Awaking as the bell struck two, and sitting up to get his thoughts together, Giles scanned the room for the spectre he believed it to contain. There was nothing there. Giles stood nervously, for he wished to challenge the spirit on the moment of its appearance, and did not want to be taken by surprise.
A pleasant, cultured voice called him by name and bade him to come into the lounge. It was his own room. There was no doubt about that, however it had undergone a surprising transformation. Each and every available surface was wreathed in such prodigious quantities of tinsel, flickering lanterns and paper chains that it was at once wonderful and ridiculous. Twirling around, dancing in sheer delight, as glitter fell from the ceiling as a light summer’s rain falls from the sky, was the ghost.
She, for this phantom was most definitely a she, had in common with her predecessor, the same ageless, shifting qualities. Her smiling face bore the lines of all the smiles that had gone before it, yet her manner and movements were closer to the carefree poses of youth. There was a wreath of holly upon her head and robe of the brightest, most vivid red about her body. As she approached Giles it seemed that she was taller, then shorter than him, until they were evenly matched in stature.
‘I’m the Ghost of Christmas Present. Dance with me!’ ordered the ghost merrily. Giles began to protest, but the ghost had greater strength than any mortal. As they waltzed through the cascading glitter, he felt his spirits lift, for there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour and both of these the ghost possessed in abundance.
It is Christmas! Does that not bring the greatest of joy?’
Giles’ face fell, all solemnity returning.
‘I can’t say that it does.’
The ghost looked at Giles, pity and concern writ large across her features.
‘The hatred you feel towards yuletide is poisoning, not only this, but all your days,’ she said with sadness. ‘Take my robe, there is much to see.’
********************
Giles did as he was told, and held the fabric fast. Tinsel, glitter, lanterns and paper chains, all vanished instantly. So did the furniture, the room, the hour of night, and they stood in the streets on Christmas morning, where the city had been transformed by a thick blanket of snow.
‘How have you done this?’ said Giles. ‘It doesn’t snow like that here, and it never snows on December 25th.’
‘Anything is possible on Christmas Day.’
Such citizens as found themselves outside, on this day of days, were jovial and full of glee; calling out to one another, exchanging compliments of the season and occasionally snowballs. Some were striding briskly towards the churches whose bells echoed across each and every borough, others were cheerily making their way to friends and family.
‘Where will you be?’
‘Working.’
‘The ghost bestowed upon Giles a most disgusted look.
‘People do work on Christmas day,’ he said defensively. ‘I’m not the only one.’
Many were working today, but not labouring, not engaged in the solemn count-the-pennies-and-observe-the-minutes duties that oppressed them for the rest of the year. The business of the day in any profession was enjoyment. The ghost showed Giles many examples of duty and sacrifice refining themselves into pleasure and fun, before coming to a halt in an office whose effects and sole inhabitant were as untouched by Christmas as stalactites are by moonbeams.
Giles paced around, seeing himself from all angles, whilst his unaware copy sat at his desk, reading through a file and making notes. On being forced to fully confront the gap that age had created between the person he looked like and the person he felt himself to be, Giles was both captivated and appalled.
The thermostat must still be awaiting repair for the working Giles had not removed his jacket. The watching Giles realised that over time he had allowed his preference for formal attire and muted colours to alter into an image of the utmost severity.
The ghost nudged him. ‘Do you like what you see?’
Giles backed away from himself without comment.
‘Time leaves its mark upon us all, unhappiness leaves damage.’
‘I’m not unhappy.’
Giles’ emphatic denial was completely undermined when his double threw down his glasses, then sat back in his chair, seemingly lost in thought, looking entirely wretched and thoroughly miserable.
‘You had a choice. Let us seek out the company you declined.’
********************
And so it was that Giles and the ghost came to be in the main room of a small terraced house, in an undistinguished suburb, far from the majesty of the Council Headquarters and further still from the affluent area in which Giles resided. Yet such is the size and variety of London, that they were still deep within the city boundaries.
The room was in a home, not a house. This wasn’t merely a dwelling inside which it’s tenants passed the hours. Its state of cheerful disorder, various teetering piles of books, DVDs, notepads and numerous other items bore witness to the fact that people lived, studied and relaxed here. They reclined on the sofas, covered as they were with bright throw rugs that clashed with the sunshine orange walls, and usually stretched out their legs on the long, low coffee table that now served as a stand for a small, fake Christmas tree whose coloured lights were winking on and off randomly.
Giles knew this room and this home well, and smiled at the ghost in gratitude for having been brought to it, for this was the home of four people he loved dearly, though even as he looked on it he realised that it had been many months since he had been here with them.
Xander wandered in, closely followed by Buffy.
‘Why have I just wasted twenty minutes peeling sprouts? No one likes sprouts, even at vegetable kindergarten it is always the sprouts who no one wants to buddy with on trips.’
‘Vegetable kindergarten?’ repeated Buffy as she flopped down onto the sofa. ‘How much of a sugar rush are you on?’
‘Hey,’ asserted Xander with a grin. ‘Anyone whose still got their own teeth at the end of the one day of the year where it’s practically the law you eat chocolate for breakfast, ain’t even trying.’
Dawn and Willow entered each carrying two glasses of dark, bubbling liquid.
‘We’re making our Christmas toast with Coke?’ queried Buffy, taking a glass from Dawn. ‘What happened to the champagne?’
‘Oh there was champagne,’ confirmed Willow. ‘Then there was a crash and a fizzy mess full of bits of bottle.’
Dawn raised her glass.
‘Coke, champagne, whatever. It’s still a frabjous day.’
Giles smiled at Dawn’s choice of words, which went someway to lessening the shock of her appearance. Her long hair had been shorn away and replaced with a short crop of spikes, the tips of which had been bleached.
‘It’s still a what now?’ said Buffy.
‘Frabjous day - Lewis Carroll.’
‘Get down with your bad freshman self.’
Dawn affected an air of mock superiority. ‘Undergrad. They say undergrad here.’
Xander pretended to wipe tears from his eyes as he stood up, accepted his glass from Willow and put an arm around her shoulders.
‘She pursues the knowledge and speaks the confusing Brit-speak. Gosh darn it Ma our little one’s done gone and all grown-up.’
Giles and the ghost chuckled along with them all. Giles laughing out of affection for the mindless banter that over the years had alternately infuriated him and lightened his days, the ghost because the very sound of mirth provoked within her the instinctive desire to join in, regardless of the joke.
Dawn grinned delightedly. The foursome made to raise their glasses to toast the day and the good fortune that had brought them together to this moment, when Buffy hesitated.
‘Maybe we should wait.’
‘We’re all here,’ said Dawn.
‘You know that’s not true,’ replied Buffy looking at Willow who shrugged non-committedly.
‘If Giles was coming he wouldn’t have sent his gifts already,’ she pointed out.
‘Yeah, all the expensive shiny stuff you can handle, but not so much with the actual talking or being around,’ Xander sounded uncharacteristically bitter. ‘Don’t need G-man for that, we’ve all got dads.’
The mention of his name cast a dark shadow on the group, Giles hung his head in shame, as they made a half-hearted toast: the first of their proceedings which had no heartiness.
‘You know he called me ‘Mister Harris’ the other day,’ though still smarting over the incident Xander was essentially a fair and just man, so added. ‘I know the Council is all formal and he did correct himself but even so.’
‘I guess what with the Council being so big, we aren’t special anymore,’ said Willow. ‘There’s other witches, other people who find potentials…’
‘There’s only one Chosen One,’ said Buffy.
‘You still Watcher’s Pet?’ asked Xander.
Buffy nodded.
‘The pettiest. As long as we’re talking number of stakings or training or how the potentials are doing. Real life is a conversational Area 51 - officially it doesn’t exist.’
‘Giles is an asshat.’
‘Dawn!’
The youngest among them did not back down. ‘He is. Head of the Council big responsibility, lives on the line blah, blah, blah. Pushing people away isn’t going to make it hurt any less if they get killed. Acting like the apocalypse has come and gone and this time we lost doesn’t mean it won’t happen.’
The ghost stared at Giles in horrified fascination. He forced himself to meet her accusatory glare.
‘That’s not what I’m doing. I wouldn’t push them away, they know that. They must know that.’
‘We are witnessing the events of the day. The evidence before us suggests otherwise,’ said the ghost.
‘And he is also way dumber than we think,’ continued Dawn. ‘for not figuring out that Buffy’s stellar stats are because she’s pulling solo patrols.’
‘She’s what?’ said Giles, speaking aloud in anger.
Xander’s face creased with concern.
‘You know Giles is going to go nuts when he tumbles that one. Of all the new rules ‘two or more to a patrol’ is probably his favourite.’
‘Totally his favourite,’ confirmed Willow.
‘I know, but stats are all I’ve got - the only time he’ll even look at me. Besides, however big the bad is I’m gonna kick its ass.’
‘Spirit,’ said Giles, already fearful of the answer, ‘tell me if Buffy will live.’
‘I see a vacant space,’ replied the ghost, ‘on the sofa, and a stake without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the future, the Slayer will die.’
‘No,’ Giles spoke quietly but with great resolve. ‘No one patrols alone anymore, this stops now. So does Buffy lying to me and taking pointless risks.’
He sighed deeply and ran a hand through his hair. Suddenly disenchanted with the whole experience, yearning to be far away.
‘Is this it? Did you bring me here to show me how much I am despised?’ He spat his words out with some aggression, fuelled by the self-loathing this most recent observation of events had provoked. ‘Because I assure you that your mission has been a great success, so may we please leave?’
Nodding, the ghost held out the corner of her robe once again. In a heartbeat the room vanished and they came to a featureless place of greyness and fog. Giles looked about him for the ghost, and saw it not. Then, in the distance he beheld a solemn phantom, draped and hooded, making its way through the mist towards him. The new ghost slowly, gravely, silently approached, seeming to scatter gloom and mystery with every movement. A towering figure shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible save one outstretched hand: this spirit was terrifying, even to one such as Giles who had seen the worst demons that hell could conjure.
The ghost clicked together digits that were more bone than finger and everything went black.
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