Part Two:
It had been the whistle of the kettle which had pulled him from his work. Long, painstaking work, the kind of work he could get lost in: handling the delicate pieces of broken pottery, the hints of worked metals and the echoes of lives long gone and long since forgotten. He’d unearthed a treasure trove of pieces from his first forays into the winter soaked earth, and he needed to catalogue them all – to map them using his meticulous measurements, confirming their source and location from his notes and sketches of the site, and to clean and date and determine every one before carefully packing them away, ready to be sent south for the museum’s consideration.
He’d been pouring over them all day, skipping breakfast and barely pausing for lunch; the day had been too bitter to coax him back up to the excavation and besides, he’d needed to do something with the trays of artefacts before they overwhelmed the tiny croft and drove him out into the teeth of the wind. He’d dropped the kettle on the fire at some point between dating shards of thirteenth century pottery and sketching the delicate strands of the twisted wire brooch he’d lifted from a dead woman’s breast only the day before. There was an oddly satisfying irony to the fact that he – Rupert Giles, ex-Watcher, expert on matters of the undead and the dealings of demons – should have found refuge here among inanimate bones and the ruins of the past. He acknowledged that irony every day, wrapping himself in history, in the certainty of weathered stone, in the cold hard work of the excavation, in the cling of the earth, and the endless grandeur of his chosen place of exile.
He occupied himself with trivial things, with measured study and undemanding fact, finding sanctuary in the arms of humdrum activity. In a place where monks had meditated and hermits had communed with God for centuries, he’d sought his release in the mechanics of physical labour and the mind numbing detail of cataloguing and cross referencing – and yes, there was irony in that too, although it wasn’t one he cared to think about.
In fact, most days, he tried not to think at all.
He wasn’t really thinking as he plucked the kettle out of the fire and used it to fill the waiting teapot, nor as he poured himself a cup of tea and went to stand by the open half door to drink it – but his mind was sufficiently alert to catch sight of the lowering cloud that spilled across the horizon. Dark, ominous clouds; they promised storm weather, the rumble of thunder and the lashing impact of the rain. He grimaced and put down the cup, grateful that he’d thought to cover his currently half excavated trench before he’d come down from the ruins the day before. Last time the weather had turned ugly he’d been forced to spend three days trapped inside the stone walls of the croft. Bad days, filled with smoke and damp and misery. This time he should fare better – he’d sealed the worst of the leaks in the roof, had stacked layers of peat and buckets of sea coal ready for his fire, and stocked up on oil and candles. Since the diesel for the generator was both precious and rare, he’d learned to ration it, saving the niceties of power for important things – like the radio, on those few occasions that he needed to use it.
The comfort of the croft wasn’t his only concern though; he’d have to go out and drag his boat further up the strand, in case the wind and the tide tried to steal it away from him. It wasn’t much of a boat, but it had served him well over the past few weeks, and it would be a wrench to lose it. Fresh fish pulled from the sea, the odd lobster dragged up from under the promontory’s point, and the ability to sail as far as Marchess or Invaree added a certain richness to his otherwise spartan life – not to mention giving him something else to do, other than dig, and sort and brood.
Giles sighed, reached back to drop his glasses on the table next to his notes and reluctantly clambered into his sea boots, thrusting his sock-wrapped feet into their cumbersome depths. His hand half reached to lift the heavy windcheater from its hook, but he changed his mind and pushed open the bottom half of the door instead. This wasn’t going to take long and it wasn’t actually raining – not yet, at least. All he had to do was walk down to the boat, drag it a little further up the strand and make sure that its anchor was embedded deep into the sand up above the usual tide level. With luck – and the help of his sturdy boots – he wouldn’t even get his feet wet.
He was being optimistic, of course. It only took a few steps to move from the snug, smoky warmth of the croft into the shivering, bite of the wind and – once engulfed in its embrace – to realise that the weather had already deteriorated from a crisp, clear January day into the bitter, ice filled swirl of threatening storm. The cold and the chill cut through the air like knives, lifting instant colour to his cheeks, and misting his hair and beard with the first threats of rain. It wasn’t worth retracing his steps to fetch his coat since, by the time he’d done so, it would almost certainly be raining for real. He set his shoulders and gritted his teeth instead, striding down the steps and onto the slope of the beach, intent on completing his task and getting back into the warm as soon as he could.
The boat was lying at a slight angle against the sand, with its prow turned towards the shore and the surf tugging at its stern. The anchor rope was at full stretch, and the heavy metal hook was buried deep. So deep he had to work hard to tug it free. He’d not taken the vessel out for a couple of days, and the shifting tide had been slowly dragging it back towards the sea. Normally he would be happy to leave it where it was. It took less effort to launch the thing when half of it was already afloat – but he didn’t want to lose it, and the increasing agitation of the ocean was only a hint of what he suspected was still to come. The bay was generally well sheltered by the promontory on one side and the old stone quay on the other, but if the wind rose any further – or swung round to drive in straight from the east – then it would be subjected to the full force of the North Sea in a winter fury.
It’s far too remote, Rupert. Miserable place. Harsh weather and spartan conditions. And this time of year?
A memory of Quentin Travers’ words – a mixture of stern, if well meaning advice, unwanted sympathy and a slightly confused reaction to his choices – lifted an ironic smile to his lips. He hadn’t cared what time of year it was. The prospect of harsh weather and deprivation had suited his mood – and he knew a lot about misery. He’d been living with it every day. Every day since …
He grimaced angrily, refusing to follow the thought all the way down. That kind of thinking only led to pain and regret, brought back memory and took him to dark and unwelcoming places inside his head. He’d come to the Sully seeking refuge from those places, only to find he’d brought them with him; the peace he sought – peace of mind, if not peace in his heart – still seemed impossibly distant, even after all this time. Time, they’d said, would heal the wounds. The nagging ache in his gut had long since vanished – but the savage lacerations that events had ripped through his soul were still painful. Still bleeding. There was a cold empty space inside him that felt as if nothing would ever fill it – and while the soaring grandeur and the harsh demands of his chosen sanctuary helped numb the agony of his loss, it could do nothing to salve the bitterness of the experience.
Or the inescapable of guilt that wrapped every moment of it.
The anchor finally pulled free of the sand and he tossed it into the prow of the boat for a moment, reaching gritty hands to grab hold of the hull and begin dragging the vessel further up the beach. The wood was slick and it was hard to get a firm grip. Cold surf washed around his feet - and the sudden surging wave, which gave him unexpected aide by lifting the boat and driving it forward, also managed to immerse him up to his knees. He was soaked through in seconds.
“Damn and blast!” Giles cursed, as much from the shock of the cold as from real annoyance. The boat had jammed itself firmly against a jutting rock and his hands had slipped, leaving painful layers of raw skin scraped along the gunwales. It was too much. Suddenly everything was too much. The weight of the world crashed down on him with a vengeance, driving a dark wedge of despair deep into his wounded heart.
His hands clenched convulsively on the wood and he leant forward with a groan, bowing his head and closing his eyes as a feeling of utter despondency surged through him. It didn’t matter how hard he fought, how much he tried to distance himself from his guilt and his grief, the shadows still came back to haunt him. For one long, unbearable moment, he was standing – not knee deep in the bitter cold swirl of the winter surf – but somewhere at the foot of a swaying, makeshift tower, the last warmth of a dead man staining his hands while the tumbled form of his Slayer came to rest on the cold, hard ground in front of him.
Every time.
He could play and replay the moment over and over in his head and it never
changed, never altered in clarity or impact. There’d been nothing he could
do, nothing he could have done that would have saved her – and he hated
himself for hating her choices, for wanting to deny the poetry of her gift,
and her right to make the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of the world.
He hadn’t just cared about her. He’d loved her. Loved every selfish,
self-indulgent, self-absorbed moment of her; the way she’d wanted to defy
her fate and the responsibilities it demanded of her. She’d been an infuriating,
frustrating charge – and a total joy to his heart, a spirit that had fired
his soul. It was on days like this that he wanted to curse her, wanted to reach
out and shake her lifeless body, demanding to know why on that day,
of all days, she’d finally understood the selflessness of her destiny
– and chosen to follow it to its ultimate end.
“Giles?”
The sound of her voice was soft, an anxious, sorrowful whisper that turned his heart and cut him to the soul. It had sounded so real. So real, in fact, that – for one terrifying second – he could have sworn she was right beside him.
“I’m sorry, Buffy,” he murmured, not daring to lift his head or open his eyes. If he did that, her ghost would leave him; leave him with nothing but memory and regret – and the deep aching emptiness that swirled in the hollow of his heart. “I am so sorry.” His voice choked on the words. Sorry wasn’t enough. He’d failed her. Left her to struggle for her own solutions, because the ones he’d had to offer just hadn’t been acceptable.
There should have been another way. Another answer. He should have found her
one.
One they both could have lived with …
The wind shifted a little, the change heralding the onset of rain. Cold spears, the ice of descending precipitation, began to strike at his hunched shoulders with almost bruising force. He sighed and tilted his head up and back, letting the water hammer into his face, letting it wash away the treacherous tears that had spilled onto his cheeks. They mingled like ice and fire; the weeping of the world and the white hot protests of his soul.
“Don’t be sorry. Be Giles.”
Her voice was so close – so real– that for a moment he thought … His breath suddenly caught in his throat. A phantom hand clenched around his heart. Slowly, fearfully, he turned his head and opened his eyes.
“Buffy?”
She was standing on the beach. Standing there, staring at him with wide, haunted eyes. Buffy Summers. His Slayer.
His dead Slayer.
The wind was tugging at her sundress and making her hair dance. The rain was patterning her skin, and the surf was swirling around her sandled feet; she was thin and wan and as pale as a ghost. “Hey,” she ventured, her lips quirking in the brief echo of a smile – one that slipped away and was lost almost before it had time to form. “Miss me?”
He opened his mouth – but no words came out. He was afraid to move, afraid to even breathe. He felt suspended, held in a moment between pain and joy, his heart pierced by her presence; it fluttered and struggled inside his chest like a moth caught in a candle flame. It just wasn’t possible – but she was there.
Really there, a figure as solid and as soaked as he was, lashed by the rain and caressed by the ice filled wind. She was shivering – and not all of it was from the cold.
Giles let go of the boat. Strode out of the surf and went to her. She didn’t move – or vanish - as he approached; her eyes watched him with anxious intensity, and her body quivered, almost as if poised for flight. He hesitated as he reached her, doubt and disbelief warring with the evidence of his senses. He wondered if he were losing his mind. He knew she was dead. He’d carried her home after her fall, had stood over her grave. She could be nothing more than a phantom; a ghost conjured up by his grief.
And yet, and yet … She stared up at him as he stared down, the moment poised in eternity, the requisite six inches of proprietary space between them – and that little distance yawned like a gulf, defining the abyss that lay between life and death. His sense of the world hung in precarious balance; one wrong move, one wrong word, and he knew she would be gone. Gone forever, taken from him a second time.
He lifted his hand. Tentatively, delicately, he reached to brush the rebellious strands of rain slicked hair from her face – and felt them cling to his fingers, felt the whisper of them, their reality, against his skin. “Buffy,” he breathed, acknowledging the miracle, turning her name into a prayer.
And then she was in his arms, hugging him with fierce and desperate need, the hard curve of her body pressing against him as she shook with heart wrenching sobs.
They didn’t stand like that for long – although the moment felt like forever, an instant of eternity captured within her soul. Buffy marvelled at the feel of familiar arms around her, at the sensation of embracing the solid, certain warmth that lurked beneath layers of salt spray and rain soaked wool. It was a feeling she never wanted to lose; she felt anchored and protected, encircled by his strength and immersed in his presence. She pressed her face against his chest, not bothering to hold back the tears that had somehow welled up from inside her. She had cut herself off from the world for so long, buried her emotions so deep, that this sudden release was giddying. She’d wrestled with pain, and effort, and misery for weeks, each numbing moment pushing her soul closer and closer to utter despair – and now all of that came bubbling out of her, the anguish and the wretchedness wrenched from her heart with savage intensity.
he hadn’t known that she needed to cry.
Perhaps she’d forgotten how.
“Ssh,” he soothed inconsequentially, pressing his check against her hair and stroking the curve of her shoulder with reassuring gentleness. He was shaking almost as badly as she was, holding her against him as though he feared she’d vanish the moment he let go. Perhaps he did; as far as he knew, she was a ghost, just an apparition sent to haunt him by the storm. “It’s all right. Everything’s going to be all right.”
They were words, nothing more, offered as meaningless comfort for a distress he had no real way to measure – but they tore at her heart with desperate pain. Nothing was right. Nothing could be right, when she was so wrong, and so out of place. She clung to him like a limpet, feeling herself battered and torn by the storm of emotion that had been unleashed inside her. Anger and pain swirled into the empty spaces in her heart, dragging fear and hopelessness with them. It threatened to overwhelm her, to drown her in its turbulence.
But the rock to which she clung stood firm, holding her, sheltering her; his warmth, his certainty, gave her the strength she needed to pull herself up from the flood. Slowly and fearfully, she lifted her head and looked into his eyes. It was a moment she’d been dreading. She had every expectation of seeing what she’d seen in every other pair of familiar eyes these past weeks. Confusion. Anxious, misplaced sympathy. The pleasure at her return tainted by all the pain of her leaving in the first place – and the hints of anger, the guilt and the blame placed on her shoulders, the long, anguished cry of the bereaved as they fought to understand the injustice of death. Her friends had been unable to understand the reason for her choices – and her sister had still carried the guilt of being the one left behind.
The man in her arms had every right to feel that way too. More right, perhaps, than any of them.
Buffy expected to see it in his eyes. Not just the pain and the reproach, but the regret and the grief tangled together like barbed wire wrapped around his soul. She thought she’d look, and that she’d see, and when she did the moment of their connection would dissolve like mist, vanishing like a long forgotten dream.
She held her breath as their eyes met; she was trembling on the edge of the flood, waiting for it to rise up and sweep her away. She was expecting accusation. What she found was absolution.
His smile was gentle, and his sympathy profound. There was pain – and grief – in the way he looked at her – but they were nothing compared to the deep and abiding love that lurked in the depth of his eyes. It gathered her up, welcomed her, measured her and forgave her, all in an instant.
“I thought I’d lost you.” His words were shaky. He still didn’t quite believe she was there. Nor did she.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, pressing herself back into his embrace, echoing his earlier words with the same heartfelt need and passion. None of this was right – not yet– but suddenly she knew it could be and it would be; with his help she would find a way - a way in which she could weather the storm and reach safe harbour.
“Don’t be sorry,” he said, sounding as if he were choking back a mix of laughter and tears. “Be Buffy. Be real.”
“I am. And … I am,” she assured him, a little surprised by her own confidence in the assertion. “Will – Willow brought me back. Back from the dead … back from – “ She hesitated, shivering with memory. She didn’t want to tell him – but not telling had been part of the problem. Part of the pain. “From heaven, Giles. I was in Heaven, and they tore me out of it.”
“Oh dear Lord.” His arms tightened around her. His words were soft and fervent – a true prayer, rather than simple exclamation. “I had no idea … Are you all right? A-are you …?” He couldn’t formulate the question, couldn’t find the words to express what he needed to know. Buffy’s tears welled up a second time.
“No,” she sobbed, clinging to him with a sense of desperation. “No… Giles, I-I think I came back wrong. Everything – everything’s too harsh, too hard, too much. I’ve tried and I’ve tried, and I just can’t … I don’t know how… They took Dawn away from me. They said I wasn’t fit to care for her – and I was glad, because … I’m not. I’m not. Everything’s just fallen apart. Xander walked out on Anya. Will and Tara broke up and – and I … I slept with Spike. He hurt me and I wanted him to. I wanted him to because … because at least he made me feel.”
She paused, trying to catch her breath, trying to fight the flood of words and self-loathing that had come pouring out of her. It felt like poison welling up from a wound; her ugly, bleeding heart laid bare for him to see. “Do you … do you hate me?” she asked in a small voice, quivering with shame.
“Oh, Buffy,” he sighed, an unexpected note of amusement in his voice. “You silly girl. Of course I-I don’t hate you. I am having a little trouble b-breathing here, but quite frankly, that doesn’t seem to matter at the moment …”
“Oh,” she reacted bemusedly, oddly disappointed by the absence of stern words. Then what he’d said registered. “Oh.” She sprang away from him with wide-eyed guilt, and he reached to catch her shoulders before she bolted completely.
“Buffy …” He was looking at her with sympathetic affection, smiling a little sadly in the depths of an unexpected beard. He was, she realised warily, no longer the stuffy, tweed-clad librarian who’d struggled so hard to cope with the stubborn, wilful teenager who’d been placed in his care. But he was still Giles– still, in that indefinable, destiny shaped way, her Watcher.
Still the guardian of her soul, the keeper of her heart.
The beard was a nice touch actually; it gave him a weathered, rumpled look, a suitably roughened edge to match the stark wilderness in which he’d sought refuge. She took a moment to look at him – really look at him – and found her lips curling into a wary smile. His sweater was torn and frayed at the neck, and had little leather patches sewn into the elbows, he was wearing thick and heavy jeans, tucked firmly into a pair of solid boots - and he was soaked. From head to toe. The rain was falling heavily by now; it had plastered his hair tight against his skull and was running in little rivulets into the curls of his beard and then dripping out again.
“I think,” he was saying, “that you and have a-a lot to talk about. But not here and not now– because right n-now, the important thing is to get you somewhere warm and dry before you catch your death …” He trailed off, colliding with his own thoughtless phrasing . The sudden, stricken look in his eyes turned her heart over.
“Been there. Done that,” she said softly. “But … warm and dry sounds good.” Lightning flared across the distant horizon. It was followed by a heavy rumble of thunder, the sound of ancient gods quarrelling somewhere in the heavens. It summoned up memories of a boiling vortex, of violent forces trying to tear the universe apart. Buffy shivered, all the way to her soul. “Better than good,” she corrected shakily. “Does it do that – a lot, around here?”
Giles’ smile was wry. “Now and again. It’s that time of year.” He put his arm around her shoulders and turned her inland, gesturing up the beach. “We’ll be safe enough in the croft. I’ve a good fire going, and I-I’ve fixed - most of the leaks in the roof.”
She’d taken two steps before she remembered what he’d been doing when she’d found him – a task he seemed to have forgotten about completely. “Oh,” she exclaimed, glancing back at the beach. “Giles … y-your boat. You were – “
“Oh bugger,” he cursed, half turning back. “Ah, what the hell. Leave the bloody thing. If it washes away, it washes away.”
That didn’t seem right somehow. Hadn’t he braved the onset of the rain to drag it to safety, and wasn’t she the reason he hadn’t managed to do so? It would be her fault if the storm dragged it away – and she carried enough guilt as it was. She really didn’t want the burden of any more. Especially where he was concerned.
Besides, it really wouldn’t take much to complete the task.
“No,” she decided, slipping out from under his arm. “It’s okay. I’ll get it.”
“Buffy …”
She was at the edge of the surf before he could stop her, reaching to seize the rail of the boat and lift it out of the water.
“… that really isn’t …”
All it took was one good heave to break the grip of sand and surf; once it was free she dragged it forward, pulling it up until it lodged on a sand bank further up the beach.
“… n-necessary. Ah. Yes. Well, that - that will do.” Giles stared at the rescued vessel a little bemusedly for a minute. “I – um – see you … haven’t lost your strength.”
The boat had a name. Buffy could see it now, the curl of words painted lovingly just below the prow. ‘Summers Gift’. Had that been its name before? Or had he chosen to call it that, a poignant reminder of events he could neither prevent or forget? She lifted her head as he reached to lift the anchor out of the prow. Lightning flashed a second time and - for a moment - she saw not just the rumpled, familiar figure that was his current shell, but all of him, from outer flesh to inner spirit; the wounded warrior and the weather worn, weary Watcher within him. There was a deep and bleeding hole in his soul. A Buffy shaped hole, she realised guiltily, an emptiness as desperate and as intense as her own. She’d torn the heart out of him, the day she’d died. Torn it out and taken it with her into the light.
“Still the Slayer,” she quipped, wincing at the quiver in her voice. That sudden glimpse, the vision of the hurt *she’d* caused, had shaken her to the core. “Still your Slayer,” she corrected, hoping – against all hope -that it was true.
He’d turned to heft the anchor so that he could throw it further up the beach; the correction turned him back, turned him towards her in a startled beat, as if he hadn’t quite believed what he’d heard. Then he smiled. Deeply. Warmly. And with more than hint of shy pleasure lurking in the depths of his beard. “Always,” he affirmed, tossing the angled steel away without another thought. He held out his hand instead, and she took it, anchoring herself within his grasp.
Seeking sanctuary beside his wounded soul.