What I Did On My Summer Vacation: Part Four: Giles's Story
by Elizabeth Ann Lewis
He found her, finally, in the chapel. A monk was changing the candle in the Presence, fitting a new one to burn red into the night. Its flame was invisible in the last slanting rays of the setting sun.

Deirdre sat, head bowed, before the altar, hands listlessly clasped in her lap. Alone. Her averted face was a study in gentle grief, in wistful dreams. For a moment, Giles' voice simply deserted him. He was struck by a sudden memory of Buffy sitting on the edge of a fountain, watching her last hope of a normal life walk away from her. Not her true love, not even a friend of her heart. Merely the desire for something other from what fate had called her to.

Fate had chosen not to hear. And instead, called her to another, by whose very nature she was inextricably bound to her destiny.

Giles shook the thoughts away. There was no time. *No time.* "Deirdre." He came more fully into the chapel, crossed to her side. "Deirdre, we must hurry. Darla has risen."

Deirdre's head snapped up, looking first at Giles then out to judge the slant of the setting sun. "What? How can that be? It's not dusk yet!"

She rose as Giles spoke, taking up a flask and filling it with holy water from the font, murmuring a prayer as she did. "I saw her. She was careful to keep in the shadows."

Deirdre turned, catching up a sack that rattled slightly as it was lifted. Full of stakes. "She took a chance in doing so. Why?"

Giles took a deep breath. "She gained something in return. Deirdre... she made another."

Deirdre barely halted as she moved toward the door, although her lips shaped Gaelic curses older than the God on the cross behind her.

"Deirdre. It was Angel. Aine." Giles heard the hoarseness of his own voice. "She took Aine."

That stopped her. She did not look around, though, merely stared ahead of her. "Then she will die. And the demon that took my friend's body will die as well." The words were low and fierce.

Giles caught her arm as she started to leave the chapel. "Darla was alive in my time. I do not know if you can kill her," he said bluntly. "But you must promise me one thing. You cannot kill Angel."

"Aine is already dead," she said bitterly, the unnatural coldness beginning to break through to wild pain.

"You must not kill him," Giles said again, urgently. "He must survive. In a century and a half, he will receive a gift -- or curse -- that no vampire has ever received. His soul will be restored to him. And in two hundred years, he will save the life of another Slayer. One whom he loves and who loves him. Deirdre, listen to me. I don't know if you change change what is to come. But if you can, if you kill Angel now, then the world *I* know will be destroyed."

Deirdre's hand tightened convulsively on the one stake she carried. After a very long moment, she said, "Damn you. All right."

She stepped across the threshold of the chapel, outside, as the first terrible scream shattered the newborn night.

Giles endured that cry, and the ones that followed. In the chapel, he was safe. If nothing else, between the holy water and the holy images, he had weapons. But... his Slayer was facing seven vampires. One wearing a face as familiar as her own, and yet so horribly different. He couldn't allow her to challenge them alone. He couldn't let her be alone.

Shattering a lone chair that leaned against the wall, he collected splinters of wood to use as stakes. He snatched a cross from the wall, and remembered he had a drinking pouch that would hold holy water in his small cell. Carefully, he made his way to the room he had slept in the night before, snatching up the pouch that rested beside his satchel.

He turned to dash from the room -- and found his way blocked by Angel.

His mind, oddly enough, turned clear and cold. Emotion disappeared, logic ruled. He had failed, if such could be considered a failure, to stop Angel from becoming a vampire. Whether or not fate was an absolute, events had moved forward in their accustomed way. Which meant....

Giles raised the cross he carried in his hand, and fumbled behind him for his satchel. Angel flinched violently away, giving Giles the precious moment he needed to extract the correct book from the bag. When Angel tried to advance on him, Giles lifted the cross again. "Listen to me. This book --" he held up the Codex "-- you must take it. I give it to you." Kneeling, he carefully laid the book on the ground.

Although he still cringed from the cross, Angel laughed, a hideously smug sound. "What do I care of books now? I'm immortal! I have power that your puny mind could never dream of!"

"Listen to me!" Giles said fiercely, rising. "There will be a girl, a Slayer. In two centuries, at the time of the Harvest, a Slayer will come to where you live. When Buffy does... when she does, then someone will ask you for this book. Give it to him. Do you understand me?" Giles was gambling on fate. If fate was immutable, then Angel would keep the book -- if only out of arrogance and greed when he was ruled by the demon in him rather than by his soul.

If not... then they were all doomed.

"I care nothing for your books," Angel said again, scornfully. He advanced on Giles, but had to retreat again from the image of the cross. Giles managed to circle around him and flee from the room.

Leaving the Codex behind.


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