There were roses everywhere, the air was heavy with their sickly sweet scent, that landed on his skin and hair, making them feel slick and greasy. Surely that couldn’t be right? They weren’t normally roses, it was all distorted. Nothing was as it should be and he didn’t know why, only that somehow he was to blame for the hatred, violence and dark magics that he couldn’t see and yet was totally aware of. Suddenly he was on the landing of the broad staircase, unable to take either the right or left flight of stairs leading off it. One of Them reached out and grabbed his hand, the pressure intolerable. He tried to cry out, but had no voice.
‘Put the ring back on. Now!’
**********************
Anya grabbed Giles’ shoulder and shook him, he jolted upright from the table he’d been sleeping over and stared at her blankly as if he didn’t recognise her.
‘What the…?’
She stood back and watched Giles catch his breath, run a hand a through his hair and return from wherever his subconscious had dragged him.
‘W-why why did you do that?’
He sounded annoyed which he had no right to be, no one who sleeps with the expression he’d had on his face is resting easy.
‘You were having a nightmare so I rescued you.’
‘Please never ‘rescue’ me again, I don’t think I-I could take the shock,’ he said firmly. ‘A-and it wasn’t a nightmare, j-just a dream.’
Which is why you’re shaking and can’t get a sentence out, thought Anya, deciding it would be wise to keep that to herself.
Giles crossed over to the window, when he spoke again he kept his back to her.
‘Is there a reason you were watching me sleep?’
‘I wasn’t watching you sleep, I came in to see how it was going, saw that it wasn’t and that you look very cute when you’re asleep until you start freaking out.’
‘I wasn’t frea…cute?’
‘Very,’ confirmed Anya happily.
‘How unexpected,’ Giles turned around and did that thing she liked where he managed to smile without moving a single muscle in his face.
‘When you’re awake you look manly and ruggedly handsome.’
He began to laugh.
There you are, thought Anya with satisfaction.
This was the first time for months they’d had anything like the teasing conversations with which they used to occasionally spin out the long no money afternoons in The Magic Box, when the ticking of the clock was heard more than the ringing of the till. Anya liked spending time with Giles, she didn’t need him to be her mentor, surrogate father, or any of the labels the other Scoobies had not so subtly pinned on him, he just had to be himself.
To her disappointment it wasn’t really Giles who’d come back to Sunnydale to join the fight against The First. Anya still had no idea exactly what The Council had meant to him or who he’d lost to the Bringers; friends probably, maybe even family, because Giles hadn’t spoken about it. He’d drifted around Revello Drive like a ghost, tense, remote and obviously unsettled. Now it was all over Anya wanted her friend and business partner back and was more than happy to cross continents to find him.
This was their third day in England, Anya knew that things would be better once Giles stopped searching through papers, calling people’s relatives, and dealt with the fact that anyone who could’ve helped them rebuild the Council of Watchers had been killed.
There were many lists of names on the table, unlike all the others which Giles had drawn a neat line through, one name featured on several lists and was circled every time.
‘Was he a friend of yours?’ Asked Anya, holding up a sheet of paper and pointing.
‘Once. He is different from all the others.’
‘How come?’
‘He’s alive.’
**********************
Council Of Watchers, London: 30th July 1981
Giles was restless, not only were the papal edicts he was supposed to be translating spirit-crushingly dull, it had become obvious to him that they were of no possible relevance to any aspect of The Council’s work. Still it had to be finished or his Head of Department would be displeased and the last thing Giles wanted was for Quentin Travers to slither in muttering quiet words and veiled threats.
He looked over to Carlyle’s half of the office and the ludicrous semi-cave the man had created for himself over recent months from books, parchments, files and even weapons. Giles now actually had to stand up to look at his colleague directly, not that he did often, whole days went past during which all he heard from Carlyle were the turning of pages and the scratching of a pen. Giles much preferred those days to the ones that were punctuated by Carlyle becoming tremendously animated. The older man possessed by far the superior intellect, meaning Giles found himself unable to follow the torrent of words made less clear by the frequent digressions into a language he not only couldn’t understand but didn’t even recognise, presumably it was the pre-Germanic language Carlyle claimed to have discovered and was so secretive about. Since his return from the Cotswolds three weeks ago Carlyle’s behaviour had become noticeably more erratic, Giles was beginning to feel he ought to do something about it, but was embarrassed by the idea and assumed that given time his old college friend would pull himself together.
‘Did you watch the wedding?’ Giles asked, noticing with disgust that one of the materials used to build the barricade on Carlyle’s desk was a rotting sandwich - that explained the smell.
‘Quiet, Nunc. I’ve got a headache.’
‘H-haven’t we all,’ said Giles. ‘The whole country was drunk last night. I bet even the Queen Mother feels rough as a badger’s arse.’
Giles rubbed his spectacularly bloodshot eyes cursing himself for being too vain to take out his contact lenses in the presence of last night’s conquest.
‘Good to see England at its finest, Queen and country and all that,’ he persisted, trying to get a rise out of Carlyle knowing that like himself he would have found yesterday affected and hopelessly archaic. ‘Worth fighting for do you think?’
‘We have no choice.’
That was true, they had no choice at all. Deflated, Giles decided to leave his fellow researcher alone and concentrate on his work, he knew that he was going to spend the rest of his life sat in a succession of rooms like this one searching for salient information amongst thousands of potential sources, so that somewhere in the world an active Watcher stood a better chance of keeping their Slayer alive for another night. The future stretched before him, suffocating in its secure predictability.
The metallic sliding sound of a dagger being drawn out of its scabbard derailed his hangover induced depression. Giles was halfway to standing when he heard a thud and a sharp intake of breath.
‘Are you alright?’ He enquired squeezing into Carlyle’s domain.
‘Much better now,’ came the reply.
Curiously, Carlyle did indeed look far more relaxed than he had done for some time, he span around in his chair and stared up at Giles with the serene look of someone entirely at peace. Unnerved Giles looked away, eyes resting on the open notebook behind Carlyle; placed in the centre of it, lying in a pool of blood was a neatly severed ring clad finger.
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