TITLE: The Fine Art of Blackmail
AUTHOR: JK Philips
RATING: PG
SUMMARY: After the events of The Family Business, Giles and Buffy have their daughter back and are running the Council, but will Wolfram and Hart use Giles’ past sins to destroy the life they’ve built?
SPOILERS: Everything up to “The Gift”
DISCLAIMER: I do not own these characters; they are the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy & Fox. I simply am doing this for fun, and non-profit use.
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. Feedback always welcome.MY WEBSITE: www.jkphilips.com
--------------------------------------------------- Part 3: Coming Clean The darkness made it easier to say. He didn’t have to look into her eyes as he said it, didn’t have to see the hurt or disappointment or accusation that would surely be in them when he was done. Ironically enough, the darkness that so often stirred such terrifying memories of being trapped by Willow’s spell would now give him the courage to confess. “Buffy, there’s something I’ve been keeping from you.” She was silent, waiting patiently, and he pressed on. “There’s really no way to pretty it up, no way to make it sound different than it is, so I’ll just come out and say it. I killed Longsworth and Sulla. Not myself, but I had it done.” She withdrew from his arms, and he didn’t try to hold onto her. He just let her go, feeling the emptiness in his heart as well as his arms. “I’m so sorry, Buffy,” he murmured softly. “You must be terribly disappointed in me. I know that when you stopped me in India, that you didn’t want to think me capable of murder. But it would appear that, in the end, I’m not the man you thought I was.” She flicked on the nightstand lamp, and he squinted in the harsh light, trying to make out her expression. She was sitting straight up in bed, glaring at him. “Do you think I’m stupid, Giles?” “Of course not!” he sputtered. “Whyever would you ask such a question?” “You must either think that I’m stupid or that I never pick up a paper.” She pondered what she had just said for a second before she tacked on, “Okay, I guess I’m not usually Current Events Gal, but still… All those times I was up in the middle of the night with a crying baby, because his father was claiming the broken leg excuse-” “Hey!” Giles protested. “I got up every night with him while he was teething.” She shrugged. “Fine. We’re even. My point is this: there’s nothing on at three in the morning except CNN, Xena reruns, and Gilligan’s Island. I must admit that Gilligan’s Island won out on some nights, but there were lots of other nights that I would sit on the couch downstairs, watching the news while I was nursing Alex or trying to get him to go back to sleep. When they pulled Longsworth and Sulla’s bodies from the water… Well, they might have written it off as two more casualties of the plane crash, but I knew I’d seen them both alive since then.” She crossed her arms defiantly. “You think I didn’t figure it out, Giles? You think I wasn’t looking over the phone bill the next month and connecting the dots: when they’d died, when you’d called? You must think I’m a pretty lousy detective, huh? You called the Council’s black ops, didn’t you? The ones that tried to kill me when I was in Faith’s body?” Giles sat up in bed now too, giving her a matching glare. “You knew? All these years, I’ve been terrified that you’d find out, terrified that you’d never forgive me, and you already knew?” She poked him in the chest with her finger. “Let’s not forget which one of us had the big earth shattering secret he wasn’t telling the other one of us. My knowing about it doesn’t even rate on the scale of secrets, and it sure doesn’t change the fact that you should have told me way before this. Jeeze, Giles, it’s been four years. I was beginning to think you’d never ’fess up.” He shook his head in disbelief. “All this time… you knew, and you didn’t hate me for it?” She crawled out of bed, slipped on her robe, and began pacing. “Maybe I did a little, at first. When I saw it on the news, when I first figured out what you had done, I didn’t come to bed that night. I just sat on the couch and cried, like all night long. The next day, I told you I had been downstairs with Alex the whole time, which technically I had, and then I went to spend the day with Willow. If I hadn’t already figured it out myself, she would have filled me in. She showed me an article she’d clipped out about Longsworth.” “Willow knows?” “And Xander, which I guess means Anya, too. Although none of them know about Ben. Anyway,” she continued, as if the details of who knew about his crimes were inconsequential, “I talked with Willow, and… well, I couldn’t hate you, Giles. I was holding our son in my arms, and looking at him, I understood why you did it. Hell, I broke the old guy’s leg while we were in India, and it took a whole lotta restraint to shoot him with the tranq instead of the 9 mm. I wanted him dead, after what he put us through, after he cost us our daughter. So I understand. And maybe the smallest part of me is ashamed to admit that I’m glad you did it, that they’re dead and I never have to worry about either of them showing up here again.” She faced him, her eyes still filled with the anger and hurt he had been afraid he would see in them. “I forgave you a long time ago for sending the black ops after Longsworth and Sulla. But I am still angry with you for never telling me, for keeping such a huge secret from me. And I asked Willow and Xander not to say anything. I wanted to give you the chance to come clean yourself.” She crossed her arms. “Sure took you long enough. Why tonight?” He dropped his eyes to his lap, unable to meet her piercing stare. “Remember when Travers was trying to blackmail us into raising Robin as a slayer?” “He had proof that you’d killed Ben.” “Not just Ben. Longsworth and Sulla too.” “Oh,” she answered softly. “You kinda left that part out.” “Yes,” he answered bitterly, resting his head back against the headboard and closing his eyes. This conversation was not going as he had expected. “I must admit that the greater part of Travers’ threat was that he would tell you what I had done. If I had known that you already knew… well that might have changed things slightly.” “Well, sor-rry,” she retorted caustically, “maybe if you had actually told me, you wouldn’t have had to worry about it.” He opened his eyes, and they stared at each other for several tense and silent moments. Buffy finally sighed and climbed onto the bed beside him, resting back against the headboard in a matching pose to his. “So… that was still a long time ago, and Travers is dead now…” she prompted him for more. “He had audiotapes, the actual conversation I had with the black ops. Someone must have recovered them from the Council ruins. And now those tapes have found their way into the hands of Wolfram and Hart.” “The evil law firm Angel talks about?” “Yes.” “Oh.” Her voice became softer, lost the hard edge of anger. “This is bad.” “Very bad,” he agreed. “A lawyer came by today with an ultimatum: I have five days to recover a stolen artifact for them or else they’ll turn the tapes into the district attorney and bring me up on murder charges.” He felt her fingers grasp his. “What are we going to do?” she asked him as she leaned her head against his shoulder. It didn’t escape his notice that she had said “we” and not “you.” “I’m afraid there isn’t much we can do. The artifact they’re after would be too dangerous in their hands. I daren’t chance it. Besides, I do this one thing for them, and they’ll find something else to demand of me. I give into them now, and they’ll hold those tapes over our heads for the rest of our lives.” She squeezed his hand softly. “Too bad they don’t just want hush money. We have plenty of that.” He chuckled wryly. “Is this my police detective wife talking?” “Sometimes you have to break a few little laws in the interest of world save-age. Just little things like breaking and entering, stealing things outta public museums, blowing up high schools… Shall I continue?” “This is very much different than that, Buffy. I didn’t do this to track down an Incan mummy or stop an ascendant demon. This was murder, plain and simple as that.” “No.” She turned, hiking one leg over his until she was sitting straddled across his lap, the ends of her robe pooled around their legs. She looped her arms around his neck, leaning forward to touch their foreheads together. “You’re not a murderer, Giles. You’re a father who was protecting his children.” “Let’s hope a jury sees it that way,” he muttered. “You’re not giving up that easily,” Buffy insisted fiercely. “We’ll find another solution, something besides the two options Wolfram and Hart gave us. You’re not going to jail, Giles.” He gave her a level stare. “Maybe I should.” She tilted her chin up and kissed him on his forehead. “No, Giles. You’re worth ten of them. Look, I said I forgave you a long time ago. So forgive yourself already. Randall was an accident. Ben was war. And Longsworth and Sulla were two bastards who kidnapped our children and would have probably tried it again. The fact that you feel so guilty about their deaths only proves that you’re not a murderer. Just a man who made some understandable mistakes under some difficult conditions.” Giles shook his head. She had it all wrong. She had known his sins, and yet she knew nothing. And this was the confession he had dreaded, the part of himself he was afraid for her to see, the truth that could drive them apart. He lifted one hand to tenderly brush a lock of hair from her forehead. “Oh, my dear, sweet Buffy, that’s exactly my point. I don’t regret what I did, would do it again if given the chance. I only regret getting caught. And isn’t that the classic line of the guilty?” She leaned forward and kissed him once more, this time on his lips, slow and sweet and banishing all his fears with this demonstration of her unconditional love. She knew now his darkest secrets, but that knowledge earned him no condemnation from her, only this tender devotion. She pulled away from him then, and stared into his eyes for several long, quiet seconds. When she finally spoke, it was with a normalcy that belied their entire previous conversation: “We should go back to sleep. We’ll be up bright and early tomorrow: stereo alarm clocks.” Giles smiled at the thought of the twins’ waking them, as they did every morning. “Have I mentioned lately that I miss having Dawn in the house?” She smiled in return. “You’re only sorry she went off to college just when you found yourself free to sleep in in the mornings. I know it’s not exactly free babysitting, but Marianne could stay over sometimes to keep them occupied in the morning. Or everyday if you wanted. We pay her enough.” “No… I-I know I tease, but I actually think I would miss it.” “Me, too.” Her smile faded, and she touched him on the side of his face. “We’ll figure this all out tomorrow. Big Scooby meeting, and we’ll figure it all out.” He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. “I don’t deserve you.” “You’re stuck with me all the same,” she answered, shedding her robe and crawling back under the covers beside him. “For better or worse. I think that was actually in the vows there somewhere.” He spooned up behind his wife and slayer and allowed the conversation to end for now. Tomorrow they would make the hard choices, but for tonight he would sleep soundly, knowing that Buffy still loved him despite the wrongs he had done, and knowing that whatever he had to face tomorrow, he would not face it alone. *** “The tapes are all they got, right?” They were all seated around the Magic Box table, just like old times. The store hadn’t opened yet, and Anya was feeding the baby her breakfast. Willow was seated beside Buffy, and Xander paced back and forth behind them. He was the one who had asked the question. “The tapes are the only proof in existence, I believe,” Giles answered, still astounded at how easily the others had accepted and forgiven that he had ordered two men’s deaths. Xander had thumped him on the shoulder and motioned to Anya and their daughter, saying he would have done the same. Willow had only dropped her eyes and in a low voice said that she had done far worse. Anya had seemed to understand his motivation far better than any of the others, who all wanted to believe he’d done it to protect Buffy and the twins. Anya, former vengeance demon, had patted him on the arm in that awkward and forced way of hers, not forced because she didn’t mean it, but forced because human gestures were still not second nature to her, and assured him very quietly that she, more than anyone else, understood the temptation of vengeance. “The ops who did the job died with the rest of the watchers,” Giles continued, “and… and they were professionals. There wouldn’t have been any evidence.” “So we steal the tapes,” Xander suggested, holding his hands out to solicit opinions from the rest of the group. “They probably have copies in different places,” Willow sighed. “We’d never know if we got them all. And even if we did, they’d just say we didn’t. We wouldn’t know unless we called their bluff.” “So stealing the tapes is out,” Xander summarized. “We can’t give them what they want, so giving in to their blackmail is out. Hey, what about blackmailing them ourselves?” “With what?” Willow asked. “I don’t know, Hacker Girl.” He waved at the laptop sitting untouched on the table in front of her. “Couldn’t you dig up some dirt on these guys? An evil law firm’s gotta have some serious skeletons in the closet.” “Not to mention a kick-ass security system at the door,” Willow lamented. “I’ve tried before. Remember when Angel wanted me to find out where they were hiding that demon larvae Spike had warned him about?” The group deflated. Buffy perked up suddenly and suggested brightly: “We may not be able to dig up the secrets they already have, but we could make something up to blackmail them with.” “Make something up?” Giles frowned. “I don’t think they’d find that very threatening. Especially as it wouldn’t be true.” She rolled her eyes at him. “I meant we set them up, Candid Camera style, and then blackmail them with that.” “Who’d do it?” Xander asked. “They know all of us. Probably even Spike. They’d be too suspicious to fall for anything we set up for them.” Anya had been quiet thus far, intent on feeding Zoey. The baby was happily oblivious to the serious conversation occurring around her, eagerly focused on each mouthful her mother offered her and crankily demanding the next by banging her fists on the highchair tray. Anya carefully spooned a mouthful of pureed peaches into Zoey’s mouth. The girl looked at Giles. He winked at her. She stuck her tongue out and blew a raspberry at him, spilling glops of orange peach goo all down the front of her. Anya glared at him. Giles smiled back innocently. It had taken him half a day to teach the child to do that. After all, he had three years of paybacks to catch up on. Anya continued scowling at him as she cleaned off the baby’s face. “I vote for letting Uncle Giles go to jail.” “Anya!” Buffy, Willow, and Xander shouted in unison. Giles only arched one brow and replied coolly, “The quality of your mercy humbles me, Anya.” Although he would never admit it to anyone, he missed the daily verbal sparring that had comprised their previous employer/employee relationship. Anya glanced at the others quickly before resuming Zoey’s feeding. “I’m actually not joking about Giles going to jail. It would be the most practical and logical thing. Giles turns himself in, which would hopefully work in his favor, and then uses his massive fortune to hire expert legal counsel, much as OJ Simpson did, except that he also sold his soul to a minor imbalance demon. Giles wouldn’t have to do that, though. He has a lot more money and a much more sympathetic defense.” She pointed at him with the spoon. “Maybe you could even buy off the jury.” Giles frowned at her suggestion. “I’m not sure which is greater: your faith in capitalism or your cynicism for the criminal justice system. But, as much as it might shake the foundations of your belief system to hear this, I must tell you, Anya, that money can’t buy everything. This, I’m afraid, would be one such instance.” She sighed. “For most people that might be true. But with the kinds of black markets we have access to… well, that trite cliché just doesn’t hold water. You can buy anything you like with enough money. The only question is if you’re willing to pay the secondary costs associated with your purchase.” “Let’s just take it as a given,” Buffy insisted, “that we can’t buy the jury. What are our other options?” Giles leaned forward, his voice becoming graver. He knew Buffy wouldn’t want to hear this. “Aside from jury tampering, Anya may have the rest of it right. It would appear that our best option is for me to turn myself in and hope that a trial would end in my favor.” “No way,” Buffy said firmly. “The courtroom is like Wolfram and Hart’s home turf. We wouldn’t stand a chance against them in there. We have to find another way.” “We seem to be running short of ideas.” Her face hardened into an expression he recognized from many lost arguments. He wouldn’t be able to change her mind about this. “We have five days to figure out a better idea,” she reminded him. “Fine, but if we fail to arrive at a solution by then… I’m not waiting for Wolfram and Hart to do the honors. I’ll turn myself in.” *** Willow went back to the sorority house, but she shut her door on the other girls and pretended to be grading papers. She didn’t want to be bothered. There was very little time, and far too much work to be done. Five days. She had five days to fix things for Giles. Hopefully, in doing so, she could set things right between them. She booted up her laptop. Magic would have been easier, but Giles hadn’t lifted his spell yet, and so she would have to do things the old-fashioned way. She hated to admit that she was actually beginning to miss the magic. With it, she might have been able to hack past Wolfram and Hart’s firewall, but she wasn’t about to mention that fact to Giles. She played the dutiful Scooby and researched whatever she was given without complaint, but her extracurricular reading had expanded back into the magic she had previously abandoned. Sometimes she left the magic books she was reading lying around where he would notice them, hoping he would catch the hint that she was ready and responsible and had learned her lesson. If he got the message, he never said anything. And Willow didn’t have the nerve to do anything more than hint. She would never actually ask Giles to give her back her magic, even if it meant being plain, powerless Willow for the rest of her life. She started scouring the chat rooms that some of the seedier elements of the magical community frequented. Her mind kept replaying Buffy’s suggestion: set them up and blackmail them back. Xander was right, though: none of them would be able to do it. So Willow had to find someone who could. ***
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