She’d written him a letter. Giles had been in Devon for three or was it four days? Good though his memory was, there were blanks around that time that he’d accepted would always remain so.
He’d woken with a start, unsurprised to find that he was being watched. As far as Giles was aware he hadn’t been alone since he and Willow arrived. In a flurry of firm words and gentle gestures, she’d been led away immediately, leaving him marooned in the shadows of the badly-lit hall, trying to follow the confusion his presence had provoked, and not end it by succumbing to the pain and fatigue it was becoming increasingly difficult to suppress.
The Coven was an exclusively female environment and had he not been in need of assistance, Giles was left in no doubt that he would have been sent on his way.
To their credit the members of The Coven that he’d encountered had executed their duty of care with dedication, whilst variously regarding Giles with motherly concern, studied indifference, and occasionally something like contempt.
For his part, he tried to accept their help with good grace whilst fighting against relinquishing any sense of self-reliance or control. He’d always had trouble letting go and submitting entirely to another person, which went some way to explaining why he’d been capable of offering such prolonged resistance to Angelus, and also why he’d been unattached for the greater part of his adult life.
Wincing, Giles straightened out of the sprawl he’d slumped into whilst sleeping. To make oneself so vulnerable in public went against decades of training, yet he was currently unable to resist the almost-constant urge to sleep, to sink ever deeper into unconsciousness, as his body ached and healed. So now, not for the first time, he was sat in the kitchen of The Coven looking alternately at the clock and the darkness outside, wondering if it was pre-dawn or post-sunset.
‘There’s mail for you.’
A pleasant surprise; only a handful of people knew where he was, and each of them was far more likely to phone or email rather than go to the trouble of putting pen to paper.
Giles looked up at the woman who had addressed him. Was she going to hand him the letter or leave it on the table with the rest and watch his discomfort when he got up to retrieve it? She held the vivid envelope out with a brief nod and then withdrew.
On recognising the handwriting Giles couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed. He unfolded the first piece of paper, bafflingly labelled ‘Know Your Enemy’ and laughed for the first time since stumbling away from the wreckage of the Magic Box on being faced with a printed-out web page all about rabbits.
**********************
She had written him a letter, and then another and then another. He’d responded, taking refuge in describing his surroundings, knowing that the seventeenth century manor house with its thick granite walls and fussily precise grounds, which appeared to have been abandoned in the middle of Dartmoor’s savage beauty, would appeal to every clichéd memory of England as a green and pleasant land that Anya held. Giles omitted to tell her that as a life-long city dweller this environment was as alien to him as Southern California had once been, and that he found the quiet and isolation unsettling rather than relaxing.
He struggled to compose adequate replies to some of her questions, unwilling to offer false comfort and unsure of what the answers could be. In amongst the bluff, idiosyncratic style that made him smile so, Anya expressed some heartfelt ideas that left him feeling concerned that no one in Sunnydale was talking to her properly. He knew, they all knew, that her lack of human experience meant that she sometimes needed a little more time, though in his less tolerant moments Giles felt that a lack of perception was one thing that The Scooby Gang all had in common.
‘…now Willow isn’t evil, am I supposed to pretend she didn’t do anything?…’
‘…when will the store be rebuilt? The money needs a place, we need to make lots more…’
‘…what will happen now?…’
Anya wrote on the most garish, brightly coloured paper. Her letters stood out with colourful intensity from the dark wood of the desk in the library it had become his habit to sit at when wanting to be alone. The kitchen was the heart of The Coven, where company, coffee and cheery warmth from the vast Aga was guaranteed at any hour, but Giles did not desire the companionship of relative strangers. Nor after the first few days was it forced upon him.
He’d taken their magic. The remembrance of the thrilling sensation of possessing so much power and assurance made his current condition, however temporary it may be, harder to bear. Then the power had been lost, so quickly and completely, stolen from him with a lack of effort that was almost comical. Clearly Giles wasn’t the only one feeling the effects of its absence, there were plenty of pale faces and frayed smiles in this place at the moment. No one would go so far as to blame him, at least not in his presence, but the awkwardness felt on both sides allowed Giles to withdraw with more ease than might have normally been the case.
‘…when are you coming home?…’
It was sweet of Anya to write that, but she must be aware that Sunnydale was not his home. Although almost everyone he knew there was fully capable of giving the impression that they imagined he’d arrived having lived no previous existence. Were he to express any ambitions beyond a life on the Hellmouth, Giles had no doubt that they would all be shocked.
He’d be lying anyway; Watchers died as surely as Slayers. His father, happily retired on the Norfolk coast, was an exception - Merrick’s swift demise the rule. And yet, somehow, after six years he and Buffy were still standing - the most successful partnership of all time. One day he’d have to go back and see it through.
‘…when are you coming home?…’
Compared to the tragedy of Buffy losing her life at such a young age, he regarded his own mortality as a less emotive issue, however he was no more ready to die than she was. Willow had nearly put him in his grave, would it be his next assailant or the one after that who would prove to be successful?
‘…when are you coming home?…’
Anya always asked the most difficult questions.
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