Helplessness - Ch. 7

Giles knew he needed to act: to locate and dispose of Kralik and possibly Blair, to contact Travers--but for the longest time after the two girls left the room, he could only hug the discarded blanket to his chest, too drained even to cry. He wanted to kill someone, or something. He wanted to die. To destroy Kralik and be destroyed himself in the act would be the best option, the killing of two birds with one stone.

Eventually, the practicality that at times constituted a largish portion of Giles's character arose. He found himself in his office, the telephone receiver in his hand, dialing the number he'd been given for Travers. The phone rang and rang, and just when he'd become ready to smash it down, the Councilor strolled through his door. He returned the receive to its cradle with dangerous gentleness, feeling Ripper close now--so close his old, bad self was nearly in control.

"I was just trying to reach you," he said in a voice that the older man wouldn't fear--it sounded like Rupert Giles affronted, not like Ripper at all.

"I was on watch over by the boardinghouse." Making himself at home, Travers strolled past him to investigate the tea things, as if he'd no sense of danger at all.

"Then you know what's happened," Giles said, hardly hearing Travers agree. Ripper drew even closer, nearly slipping inside his skin. "He's killed Hobson and made Blair one of his own. You perfectly controlled test seems to have spun rather impressively out of control, don't you think?"

Travers dismissed him utterly, tossing off the words, "It changes nothing."

"Well, then, allow me." Giles leaned back against his desk, wrapping his fingers over the edge in preference to wrapping them round the older man's thick neck. "I've told Buffy everything."

Travers continued to fuss with the teapot until Giles was nearly ready to snatch it from his hands. Smugly, with the barest hint of, "aha, I've caught you out this time," Travers told him, "That is in direct opposition to the Council's orders."

"Yes." And you've caught it all on your bloody films, haven't you, you pillock? He crossed his arms over his chest, in just enough control of his darker self to know that his arrest for assault would do nothing to help Buffy. "Interestingly, I don't give a rat's arse about the Council's orders. There will be no test."

Travers had the nerve to actually pour himself tea. "The test has already begun. Your Slayer entered the field of play about ten minutes ago."

The news caught him entirely by surprise. She'd gone home. Cordelia had brought her home. What on earth would have driven her out again, frightened as she was? Yet even as he thought the words, he knew--someone she loved, Willow, or--given Kralik's history--her mother. Kralik the madman, had killed, and was it--eaten?--his own mother.

My God, he thought.

"Now, Giles," Travers burbled, "We've no business..."

The Councilor wasn't a light man, but Ripper lifted him straight off the floor, slamming him against the doorjamb, snarling in his face, "This is not business."

Ignoring the Citroen's seeming death-cries, Giles raced to the boardinghouse, bailing out of the vehicle almost before he'd stopped the engine. He made it inside just as Blair, the former Watcher, picked himself off the floor. Giles came at him with a stake, and the vampire threw him backward, so that he slipped on a drift of spilled books and struck his head on the fireplace. Stars spun before his eyes, but Ripper seemed to have a harder head than Rupert--within seconds he was on his feet again, dashing after the vampire into the mouldering depths of the disused house.

He'd barely time to register Joyce tied to a chair in the basement, a bruised and bloodied Buffy kneeling by her side, the Slayer's face opening with shock as Blair lunged toward her. Rupert caught at him and they briefly fought, Joyce crying out her daughter's name.

Blair flung him against a shelving unit, and the stars spun again, and more of them, as Blair punched him hard in the face and harder in the abdomen. His breath whooshed out from the force of the blow, and he doubled up, but did not lose his grip on the stake in his hand.

Ripper's instincts did not fail him: the stake traveled upward, found purchase in undead flesh, tore through the vampire's heart. Dust exploded everywhere, and through it, even before the grey cloud cleared, he and Buffy regarded one other. He tried to straighten, the better to meet her gaze, which was full of sorrow, and bitter pain, and the aftermath of fear. She did not speak.

Giles, too, said nothing, only reached into his pocket for his Swiss Army knife, which he could almost blame for causing all this trouble--if it hadn't cut open the box...

No, that wasn't rational thought. Carefully, he sawed through Joyce's bonds, unable to meet either her or Buffy's eyes, and helped his Slayer's mother gently to her feet. Joyce seemed quite unable to stand, and so he'd walked her outside to his car, bearing the greater part of her weight on his arm.

He installed the two women in the backseat, where they clung to one another, weeping, for the entire ride home to Revello Drive. Once there, Buffy helped her mother inside, leaving the car without a word. As the door slammed, Giles rested his head on the steering wheel, willing the stars to spin away so that he could start to think clearly again--but, really, he didn't want to think; he'd done all the thinking he could do, and all the feeling too.

What he really needed was just to go home, draw the curtains, lock the door, and drink until nothing remained in his well-stocked liquor cabinet.

It shocked him when, minutes later, Buffy came back outside. "Drive me to the library," she said briefly, tonelessly.

He drove, the two of them staring straight ahead, distant as the strangers that, he supposed, they now must be. She stumbled a bit on her way to the library entrance, and he could not help but reach out a steadying hand--she did not shake it away, but perhaps she was only too weary.

Inside, he saw Buffy seated safely in a chair, a bowl of water and a cloth close to hand. In the normal course of things, he would have tended her, cleaned her wound, applied the disinfectant, carefully, carefully smoothed on the bandages.

Ripper had entirely left him now, he was only Rupert, tired and heartsick and confused. He wandered about the library, tearing out all the lenses he could find, dumping them into the rubbish bin. Buffy watched him, apparently without comprehension. During his peregrinations, he heard Travers using the telephone in his office--sealing his fate, no doubt

Em, work your magic,; he prayed silently, though he had really, no hope. She was only one woman--considered useful, but not universally liked by any means--and in this she'd be tainted by her association with him, the rebel Watcher. The one who'd been meant to die years before.

Giles threw a last handful of flex and optics into the bin as Travers left his office. He hovered near the door as the Councilor moved deeper into the room.

"Congratulations, you passed," Travers told Buffy. "You exhibited extraordinary courage and clearheadedness in battle. The Council is very pleased."

"Do I get a gold star?" she asked bitterly.

"I understand you're upset," Travers replied, smug and patronizing. If any tone was guaranteed to get up the Slayer's nose, that was the one.

Her bitterness gave way to fury. "You understand nothing. You set that monster loose, and he came after my mother!"

"You think the test was unfair?"

"I think you better leave town before I get my strength back." Buffy's focus increased: she meant it, just as she'd meant the things she said to Giles earlier. His heart ached worse than any physical bruises.

"We're not in the business of fair, Miss Summers. We're fighting a war."

He sounded so self-righteous, Giles was tempted to beat him bloody himself, with or without Ripper's help. Instead, he said--with a fair amount of bitterness of his own: "You're waging a war. She's fighting it. There is a difference."

"Mr. Giles, if you don't mind!"

"The test is done. We're finished." That, as least, thank God, was true. Kralik was dead, Joyce and Buffy safe.

"Not quite."

Ah, here it came, the Councilor's cream, the judgement he'd no doubt longed to pass for over twenty years.

"She passed. You didn't. The Slayer is not the only one who must perform in this situation. I've recommended to the Council, and they've agreed, that you be relieved of your duties as Watcher immediately. You're fired."

Even expected, the words still stung, still came as a shock--and Travers had said "fired" instead of "sacked," wanting to make sure, no doubt, that Buffy understood.

"On what grounds?" Giles heard himself say.

"Your affection for your charge has rendered you incapable of clear and impartial judgement."

Giles caught Buffy's look, incredulous, distrustful--she still hated him. Naturally she did.

"You have a father's love for the child, and that is useless to the cause."

If you only knew. Giles nearly laughed. Shortsighted old bastard, he hadn't seen the half. He bit back the laughter--which would be misunderstood by both hearers--staring instead at his shoes, as he heard Travers say that it would be best for him to have no further contact with the Slayer.

The anger, grief and betrayal bubbled up in him, and he all but snarled, "I'm not going anywhere."

"No, well, I didn't expect you would adhere to that. However, if you interfere with the new Watcher, or countermand his authority in any way, you will be dealt with. Are we clear?"

"Oh, we're very clear." The threat hung between them: it would start with failure to share information--but what else was new?--go on to troubles with his work here, perhaps, or immigration. Conclude somewhere in the area of grievous bodily harm. Giles didn't care. He would fight them. He would fight them all.

Travers gave Buffy a little bow, saying "Congratulations again," to which she returned a purely poisonous stare, and a sharp exclamation of: "Bite me."

"Yes, well." Travers's chuckle said that, had she been his daughter, he would have turned her over his knee and paddled her raw, but he only added, "Colourful girl."

Then he had gone. Giles replaced his glasses, careful of the bruises at cheekbone and jaw. The bones ached, and his head too, where he'd struck it on the fireplace, his whole body, in fact was a collection of weariness laid over with a net of aches and pains, but he only had thought for Buffy--her obvious misery, the terrible bleeding gash across her brow. She was sniffing, trying not to cry in front of him, unwilling, still, to meet his eyes.

Travers's revelation of his love, however off-center, could mean nothing to her. What use was a father's love?--she'd already one father to deceive and disappoint her, she hardly needed another.

Giles watched her, with trembling hands, reach for the cloth. Not daring to speak, hardly daring to make a sound, he went to her and took the cloth from her fingers, kneeling before her, just as he'd longed to do.

Gently, knowing that he hurt her, he patted at the blood--and for a moment, sadly, she looked at him, then away. Giles turned the cloth over and continued to cleanse the wound.

"May I?" he asked softly, at last, and retreated to his office for the first aid kit, half-thinking she'd be gone when he returned. She wasn't gone, only sitting quietly in her chair with a piece of the torn-out flex in her hand, studying the now-unseeing lens.

He set the kit on the table, removing peroxide and cotton pads, tipping up Buffy's chin to better see as he gave the wound a thorough disinfecting--God only knew what was harboured in that musty house. He smeared on the antibiotic ointment with a liberal hand, pulling the lips of the wound together with butterfly closures, the covering the whole lightly with tape and gauze.

"What--?" She asked at last, twirling the flex in her fingers. "Is this?"

"Part of the cameras that they used to watch us. When you're stronger, you and Willow ought to search through your house, as I will through mine."

"They were watching me--and watching you? Here?"

"And at home. And, I'm sure, at the boardinghouse as well."

"Why? So you wouldn't tell me?"

"Yes, and because that's the way it's done. They make records, and they observe. Their traditions are very important to them."

"Their traditions...to them?" She studied his face, searching for something.

"Buffy, I'm not a Watcher now," Giles reminded her, turning away a little to tidy up the first aid supplies.

"But you did this to me."

"Yes, I did it to you." Anger rose in him suddenly, directed more toward himself than to her--but a smallish piece still aimed in her direction. "What other choice was I given? I never even wanted to be a bloody Watcher--but I was. I never wanted to hurt you--but I did. When all this started, when I got the poison in a box of books, I thought I'd rather die than do this to you. It hit me just like a stake through the heart."

Giles sank into a chair, not facing her, trying to get himself under control. "But then," he continued at last, in a slightly calmer voice, "I thought again and concluded that this was the only way. I should try to explain to you, so that you knew, and we'd face it together, the way we always do--but you wouldn't bloody listen, would you?" He propped his elbows on the table, his head in his hands.

"When did you try to explain?" Buffy asked--Giles couldn't read her tone, and didn't want to try.

"A friend of mine, on the Council, had the last Slayer before you, a girl that simply breezed through Cruciamentum--hunt, stake, dust, out for ice creams--against an opponent every bit as vile as Kralik. She pointed me toward a book, and I said a bit of a spell--"

"You used magic on me?" Again, that quiet, possibly dangerous tone.

"Not on you--on me. I went inside your dreams." Giles glanced up, turning his head, showing her all the pain in his eyes. "And the first time you threw me out, and the second didn't remember a bloody thing. Do you remember dreaming of dust, and of wearing a large ridiculous hat and an apron?"

Buffy nearly smiled. "We had to clean up before mom got home. But how--" She looked at him, tears brimming in her eyes. "Oh, Giles."

He needed not to be there anymore. He needed to take her home. "Come," he said, resting a hand ever-so-lightly on her shoulder. "It's late, and your mum will be worrying."