have done it – and he would have had to live with it afterwards, with knowing what he’d done.
With endless regret and unbearable remorse.
Looking at him now – at the anxious lines that creased his face and the look that haunted his eyes - she knew that he regretted Ben’s death. Not just the necessity of it, but the deed itself. There’d been too much death that day, and he’d had to carry all of it: the murder and her suicide, shattering his world and tearing his soul to shreds.
No wonder he’d left Sunnydale when he did.
If she’d been capable of honest emotion in those early days of her return she probably would have been resentful for what he’d done; walking out on the Scoobies like that, abandoning Dawn to her guilt and her grief. It had never occurred to her that he might have done it to protect her from his own.
No-clue Buffy, that’s me, she sighed, laying her head back on his shoulder and breathing in the warm, earthy fragance that was a little bit of peat-smoke, a touch of wet oiled wool, and a whole lot Rupert Giles. His scent was comforting - although nothing like the mindless, heedless comfort of dead flesh and cold kisses that she’d embraced with bitterness and self-loathing. Spike had made her feel weak, made her feel needy and desperate. She’d devoured his touch, his presence and his passion - and none of it had been enough to break through the ice that held her heart. Yet one simple breath, one whisper of that unmistakable, utterly Giles-y smell and she felt challenged and strengthened and found herself staring at painful truths with confidence. A shaky confidence, perhaps, but confidence none the less. When she’d set out that morning she’d thought she was running away from everything. It was only now that she realised she’d been running towards something. Something she needed. Something that made her complete.
“I had no choice.”
“I know.” Giles put down his mug and laid his hand over hers instead, warming cold fingers between the heat of his heart and his work weathered palm.
“Neither did you.” She offered the words gently – making them an acknowledgement without censure, the forgiveness she knew he hadn’t found in himself.
“I know that too.” He paused for a moment, then added: “Doesn’t make either of them any easier to bear.”
“No,” she agreed, still in that soft, forgiving tone. “Life sucks, right? Having to live it. Having to live with it. But we keep on .. keeping on. Doing the livingness. I guess. Except …” She frowned, thinking about it. “You’re here, doing the hermit guy stuff - and – I – I came back and I – I just couldn’t get it right again.”
He sighed. A slow heave of his shoulders that expressed the weight they carried. “We are a pair, aren’t we ...?”
“We always were.”
Everything paused; a slow and pensive pause in which the echo of her words rippled and resonated like a distant chiming of church bells. Buffy looked up. Giles looked down. Their eyes met – and then he was smiling, hugging her a little closer with a soft gulp of happiness that held both laughter and tears.
“I missed you,” he said. “I missed you so much.”
She hugged him back, forgetting – for a moment – that she was a Slayer, and perfectly capable of breaking ribs if she wasn’t careful. “I think,” she admitted with a tearful gulp of her own, “I’ve been – missing me, too. I don’t know who I am, anymore. I can't do it ... without you. I need your help. I need you to be – “
“Your Watcher again?” he offered softly, no doubt recalling the last time she’d said those words to him. She’d meant them then. She meant them now, more than ever.
“Yes. No…” she corrected, then again, “yes … I – I don’t know. Exactly. I just need *you*. The whole package. Watcher, teacher, friend – whatever. Be Giles. For me. So that I can be me again.”
The smile he found for her was haunted; it came tinged with sympathy, affection, and hint of weary resignation. “I don’t know if I can,” he said. “That part of me - the Watcher, the defender of all that was good and true … I’ve lost him, Buffy. I not sure if I can find him again.”
“You will,” she murmured, cuddling up against him so that she could listen to his heartbeat, softly counterpointing her own. “We’ll go look for him together. In the morning,” she added, sleepily. “Once the storm is over …”