" . . . and those who come after .
. ."
by G. Petronius
Spoilers: Season Six
Rating: PG for a little swearing
Disclaimer:
All the characters of BtVS belong to Joss Whedon, Fox and Mutant
Enemy and not me. I only borrow them, mess with their heads, make
them cry and, once in a while, torture them.
Teaser: After Willow's restoration, Buffy helps
Giles clean up the Magic Shop and look to the future.
* * * * * *
"Hey, guys!" Buffy announced as she
bounced into the Magic Shop. Deftly she avoided one of the many
piles of debris that were mounded up in various locations across
the floor. Although there were still cracks in the walls, the
fragments of the collapsed ceiling no longer covered the display
areas in a blanket of rubble as they had just three weeks earlier.
"Hi Buffy," Willow sang out from
behind the counter where she was sweeping up broken glass.
"Where's Anya?" Buffy asked as she
looked around.
"Over here," Anya muttered from a
corner of the shop still clogged with a particularly large pile
of wreckage. She was busily sorting though the chunks of the ceiling
for any salvageable inventory.
"Wow, you guys have made progress!"
said Buffy, honestly impressed by the fact that she could now
walk through the shop on little cleared paths amongst the debris.
"It helps that the building department
didn't condemn the place after all," Willow said sarcastically
as she pushed her broom.
"Well, you might as well make yourself
useful," Anya ordered as she popped up out of the pile she
was rooting through. "Grab a shovel. Dumpster's out back!"
Buffy scowled.
"Where's Giles?" she asked as she
scanned the remains of the shop for her Watcher. "I thought
he was down here helping you guys."
"He was," Willow answered, "I
saw him sorting out the invoices and other records by the register
when he suddenly got all wiggy and took off."
"Yelled something about, 'I forgot! I
almost forgot!' and poof! he was gone." Anya announced with
disgust. "He does that a lot."
"What?" Buffy asked, not really paying
attention to Anya's observation.
"Say crazy things at the most inappropriate
times."
"Oh," Buffy answered as she wandered
over to the counter where the cash register sat.. She stared at
the piles of scorched papers scattered across the counter. A small
hand held device lying nearby caught her attention.
"Hey Will, what's this?" Buffy picked
up the rectangular shaped object that fit comfortably in the palm
of her hand.
"Oh, I just got that," Willow called
out as she put her broom down. Looking for any excuse to take
a break from the filthy work, Willow joined Buffy. "It's
real cool. It's a digital voice recorder. No tapes or anything.
Runs for five hours. I can use it to record lectures at college."
"Neat," Buffy replied with some interest.
She didn't always appreciate her best friend's fascination for
gadgetry. "So, no idea where Giles went?"
"No clue," Willow said shaking her
head. "He had one of his 'Giles Moments' and just flew out
the door."
Buffy began absent mindedly fussing with the
piles of heat damaged papers Giles had stacked up. Suddenly one
document caught her attention. It was a calendar with the current
day's date circled. Two words in Giles' unmistakable handwriting
were written beneath the date and underscored several times.
"JC Remember," it said.
"What does that mean?" Willow asked,
pointing at the date.
Buffy didn't answer. She suddenly felt a pang
pull at her heart. Willow saw the expression on Buffy's face and
she, too, realized what Buffy was thinking.
"Oh, my God," she said quietly, "That
was today?"
"Yeah," Buffy replied nodding. "Five
years ago."
"Poor Giles." Willow's eyes glistened.
"I have to go find him," Buffy said
firmly.
"But we don't know where he's gone?"
"I do."
Buffy strode quickly from behind the counter
and out of the Magic Shop.
* * * * *
As the sun slid towards the horizon, shadows spread down the street
that ran through Sunnydale's dilapidated industrial zone. Several
blocks of abandoned warehouses stretched as far as the eye could
see. Buffy hesitated in front of one building in particular. Every
window in the structure was broken, the outer walls scorched and
an eight foot high chain link fence surmounted by barbed wire
blocked off all access.
This was the one. There was no question in
her mind. Even after all these years and despite the shattered
roof rafters that pointed into the sky like blackened bony fingers,
the image of the place was burned into her memory. The night she
had dragged her badly beaten Watcher out of the flaming structure
after he had tried to kill Angelus. The night Giles came with
only revenge in his thoughts, revenge for Jenny's brutal murder.
Buffy shook her head as she walked past Giles'
red BMW parked by the building's chained up entrance.
"Don't be too ObviousMan," she muttered
to herself and shrugged her shoulders as she quickly glanced around
at the surrounding decaying buildings. "Well, we all know
what BMW stands for, 'Break My Window.'"
Quickly Buffy slipped through a gaping space
in the fence just a few yards from where Giles was parked.
The door to the old warehouse swung loose on
its hinges. The smell of burned wood, wet down by rain and years
of rot, hung heavily all around Buffy as she stepped inside. Just
a few yards in, Giles stood by a fallen timber. His back was to
her. She knew he sensed her presence but wouldn't turn around.
"Giles," Buffy called out softly.
Giles remained immobile and didn't answer.
Buffy stepped up close by his side.
"Giles, what are you doing here?"
"I always come," was his emotionless
answer.
"Why?" Buffy asked as gently as she
could. "This isn't right."
"If I didn't come," Giles said softly,
"who would remember? Her life, what she did, after it was
all forgotten, would it be like she had ever existed at all?"
Buffy raised her eyebrows only slightly since
she had come to expect this sort of unintelligible logic from
her Watcher.
"Huh?" she asked as she had so many
times before in their six year relationship.
"You know," Giles said as if he were
talking to himself, "the old philosophical question. If an
event occurs without the intermediary of human perception, does
that event have existence? Did it actually take place?
Buffy scowled and scratched her head. Something
about Giles' babbling was familiar. Suddenly it came to her.
"Oh yeah!" she exclaimed. "I
remember . . . from Willow's dumb philosophy course!" Buffy
began to recite from memory.
"If a bear crapped in the woods . . ."
"I believe the analogy goes, 'If a tree
fell in the forest,'" Giles gently corrected her.
"And no one was there to see it,"
Buffy continued enthusiastically without a pause, "did it
actually happen!" Buffy beamed, proud that she had retained
at least some convoluted scraps of knowledge from her curtailed
college career.
Giles finally turned towards her and recognized
the look on her face. He nodded in acknowledgement.
"Yes," he said with a faint grin,
"something to that effect."
"And you know the answer is 'yes!', Giles,"
Buffy went on, her grin spreading as she imagined she had her
Watcher's approval. Giles smiled and nodded his head realizing
how important it was to her and drinking in her natural irrepressible
optimism.
"And how is that?" he asked, curious
as to what impact a dose of Philosophy 101 had had on her reasoning
processes.
"Well obviously! The bear felt better,
and nobody else in the forest wanted to go near that spot since
. . ."
"Buffy . . ."
"Yeah?"
Giles brushed Buffy's long strands of hair
off her face with his hand. For just a moment, he felt all the
aching intensity he kept so well concealed, suddenly lift making
his limbs feel light. He also imagined the stiffness in his joints,
something he couldn't shake since the ceiling of the Magic Shop
fell on him, suddenly melt away.
It was her smile. He couldn't remember when
he last saw Buffy, his Slayer whom he always feared was doomed
to a brief and violent life, his charge whom he had trained and
in whom he had invested so much of his being, look so honestly
happy.
He reached out and wrapped his arms around
her, holding her tightly. After a moment, he held her out at arms
length and stared into her puzzled eyes. Her features glowed as
he contemplated this remarkable young woman who was truly his
daughter in all but name.
"Giles? What brought that on?"
"Buffy, in all the years I've been your
Watcher, I've never said . . . 'Thank you.'"
"What for? You're the one that's
always saved our butts," Buffy asked. "You're my rock,"
she said softly, and Giles found the confused look on her face
as refreshing as a soft spring rain.
"So what did I do to deserve this?"
"Just being you," Giles said slowly,
looking down.
Buffy spoke again, but this time her voice
conveyed a maturity that Giles had rarely heard prior to her return
from the dead.
"But Giles," Buffy said slowly, "I'm
just trying to tell you . . . You know Jennie made a difference.
To you. To all of us. You believe it. I believe it. With all my
being I believe it. She's in all our hearts all the time. How
could you even think . . ."
"Because no one realizes . . . ,"
Giles interrupted and Buffy felt a weight and despair in his words
that she hadn't sensed since that horrific night of the fire in
the old warehouse so many years before.
"To the rest of the world, she was just
one more murder victim, and because no one knows and memories
fade, I have to come here. Every year to remind myself. To keep
her alive." Giles' voice quivered, "There are some things
that we must do. You understand." In his words, Buffy felt
the pain she realized must be tearing at his heart, clawing for
a way to get out, yet held in with a control so great she couldn't
conceive of the strength that comprised its source.
"So that she is not forgotten. It's so
important because if she is . . ." Giles stopped in mid sentence
and looked up, " . . . she will truly have died . . ."
"Giles, why would any of us forget her?"
Buffy paused. "Or Tara, or Mom for that matter."
And then suddenly Buffy saw what she had been
blind to for so long. It was the wrinkles that now spread across
Giles' face. They were so much more pronounced than when he had
left for England. She saw the scattered strands of gray hair.
She even imagined as she gazed at his hands that the knuckles
were larger and more gnarled than she remembered.
Buffy finally understood. For her and each
of her friends, the weeks following Willow's restoration were
now the new time, a second chance. Willow had found the goodness
in herself and was able to let go of Tara. She had also discovered
a new kind of love in her best friend, Xander. It was something
she had never fully appreciated and yet had relished ever since
she was a child when he used to drop salamanders down her shirt
at family picnics just to hear her scream. She remembered, afterwards
when no one was looking, how Xander would slip the little creatures
back under the rocks where he found them so they wouldn't be hurt.
She recognized with that kind of love supporting
her, she could go on, learn how to love again and find a new partner
as she now knew Tara wanted her to do.
And Xander understood he was transformed. He
alone had confronted the forces of Darkness, and just by who he
was and what he felt, had defeated them. He realized now there
was nothing for good he couldn't do. As Buffy pondered this, she
almost imagined him scuffing his shoe in the dirt as he faced
a world of endless possibilities.
And for Buffy herself, there was Dawn. Suddenly
the burden, the need to protect her sister had vanished. Staring
her in the face was her own flesh and blood, an actual physical
part of her, asking to be taught, wanting to learn, wanting to
help. Buffy now saw the power and the beauty that had always been
in Dawn. She truly was The Key. And, in that image, Buffy also
saw herself.
Then Buffy looked at Giles. He had crossed
the same bridge with them all, indeed had led the way when all
seemed doomed, but for him the new time was different. To the
others it was a beginning, but Buffy sensed that to Giles, it
was completion, like the setting sun.
"Giles," she whispered to him, "how
could you ever think . . . that we would ever forget . . . you."
Giles didn't answer but only stared down at
the worn floorboards under his feet. He felt ashamed that he had
allowed Buffy to see him in this condition.
"Giles?"
Giles turned his eyes back up to meet Buffy's.
Self consciously he removed his gold rimmed glasses and rubbed
the tips of his fingers across his eyelids.
"I'm sorry you had to hear all that,"
he said quietly as he readjusted his glasses on his face.
"Giles?"
"Yes?"
"Let's go," Buffy announced.
"Where are we going?" Giles asked
as he suddenly realized that Buffy was taking complete control
events.
"Back to the Magic Shop."
"But what for?"
Buffy turned to her Watcher, and this time
Giles saw a totally new light in her eyes.
"There's something you and I have to do.
I never knew it was important before . . . but I finally realize
it is . . . and it's time."
* * * * *
Buffy slipped the iron key into the lock of
the wooden cabinet behind the Magic Shop counter. The tumblers
clicked loudly in their works. She grinned as she swung open the
compartment door.
"How did you get a copy of that key?"
Giles protested, and then his eyes fell on Anya who was smirking
over in the corner by the Chinese herbs. "If I didn't know
better," he continued wryly, "I'd say there was a breach
of security."
Anya shook her head, waving her long blond
hair that hung down close to her shoulders. "I haven't the
faintest idea what your talking about," she announced with
her nose in the air.
Buffy gripped the large half full bottle of
single malt scotch and two small water glasses in her hands. With
her arms full, she turned away from the now empty cabinet and
gave the door a disrespectful kick with the bottom of her foot
so that the door slapped shut. Turning towards the back storage
room, she motioned with her head for Giles to follow.
Once inside with the door closed, she set the
bottle and glasses down firmly on the small table between them
and pulled up one of the room's folding chairs. Giles did the
same. Buffy opened the bottle and poured a generous splash of
scotch into each of the glasses.
"Buffy, what are you doing?"
"This is the good stuff? Right?"
Buffy asked, ignoring his question.
"Of course, but . . ."
"So," Buffy continued, "How
do you drink it?"
"Well, you don't slug it down like some
fizzy sugary soda," Giles said, slipping into his teaching
mode. "You take a little sip, savor it, let the aromatic
flavor slowly wash around your lips and . . ." Giles stopped.
"Buffy?"
"Yeah?"
"You don't plan on getting drunk, do you?"
"Only if you do," Buffy grinned back
at Giles.
"I don't understand," Giles complained.
"What's this all about?"
Buffy stared at the contents of her glass as
she gently swished the amber liquid around.
"It's about something that's finally time,"
she answered slowly. "It's about today . . . and tomorrow.
Giles, you're the most important person in the world to me. You're
why I am what I am. And until today that was enough."
Buffy ran her finger up and down the side of
her glass.
"But tomorrow won't be the same. So much
has changed since we got Willow back. All of us, we see each other
more clearly now. Not differently because the stuff was always
there, we just didn't pay attention to it. Willow and Xander,
me and Dawn . . . and especially you and me."
Giles listened intently. For a moment, he thought
to interrupt Buffy, to protest that her concerns were totally
unfounded, but he realized these things were coming from her heart
and he wouldn't interrupt that for anything.
"I never had a Dad, Giles . . . only you."
Giles felt his spirit soar.
"Someday, . . . maybe someday . . . I'll
have kids and . . ."
Giles' eyes widened. Buffy picked up on it
immediately.
"Well it is possible!" she
protested.
"Did I say anything?" Giles replied
with a wry smile.
"Okay, maybe someday when Dawn
has a family . . ."
Giles nodded.
"And when they ask about who our dad was,
who raised us and taught us everything we know . . . I want to
be able to tell them . . . about my rock . . . about you."
Giles stared blankly ahead, a wave of emotions
overwhelming his thoughts.
Buffy pulled Willow's miniature digital voice
recorder out of her pocket . Pressing the record button, she placed
the device on the table next to the scotch bottle.
"You know all about me. Now it's your
turn. Giles, tell me all about you. Who your mother and father
were, what you remember about growing up. The first time you got
drunk, your first girlfriend, all that kind of stuff."
Giles raised his eyebrows as he stared at the
recorder.
"What?" Buffy responded, understanding
her Watcher's surprise, "Oh, that. It's Willow's recording
thingy. We gotta use it. What's that dumb Latin thing you say
all the time?"
"Vox audita perit," Giles muttered
to himself. "Littera scripta manet."
"That's it!" Buffy exclaimed.
"The spoken word passes away," Giles
recited from memory. "That which is written down lives on."
Buffy nodded and raised her glass in a toast.
"So all of us, . . . and those who come
after . . . will never forget," she said softly.
Giles followed her lead. Their two glasses
clinked in unison. Giles took a good mouthful of the rich, powerful
liquor. In imitation, Buffy did the same. Her eyes nearly popped
out of her head as the single malt scotch burned its way down
her throat.
For the first time in months, Giles broke out
in full hearty laughter as Buffy's face turned bright red.
"How can you drink that . . . shit!"
Buffy gagged.
Giles smiled again as he stared first at Buffy
and then at Willow's digital voice recorder.
"Ah, where to begin . . . where to begin,"
he mused.
* * * * *
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