Fine Art of Blackmail

ORIGINALLY POSTED: October 27, 2002
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.
EMAIL: . Feedback always welcome.
MY WEBSITE: www.jkphilips.com
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Part 7: Mending
“Buffy?” Willow hesitated in the doorway, as if she were a vampire who needed an invitation.
They’d had the talk, and Buffy’d had the rest of the night and now most of the morning for everything to sink in. She’d almost killed Angel. Not Angelus, but Angel. Not to save the world, but because she’d let her emotions get the better of her, deluded herself into thinking it was a slayer mission and not a personal vendetta, stormed off without a plan or even all the information. Played by Wolfram and Hart. That stung, too.
She had dreamt about Acathla all night. Only this time, the portal wasn’t opening behind Angel when she drove the sword through his belly. His hand reached out for hers, shock and betrayal in his eyes, and then… then the portal opened behind him, wider and wider, sucking them all in. She had opened the gates to hell with Angel’s blood and damned them all.
“Buffy?” Willow asked again. Why couldn’t she just leave her alone? Why couldn’t they all just leave her alone? Wesley and Cordelia, Gunn and Fred, some guy named Dennis who the others kept sneaking glances at. They had all visited her hospital room, bearing flowers and obnoxiously cheerful balloons, and made nice, bland conversation, as if she hadn’t tried to kill their friend the night before. As if some of them weren’t sporting bruises because of her.
“There’s someone here to see you.”
And she knew who that would be. Everyone else could ask for themselves. Only one person required someone else to announce their presence.
“I don’t want to see him right now.”
“I don’t think he’ll go away until you do.” Willow didn’t seem to be listening to the “I don’t want to see him” part of what she’d just said, because her friend entered her hospital room anyway. (Dammit, why didn’t people need invitations, too? So much simpler that way.). Willow turned the blinds for each window, shutting out the sun, and then left.
Could have at least stayed. Not abandoned me to do this alone.
Angel waited in the hall, framed by the doorway. He didn’t actually need an invite, as the hospital was public domain. Or did he? She was technically living and sleeping here at the moment. She’d have to ask Giles about that later.
“Come in, Angel.”
He stood awkwardly next to her bed for a moment, neither of them sure what to say. Angel finally broke the silence, which must have been a first, because under normal circumstances, he would win any kind of a brooding contest.
“I brought you a get well present.”
“I’m almost all better, actually. Slayer healing.”
“Still, I think you’ll like it. Hold out your hands.”
Reluctantly, she did as asked. He reached into one coat pocket and then pulled out his closed fist, the other hand quickly cupping beneath it. He opened his hands over hers, a dark powder sifting through his fingers into hers.
“Darla,” he told her simply.
“Ewww,” she answered, her nose scrunching up. “You couldn’t bring me flowers? A little Hallmark card: ‘p.s. I killed Darla.’ Somebody’s ashes… not exactly a pick-me-up.”
“I thought you’d feel better knowing.”
“I should, I guess, but…”
“You wanted to do it yourself.”
Their eyes met. Angel knew her almost as well as Giles. “Yeah.” Buffy studied the fine dust in her hands, some of it floating through her fingers or teased by a breath of air to land like little specs across the hospital sheets. She focused on the dust in her hands and wondered if it had hurt, if he had broken her first, if he had snapped her fingers and cracked her ribs and poured holy water down her chest. Buffy hoped he had, and she wondered if that made her a terrible person. She’d killed vampires before, but she’d never tortured them without reason, for pleasure, for payback.
She emptied her hands into the trash can and brushed them off. “Okay, gross. Again, chocolate: always a welcome get well gift.”
“Buffy,” his voice was so serious, she looked up. He always stared into her eyes with such intensity. She remembered in high school, how it had made her feel like the only person in the world. “You hated me before, when you thought I had…” He paused, as if searching for the words. “Buffy, you do know that I did those things to Giles, right?”
“When you were Angelus.”
He nodded, accepting that distinction reluctantly. “But I also have to share some of the blame for what Darla did this time. I could have killed her, but I didn’t. I… I just wanted to feel something besides the cold. It’s not an excuse, I know.”
The realization hit her like a sucker punch. “You slept with her.” It shouldn’t bother her like this. She was married, had children, slept in another man’s arms every night. But Angel was her first love, and because of his gypsy curse, she had never had to imagine him with anyone else.
“It was a long time ago, Buffy. Everything had lost meaning. But when I woke up beside her, I realized I was in danger of losing my soul again, not from happiness, but from apathy. She saved me, and for that, I let her live, let her walk away, and never tried to hunt her down again. If I had… Giles wouldn’t…”
“No.” Her eyes filled with tears, a few stray drops escaped down her cheeks. “If what Darla did to Giles is in any way your fault, then… then Ms. Calendar is my fault, too. Because I couldn’t kill you when I had the chance.”
“No. Don’t even think that.”
She sniffled and wiped away her tears with the sleeve of her hospital gown. “I won’t if you won’t.”
A ghost of a smile lifted his lips. “Deal.” He placed his hand over hers. “Friends?”
“Always. You think I’m gonna let a bunch of evil lawyers mess with my head and get the best of me? Nope. They’ve got another think coming. We’re good here.”
Angel leaned forward and placed a cool kiss on her brow before leaving her alone. She maintained her composure until she was sure he was far enough away that his vampire hearing wouldn’t overhear her tears. Then she cried and cried; she couldn’t stop. She wasn’t entirely sure why she was crying, just a vague sense that things would never be the same. The extreme lack of sleep and whatever the doctors had given her for her shoulder might also be contributing factors. All she knew was that she was sobbing into her hospital pillow as if her heart was breaking, so desperately homesick that it was an actual physical ache in the pit of her stomach. She wanted go home to Sunnydale. She wanted Giles to be there waiting for her, not lying in his own hospital bed, wanted everything to be the way it was before, before last night, before last week, before the blackmail and the torture. But she knew that it would never, never be the same again.
***
“You sure you’re good to go? They don’t want to keep you longer?”
Buffy had arrived at the Sunnydale hospital to find Giles dressed and waiting to be released. She hadn’t been very surprised.
“Of course they’d like to keep me longer. I, however, don’t wish to stay.”
They stood beside each other, not touching, but comfortably positioned in each other’s personal space.
“Maybe if they want you to stay… Maybe they know a little bit more about medicine than you do. I mean, I don’t remember ever seeing D-R in front of your name.”
He sighed and held her gaze for a moment before he spoke. His eyes looked so hollow, so tired, like coal painted beneath them. He couldn’t have slept very well last night. “Buffy, I have done this before. After… A-acathla… I was at school the next day.”
“I remember. It didn’t look so bad standing across the street. Just…” Her fingers reached out to lightly brush over the metal finger-splints, then up to gently touch the cut on his forehead. “Seeing it up close this time… Was it this bad before?”
“Nearly so.” He gestured helplessly with his two useless hands. “Although Angelus at least left me with one good hand.”
“I wish I’d been there for you.”
“You’re here now.”
“Yeah, but I shouldn’t have gone.”
“Then or now?”
Her eyes snapped up to his. And her watcher was reading her with the same scrutiny he showed any of his ancient tomes. He nodded when he found his answer.
“You were gone when I woke. I suspected.”
“I told you: Willow figured out that it was Darla, and Angel staked her. I wasn’t in on that little hunt.”
He wasn’t fooled by her cool denial. He glanced away, finding his uneaten breakfast tray incredibly interesting. “You could have gotten yourself killed, running off after Angel in a temper. I should know. I did the same after Jenny.”
The doctor came in at that moment with the final paperwork, saving Buffy from any further scolding.
“So, Mr. Giles, tired of our hospital-ity already?” The doctor laughed at his own pun. “Let’s just go over a few things first, shall we? You’ll need to keep those ribs taped for at least the next three weeks. Will you be able to do that?”
“I can help,” Buffy offered.
The doctor frowned at her. “The dressing on your burns will need to be changed twice a day to prevent infection.”
“I can do that, too.”
The doctor seemed displeased with her answer, and his frown deepened. Obviously, the point of his discharge instructions was to convince his patient that he wasn’t ready to be discharged. “Avoid overextending those shoulders or lifting anything with them; they’ll be easier to dislocate until they’ve healed properly.”
“I got it covered, Doc. No lifting. No reaching.” Buffy was not helping the doctor’s cause.
The doctor crossed his arms over his clipboard and gave them each a level stare. “You may find simple tasks more challenging with ten splinted fingers.”
Buffy crossed her arms as well, doing the best a girl her height can do to look intimidating. She may have agreed with the doctor at the moment about Giles not being ready to go home, but if he wanted to check himself out against medical advice, then by God, she was going to stand by her man. “Whatever he needs me to do, I can do.”
“Very well. Sign here, Mr. Giles, and you are free to go.” The doctor thrust the clipboard in front of Giles, and he automatically reached for the proffered pen, realizing at the last moment that he had no way of holding the writing instrument in his hand. The doctor smiled smugly, having just illustrated his point. Buffy grabbed for the clipboard and signed, smiling back equally smugly, having just illustrated hers.
They left, walking side by side down the hospital hallway. “Thank you.”
She shrugged. “It’s what we do for each other. In sickness and in health.”
“Yes, well… I don’t think I could have stayed in that room another minute. It will feel good to be home again. I thought about it sometimes, about you and the children, when…” He swallowed and took a deep breath that made him wince. “It-it made things more bearable.”
Silence until they’d nearly reached the parking lot, a slow steady pace that still forced him to curl one arm across his chest in support of his ribs. He was limping slightly, distinctly favoring one leg over the other.
She offered him her shoulder to lean on. “Giles, why are you limping?”
“Do you really want to know?”
No, she supposed she didn’t. He accepted her offer of support, and she took some of his weight as they continued on. She gasped slightly as he leaned too hard on her injured shoulder, reminding her that slayer healing or no, getting skewered by a crossbow bolt would take some time to heal.
Giles stopped where he was, turning to examine her with his eyes. “You’re hurt.”
She shrugged, trying to brush it off. “If we’re comparing war wounds here, I think you win.”
And then his hand reached out towards her neck, the metal splints on each finger clicking together as he awkwardly tried to touch the scarf she had tied around her neck. She tugged on one end and allowed the scarf to fall free, letting him see the bite marks.
He sucked in a painful breath. “Oh, Buffy, why didn’t you say anything?”
“No big, Giles. Really, I’ll be fine. Unlike some people, the doctor said it was okay for me to go home.” She switched to the other side of him, offering him her good shoulder to lean on. “We should really get moving again, ’cause at this pace, we’ll get to the car sometime tomorrow.”
“You could have pulled up to the curb for me.” He thankfully let the previous topic drop, although she wasn’t so naive as to think they wouldn’t be having a conversation about it later.
“Yeah, if I was smarter and not so distracted by my watcher getting tortured and nearly killed. Come on, we’re almost there now anyway.”
She paused before opening the passenger side door for him. She looked up at the mid-morning sun shining brightly in the sky. “Doesn’t seem like the sun should be out today. Too cheerful. Feels like it should be dark and rainy.”
He looked up into the clear, blue sky as well. “Day four.”
She gripped the car door tighter. She hadn’t thought about it, not since finding him in their bed. “Giles, you don’t really think they’ll take you away tomorrow? I mean, they got the ring back. Not from us, but still… They got what they wanted and did what they wanted with it. They won’t turn you in tomorrow, will they?”
“I don’t know what to expect, Buffy. It’s still a possibility.” He sighed. “Lilah’s plan backfired, and she may be in a mood to lash out. I may be a convenient target. We should be prepared.”
She understood then why he was so desperate to leave the hospital and go home. He believed it might be his last chance.
The children were happy to see their parents, but they stood at polite attention to either side of their babysitter, whereas the expected greeting would have usually involved them clattering full speed down the stairs and tackling the new arrivals in enthusiastic hugs. Buffy explained to her confused husband, “Marianne and I decided that a ‘look but don’t touch’ policy should be in effect for a few days.”
The children climbed into her arms eagerly when she offered, and she held them up one at a time to give their father a careful kiss on the cheek before sending them off to play.
She pointed at Giles firmly. “Food for you. No arguments. And no complaining about what I fix. You’re at my mercy until you can make your own.”
They passed through the dining room, Willow sitting at the dining table, so engrossed in her laptop that she seemed oblivious to their whole arrival. Buffy bent close and whispered, “Boo!”
Willow jumped half out of her chair, glaring then after she caught her breath. She whacked her friend on the arm, and the slayer feigned pain.
“Whatcha got?” Buffy asked, leaning over to peek at the computer screen.
“Stuff I emailed myself from Lilah’s office. Inside stuff from Wolfram and Hart.” Her eyes slid past Buffy to find Giles, and she fidgeted in her seat as she took in his appearance. “Hey, Giles. You okay?”
“I’ve had better days,” he tossed back lightly.
“Maybe this will help: I got some real dirt off Lilah’s computer, stuff she wouldn’t want anyone to know about. Wolfram and Hart would have her hide… and I mean literally.” Her nose crinkled up in disgust. “There’s a Baktar demon running Accounting who collects the skins of disgraced lawyers as wall hangings.” She swiveled the monitor so he could get a closer look. “If the firm knew about this, I guarantee they’d be adding to his collection.”
Giles pursed his lips thoughtfully as he skimmed over this new information. “So a stalemate then?”
“Good news, right?”
Buffy smiled brightly and wrapped her friend in a warm hug. “Best I’ve had all day.”
But Giles didn’t seem as happy as he should. Maybe being tortured put a damper on his party spirit. Or maybe it had something to do with the way he and Willow were staring at each other, a thick silence building between them like a developing storm front, a palpable tension Buffy hadn’t witnessed in months.
Willow didn’t break eye contact with him, just patted Buffy gently on the arm and asked, “Could you give me a moment alone with Giles?”
Buffy glanced over to Giles first, seeking his permission, which he gave with a curt little nod. She slipped out to the kitchen, ostentatiously to fix Giles breakfast, but unable to resist a little eavesdropping as long as she was there.
***
In the staring contest, it was Willow who dropped her eyes first. In the animal world, wasn’t that a show of submission? She was sure she’d seen that on the Discovery Channel.
“How?” he asked simply.
She had expected him to sense it the moment he saw her. He could probably feel the lingering traces of the magic she’d already done, the spell to knock Angel away from Buffy, the spell to keep Buffy stable on the seemingly endless ambulance ride, to keep her breathing and her heart beating until they could get her to the hospital. Willow had never doubted that Giles would realize his spell was broken. And so knowing that, it seemed like she should have had something prepared to say.
She floundered for a moment before beginning the story at the beginning.
“I had this idea for blackmailing Lilah, and it was a really good idea, only it needed someone they wouldn’t recognize and… and the ring. So I tracked down-” She swallowed nervously, and her voice got very quiet. “Ethan Rayne.”
Giles’ face was expressionless, and she started babbling to fill the silence. “’Cause Wolfram and Hart wouldn’t recognize him, and it would have totally worked if we hadn’t gotten captured and Wolfram and Hart hadn’t gotten the ring, but we escaped in the nick of time, and I stopped Angel from killing Buffy and got the blackmail on Lilah after all, so it kinda worked out in the end, except for the part where you got tortured again, and I’m so sorry, Giles.”
“So it was Ethan who freed your magic?”
“Yeah, but not right away. He wanted to, but I wouldn’t let him. I wanted… wanted you to think I was ready for it. But then Ethan had to break your spell so I could save Buffy.”
He nodded thoughtfully and lowered himself into a chair. “And where is Ethan in all of this?”
“He went back to get the ring from Wolfram and Hart. But it’s okay, Giles, ’cause he’s on our side now. I think he wanted to make things up to you just like I did.”
“Ethan is never on anyone’s side but his own. You mustn’t forget that, Willow.”
She dropped her eyes, suitably chastised. “Are you mad? Disappointed?”
He sighed, and she wasn’t exactly sure what kind of a sigh it was, only that she wasn’t looking forward to the words that would follow it. “You were attempting to prevent me from going to trial for murder. I would say that in this particular instance, I’m hardly in a position to take the moral high ground with you.”
“You could do the spell again if you wanted, when you’re feeling better. I would let you.”
Their eyes met, and he asked her very seriously, “Do you think I should?”
“No.” She straightened her spine, unsure where this sudden rush of confidence was coming from. “I think you should have lifted the spell a long time ago. I made a mistake, and I learned my lesson, and I’ve been doing everything I can to make up for it. But the thing is that I can’t ever make up for it, and I get that. I hurt you, and all those slayers… all those watchers… they’re all dead, and I can’t make any of it right again. I can’t fix it or make it better, not even with magic. So I’ve been working hard at what I can do: studying, teaching, helping the girls at the sorority, volunteering at the shelter in LA, doing whatever research you want me to do here. It’s not enough, won’t ever be enough, but it’s all I got.”
She took a deep breath, couldn’t believe she was saying all of this, but it kept tumbling out. “Now if you don’t think I deserve my magic back, fine, you can take it. But Buffy would have died last night if Ethan hadn’t broken your spell. And sooner or later it’ll happen again, not the same exact thing, but… Giles, I don’t want my magic back for me. I mean, it was nice, and I miss it sometimes, but now I’m a little afraid of it too, and I’ll always think about… about Tara. So I’d be okay if I never did another spell the rest of my life, but someday someone’s going to need my magic. And if someone dies because I couldn’t save them, because you had my power all locked away, isn’t that just as bad as everything I did when I had magic?”
“You’re right.”
“I am?”
“You can’t balance the scale, Willow, and that’s a hard lesson to learn. Maybe I should have given you a chance to prove yourself before now, but I think you’ve earned your second chance.” He paused, worry lines creasing his forehead. “Promise me? That you’ll think twice before you touch your power? That if you have doubts or concerns, you’ll come to me?”
“I will.”
“You should have come to me before involving Ethan. You can’t trust him, Willow. I know you meant well, that you wanted to help me, but he’s extremely dangerous.”
She didn’t know what compelled her to defend Ethan. Maybe it was the way he had so gallantly rescued her purse from that pickpocket and walked her to her hotel with one arm wrapped protectively around her. Or maybe it was the way he had encouraged her to cry on his shoulder after learning about Giles’ torture. There had been moments when Ethan seemed so kind. Surely he couldn’t have faked them all.
“I know he does bad things sometimes, Giles, but other times… I could kind of see why you were friends with him.”
Ah, she hit a nerve. Giles laughed bitterly and shook his head. “Ethan appealed to a side of me you wouldn’t wish to see, a side of me that, frankly, is responsible for this whole blackmail mess in the first place. It was wrong to have Longsworth and Sulla killed. I knew it, and I did it anyway, and that is the man that Ethan was friends with.”
“Maybe.” Willow leaned forward and rested her hand over his wrist. “Maybe that’s a tiny part of who you are. But for the most part, you’re a good guy, and maybe, just maybe, that part of you appealed to a side of Ethan you never gave him a chance to show.”
Giles was quiet for a moment, and then he laid his own hand, with its five metal splints, over her own. “Be careful, Willow. That’s all I’m saying.”
***
“A movie?” Cordelia planted her hands on her hips. “You’ve been dead for half a century, and you want to spend what could possibly be your last hours outside the apartment at a movie? Where’s your sense of adventure, Dennis? Parachuting, hang gliding, mountain climbing? You’re already dead, not like you have to worry about getting deader. But, no. Thrill seeker that you are, decides on Imax.”
“They didn’t have screens that big when I was alive,” he protested. “And surround sound, THX… Your TV’s so small, Cordelia. Can we just go? The two of us, like you promised?”
“Fine. But afterwards, I’m taking you to Caritas.”
She saw it again, that guilty look that flashed across his face. All day, she’d gotten the feeling he was keeping something from her, usually whenever she mentioned the spell wearing off and him being stuck as a ghost in her apartment again. She’d figured that he just didn’t want to be reminded of it, but now she got the same nervous glance away when she mentioned Caritas, too.
“Okay, you’ve only had facial expressions for like two days now, but I’m starting to get the hang of reading them, and that, Mister, is the ‘I have a secret’ expression. As former Gossip Queen of Sunnydale High, I’d know that look on anyone’s face. So ’fess up.”
“I already went to Caritas. That first night.”
“Oh.” She deflated somewhat. “Okay.”
“I sang.”
She felt an unexpected pang of disappointment that she’d missed it. “What’d you sing?”
His lips twitched as he tried to suppress a smile. “Doesn’t matter.”
She batted at him playfully. “Come on, can’t be any worse than me singing ‘Greatest Love of All’ for my high school talent show, and I didn’t even have the excuse of getting my future read back then. What’d you sing?”
“Billy Joel.” He finally gave in to the smirk. “‘Only the Good Die Young.’”
They laughed together for a moment before she asked the inevitable question. “What did the Host tell you?”
The smile died on his lips. “That I’m ready to move on. I… I won’t be coming back here when the spell wears off, Cordelia. I’m sorry.”
“Oh.” She tried to plaster on a fake smile. He was watching her, all concerned, and she didn’t want him to worry about her. “Don’t be sorry, Dennis. Good for you. Moving on to another plane of existence… ’cause in my experience, this one usually sucks.” She sniffled slightly. “We’ll be fine, and it’ll be nice to have the apartment to myself for a change. And honestly, Wesley’s always a little weirded out when we, you know, do anything here.” She blinked away tears. “We’ll be fine. I mean, it’s not like I can miss someone who I can’t even see or talk to, right?”
A few Kleenex found their way into her hands, and she started balling. “See? This is what I’m going to miss. You always know just how to take care of me. You’ve been like the best roommate ever!”
He touched her softly on the shoulder. “Cordelia? Let’s go to the movie.”
“Is it a tearjerker?” She wiped away the smears of mascara. “’Cause I’m strangely in the mood for a good old fashioned, high tissue count, chick flick.”
They walked out of the apartment together. “I guarantee someone dies before it ends.”
***
Giles sensed that someone had entered his bedroom. The painkillers muddled his thoughts, even at half the recommended dose, but he was still alert enough to know he wasn’t alone. He opened his eyes, and turned his head.
“Hello, Robin.”
She was studying him intently, her brother lurking just outside in the hall. She tentatively reached her fingers out to hover over his. “What those?” she asked, almost afraid to touch the splints.
“My fingers are broken,” he answered evenly. “The doctor put these on to keep them still until they’re better.”
Alex took a few cautious steps into the bedroom. Robin dared to climb onto the bed beside her father, sitting cross-legged at his side. She touched her finger to the cut at his forehead. “Owie.”
“Yes, I’m afraid I accumulated quite a few ‘owies’ yesterday. But I’m going to be fine.”
Giles sought out his son, still lingering just inside the doorway. The child looked haunted. They both did. Giles didn’t want his children to see him like this, battered, hurting, but unless he’d rather lock himself away until he’d healed, there was no preventing it.
His attention was on Alex when he first felt it. A warming sensation across his chest, spreading out, radiating down into his arms, not uncomfortable or painful, just warm like the afternoon sun. His fingers tingled. He blinked quickly, everything spinning, the drugs in his system dulling his thoughts, slowing his reactions. He felt magic wrapping itself around him, the touch of it bright and clear, not fire like Willow’s or shadow like Ethan’s or granite like his own, but sunlight and air.
“Alex?” The boy was watching him so intently, and Sabrina had said that the child would have magic to equal his father’s.
But whatever potential his son had, it was still buried beneath Giles’ sight.
And so his eyes returned to his daughter, sitting beside him, her hand resting on his chest. Robin’s magic rolled off of her, soft waves that rippled outwards in ever widening circles, like raindrops across a still lake. Each pulse filled him, healed him, made him dizzy with the beauty and the power of it. His daughter’s magic was not something she did, but rather something she was, not a choice made, or a spell invoked, but an instinct yielded to, as natural and subconscious as breath. She loved him, and she touched him, and the magic became an extension of that love and that touch.
Robin was crying, silent tears running down her cheeks, her chin quivering, the fear unmistakable in her eyes. She didn’t understand what was happening to her, to them. Giles tried to push her away, but he was so weak after his ordeal, and the magic was exhausting him further, forcing him down into a healing sleep.
She took a shaking breath, and blood spilled out her nose, two rivers running down her face, dripping down her chin. She cried harder. Alex ran out of the bedroom, and Giles, terrified, shouted, “Buffy!”
Thunder pounding up the stairs, the bedroom door banging hard into the wall as Buffy came bursting into the room. Giles fought to keep his eyes open and demanded of his wife, “Get her away. Don’t let her touch me.”
Buffy snatched Robin from the bed, the spell immediately broken with the loss of contact. The child’s silence was broken as well, and Robin’s keening wails reverberated off the walls.
“Her nose is bleeding. She’s shaking. Giles, what do I do?”
The girl burrowed into her mother’s arms, hands clutching her head, blood and tears staining Buffy’s shirt.
“Get Willow.” It was all he had energy for. He managed those two words, and then everything went black.
***
Willow hadn’t moved from the couch in more than three hours, her laptop long forgotten on the dining table, her fingers never pausing in their rhythmic stroking of Robin’s hair. The little girl had fallen asleep with her head in Willow’s lap, and no one had wished to disturb her. At first her breathing had maintained that hiccupy sigh standard for any child who had cried themselves to sleep, but now it had evened out into a more peaceful slumber.
The room was silent, the world on pause, as everyone watched the little girl sleeping.
“You should get lots of fire extinguishers,” Anya warned Buffy. “She could be like that little girl from ‘Firestarter’: make her mad and spontaneous combustion.” She frowned. “You aren’t planning to bring her into the store anytime soon, are you?”
Buffy sighed. “Robin’s not going to turn into a little pyro, okay?”
Xander was seated on the floor between Anya’s knees, leaning back against the chair she was sitting in as she massaged his neck and shoulders. He studied the sleeping girl thoughtfully. “I don’t know, Buff. She kinda looks like Drew Barrymore.”
Willow brushed a lock of hair from Robin’s forehead, feeling the need to defend her. “Maybe cute Drew Barrymore from ‘ET.’ Not freaky Firestarter Drew.”
Giles made his appearance then, ending the teasing banter as soon as everyone had noticed him standing at the bottom of the staircase. He looked much better. A three-hour nap had done him a world of good. That, and Robin’s magic.
Buffy was at his side in a moment, worrying over his injuries. The finger-splints were gone, and he flexed his hands to demonstrate their range of motion. “Still a little sore, but functional.”
His eyes focused on Robin. “How is she?”
Willow shrugged. “Achy head, nosebleed. I remember vividly how I used to get when I tried stuff that was too advanced for me. She’ll probably have some headaches and be crabby for a few days, but she should be fine. We gave her some children’s Tylenol, and that seemed to help.”
He came closer, kneeling in front of the couch. He was still limping a little, and gingerly touched his chest as he settled himself on the ground in front of his daughter. Obviously, he was not completely healed, but Robin had definitely given him a short cut on the road to recovery.
He reached towards her and then seemed to reconsider, his hand hovering just above her cheek. “I’m afraid to touch her.”
“It’s okay, Giles,” Willow encouraged him softly. “You can’t hurt her.”
He smiled at her gratefully and rested his hand on top of his daughter’s head. Buffy came to stand behind him, her hands on his shoulders.
“This isn’t normal, is it, Giles?” Buffy asked. “For her to have magic at her age? She seems awfully young.”
“She is too young. Those who are extremely gifted can sometimes sense a child’s potential for magic, but that potential is never accessible until at least adolescence, and even then, usually not fully realized until early adulthood. And yet…” He withdrew his hand from Robin’s head and looked at his fingers, curling them in and then out. “And yet here is the proof of it.”
“What do we do?” Buffy sounded so lost, out of her element when dealing with magic.
But Willow understood what had to be done. She remembered the mistakes and the poor choices she had made while learning to control her own power, and she’d been in high school and college then. Robin was not equipped yet to handle her gifts; she was far, far too young. She could hurt herself or others, either unintentionally or during a preschool tantrum.
Willow shared a look with Giles. He understood the situation as well as she and had drawn the same conclusion. He had probably sensed right away that Willow had worked her own magic on Robin earlier, meant only as a temporary fix until they determined a more lasting solution. As Willow looked into Giles’ eyes, there was no discussion necessary to agree on that solution.
“Will it hold?” he asked her.
She considered the irony, that she would be the one to seal away this little girl’s magic so soon after being freed from the same spell herself. “I already did the spell, just a temporary kind of ward. As long as she doesn’t try to fight it, it’ll hopefully hold until I can get supplies from the Magic Box. If you’re serious about making the wards last… I should be able to cast something strong enough to hold for as long as you need. Might knock me off my feet for a few days, but hey… Robin and I can be the Migraine Twins.”
Willow looked down at the sleeping girl still draped half across her lap. “She’s so strong, Giles. It was like a dam burst, and I was trying to push all the water back with my bare hands. I’m only guessing here, but it wasn’t like that with me, was it?”
“No.” They had never really spoken of it since that day in the hospital. It was the topic that just wasn’t discussed, the silence that fell between their words. And now, this made two whole conversations in the same day. It felt good though, that they could finally talk about it. Giles sighed and pulled off his glasses, his eyes focusing inward in remembrance. “In your case, I had intimate knowledge of your magic.”
Willow felt the familiar rush of shame at the memory of using her power against Giles, but she resisted the urge to look away. He lost that faraway expression and focused on her, as if also unwilling to allow himself any kind of emotional distance, forcing himself to replace his glasses and look at her as they discussed what they had avoided for so long.
“I was familiar enough with your power to know the size and shape of it, if you will, to know… to know just what kind of a cage to build for it.” He swallowed and shook his head. “I’m so sorry, Willow. I think that right now is the first I’ve realized… You’ve been ready for quite a while, and I… I think at some point my spell became less about protection than punishment.”
She could feel the tears welling up. She tried to keep her voice level. “I didn’t care about that so much as… I just wanted you to forgive me.”
“Oh, Willow.” He sat up on his knees and pulled her into a warm embrace. Willow closed her eyes, feeling even lighter than when Ethan had freed her magic. Giles gasped slightly, and she realized she was holding him too tightly, not because of slayer strength, for which Buffy was guilty on occasion, but because his chest still hurt him. She relaxed her grip, but he continued to hug her just as fiercely, ignoring his own pain.
Applause behind them broke them apart, each of them blushing at having forgotten their audience.
Their sudden movement jostled Robin enough to stir her from her slumber as well, and they each laid a soothing hand on her to settle her back to sleep.
“Does this mean Willow will be a watcher now?” Anya asked. “Because, honestly, if I were in her place, knowing how much money you’re sitting on, I wouldn’t do as much work as she does for free.”
Giles laughed. “If she would like, we can make it official.”
He was looking at her when he said it, and Willow felt herself tearing up all over again. She didn’t care about the money or the title, she only cared that by inviting her into the Watcher’s Council, he was inviting her back into his trust. She nodded, accepting his offer, and a few tears slipped down her cheeks despite her best efforts to hold them back. He dried them off with the back of his hand.
Willow ducked her head shyly, her eyes coming to rest on the little girl still sleeping in her lap. She thought about what needed to be done. In times past, she would have been arrogant enough to think she could do it on her own, powerful mega-witch Willow with her occasional sidekick Tara, vain enough to think that she could beat a hellgod in a show of power, conceited enough to believe that the Watcher’s Council cared what kind of spells she did or would waste their time having Giles spy on her, arrogant enough to think that she had power over life and death, that she could have saved her beloved. But hard won wisdom made it very plain to her that this was not about proving herself, not about redeeming herself in Giles’ eyes, not about showing off her newly restored power. This was about making sure little Robin stayed safe. And so Willow would ask for help, would admit weakness.
“We should do the spell together, Giles, if we want to be sure it holds.”
He nodded. Cages and walls and doors without locks. She had built him a prison out of darkness, and he had built her one of shame, and together they would fashion Robin one of something else.
“So you two are going to lock Robin’s magic away?” Buffy summarized, wanting to be clear on the plan.
“Until she’s older,” Giles qualified, twisting slightly to look up at her. “Until she can safely learn to control it.”
She glanced off to the side, towards the dining room. “If she has it… then maybe Alex…”
Giles and Willow both looked in the same direction as Buffy.
“Alex?” Giles called.
The boy emerged from the kitchen, pausing in the foyer. Marianne followed him a moment later, his attentive shadow. She was holding Xander and Anya’s baby against her hip, doing double babysitting duty as she often did.
“Help feed Zoey,” Alex informed them all proudly, lisping a little on the “z.”
“Come here, son.” Giles motioned the boy closer, and he obediently hopped over to the couch, sparing a concerned glance for his sister.
Giles took Alex by his shoulders, studying him intently. Willow could feel the soft flicker of Giles’ magic, and it still had the ability to catch her off guard after having lived more than six months without. He turned to her then, asking her silently. She shook her head; she sensed nothing from the boy either. Then again, Robin had taken them completely by surprise.
“Maybe we should do him, too,” Willow suggested. “Just in case.”
“No harm in it, I suppose,” Giles conceded reluctantly.
“Will it stop his dreams, too?” Buffy asked. “Are those magic?”
Giles frowned, and brushed his fingers across his son’s cheek. Alex tried to wriggle away, so Giles turned his loving caress into a playful tickle. His son giggled. “I don’t know, Buffy. We can certainly hope. I can’t imagine his dreams are easy for him to deal with, especially considering the kinds of things he tends to foresee. Yet even so, he remains happy and cheerful most of the time. His dreams, thankfully, don’t appear to be doing any lasting damage.”
“He saw you,” she said quietly. “He told me Angel was hurting you. I thought… thought he just meant a vampire. I didn’t really think of Angel until…” She stopped and took a deep breath. “He saw everything, Giles.”
Alex shook his head. “Not Uncie Angel. Just look like.” He reached out curious fingers to touch his father’s hands. “Robin kiss ’n make better?”
Giles smiled softly. “Yes, she did at that.”
Alex beamed and nodded, pleased, before his smile slowly faded and he shyly leaned up to whisper something in his father’s ear.
Giles chuckled. “You’ll have to ask your mother. I’m afraid you have a tendency to kick her out of bed.”
Buffy rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically. “I suppose you can sleep with us tonight.” She held out her hands, and Alex skipped over for her to pick him up. She kissed him on his forehead and shared a look with Giles, a sad, worried, “he might seem okay most of the time, but he sleeps in our bed an awful lot” kind of a look.
Willow didn’t envy Buffy and Giles the responsibility of caring for two children who were coming into power so early in their lives. Robin’s magic, Alex’s dreams, the knowledge that to a ninety-eight percent certainty Robin would be the next slayer and Alex would be… Willow wasn’t sure what Alex would be, except that it would be amazing and powerful and probably more than either of his parents had bargained for.
***
Giles had chosen the venue with care, although it might have appeared to an outsider that he just couldn’t be bothered with more formal arrangements. In truth, he knew the lawyers would not be intimidated by whatever modest meeting accommodations he could manage. Sitting across from them at the Magic Box table or, God forbid, in the chaotic, half-finished room that served as his temporary offices at the construction site, either option would only reinforce their attitudes of smug superiority. They just might, however, find something unsettling about watching a slayer train, seeing power and grace in motion, and so he met with them in the back training room.
“Oh dear,” he exclaimed as the small entourage of well-dressed attorneys filed in. “Is it that time already? I must have lost track.” He pretended to have forgotten them, motioning awkwardly towards Buffy as if to explain. She was artfully pounding the stuffing out of the training dummy, landing punches and kicks in a blur, the dummy shaking beneath her assault.
“Buffy,” he called loudly over the constant thump-thump of her blows. “Why don’t you try something a little quieter until I’ve finished here?” He pulled several throwing knives from their rack on the wall, and casually threw them at her, one after another as fast as his hands could fly. And he was good, not as good as Wesley perhaps, as their last game of darts could attest, but still Giles could have killed with each one of his throws, his aim and speed deadly.
Buffy snatched each from the air, scant centimeters before they touched her body. He motioned her back. Every time she stopped, he waved her back further until she was nearly pressed to the far wall.
“Let’s work on your precision at a distance,” he told her.
He faced the lawyers again, unfazed as Buffy began throwing the knives back, the blades whizzing through the air between the uneasy new arrivals, not touching any of them, but so close they could feel the rush of air. Each knife stuck into the target board with a soft thud. Giles smiled when he saw Lilah’s reaction to their target practice: an 8x10 photograph of herself which Buffy happily outlined in daggers.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Giles said diplomatically, gesturing vaguely towards Lilah’s picture. “But it does seem to give her greater motivation when we train. Now… shall we get right to business?”
Lilah cleared her throat, the other four lawyers she’d brought along for appearances slowly inching their way closer to the exit and away from Buffy’s target practice. Lilah, to her credit, remained where she was. “I must admit, Mr. Giles, your offer was… interesting and unexpected.”
He pulled the knives from the board and tossed them back to Buffy. “I take it you found my paperwork all in order?” Willow had sent two sets of documents: one to blackmail Lilah and a second to threaten Wolfram and Hart. After all, they needed to provide her with some sort of believable reason to explain her change of heart to her employers. “I imagine the press would have a field day to learn that Wolfram and Hart have been skimming close to eighty percent off the profits of their most cherished charity foundations.”
“Overhead gets more expensive every year,” she replied caustically. The knives continued to buzz between them as Buffy filled her target with more holes.
“Yes, but people tend to be quite particular about knowing where their money goes.” His insinuation hit home; Lilah shifted uncomfortably. She might wish to keep Wolfram and Hart’s dirty dealings from receiving public attention, but she would be even more keen on keeping her own embezzlement from the attention of her employer. The lackeys she had brought with her certainly knew nothing of the second, more thorough set of documents that Lilah had received, but Giles knew those files were at the heart of today’s negotiation.
She pulled a folded piece of paper from her leather attaché and offered it to him. “A standard client contract. Congratulations, Mr. Giles. You’ve won this battle. But not the war. You’d do well to remember that.”
He closed the distance between them, a dangerous expression on his face, and leaned in close to her, his mouth beside her ear. For her ears only, he had this bit of advice, “I could care less if you cook the books, fail to report a few cash bribes here or there, or otherwise exaggerate your expenses in order to fatten your retirement fund. But from what little I know of Wolfram and Hart, I’m sure they care very much.” He grabbed her shoulders hard, smiled thinly against her cheek, a cold, predatory, Ripper grin. “But they are the least of your worries. You’d do well to remember that I am a murderer. You have the proof of it. Just give me a reason to kill again.”
He shoved her away roughly, and she stumbled a few steps in her high heels before regaining her balance. “Stay away from me. Stay away from my family. If I never hear from you or your firm again, we’ll stay in each other’s good graces.” He tapped the contract she’d given him against one hand before slipping it into his jacket pocket. “My own attorneys will have a look at this before I sign it. And may I remind you that Angel Investigations are technically under my employ. That means that as I am now your client, so are they, and as such, shall be afforded the same client/attorney privilege. Good day, Ms. Morgan.” He pointed towards the door.
Her entourage wasted no time in exiting. She waited a moment longer, staring at Giles with burning hatred or desire, he wasn’t sure which. Could it be that this woman actually found losing to be a turn on? A knife through her leather attaché decided her.
“Oops,” Buffy said. “I’m generally a good shot, but even slayers miss the mark sometimes.”
Lilah glanced between them, squared her shoulders, and departed.
Buffy squealed and came running across the training room, throwing herself into his arms. “We did it!”
“Ow, ow, ow,” he protested, easing her out of his arms.
“I’m sorry. Oh, God, I forgot. I’m sorry. Are you okay?” She fawned over him, touching his face, his chest, his sides, as if she could feel for his injuries.
He closed his eyes and drew a tentative breath. It was his ribs more than anything that still bothered him. He nodded and smiled weakly for her. Flexing his fingers and trying to massage out the soreness and cramping in them, he complained, “Remind me to wait a few more weeks before we try anymore knife throwing.”
She clasped his hands in her own and took over the task of massaging them. Warm, expert fingers kneading out the tension, he sighed and closed his eyes.
“I can do more than your hands if you like.”
He opened his eyes and saw the playful glint in her gaze. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to reciprocate.”
She shrugged. “I’m sure you can figure out something else to relax me.” Her hands worked their way up his arms to his shoulders. “Let’s celebrate. We got rid of the lawyers. No more worries about jail. You did the spell with Willow, so no fear of magic-enhanced three-year-old… almost four-year-old tantrums from either kid. Life is good.” She kissed him. “Very, very good.”
“Lock the door.”
“Gladly.”
***
“I’m four!” Alex informed the new arrivals happily, holding out the appropriate number of digits.
“Yes, you are,” Wesley answered as Cordelia ruffled the birthday boy’s hair. “You’re getting to be a very big boy. I’m sure your parents are very proud of you.”
Alex beamed, and his father laughed, pulling him out of the doorway. “Let’s not keep our guests standing on the porch, Alex.”
“Especially guests bearing presents,” Cordelia added.
Alex bounced and clapped his hands eagerly. “Mine?”
“Some of them,” she laughed. “But some of them are for your sister. You wouldn’t want those anyway. They’re icky girl presents.” She held out the hand not currently juggling packages. “Show me where these go, ’kay, kiddo?”
Alex led her off, and Giles motioned the other watcher inside.
“Fred and Gunn would have come,” Wesley apologized, “but we do still have clients, and it seemed unwise to bring all of Angel Investigations.”
“I understand.”
“And Angel…” Wesley tapered off.
Giles’ mood darkened.
“Angel sent gifts for the children and wished them…” Wesley again trailed off, this time in thought, as if trying to make sure he quoted the vampire correctly. “…wished them free of their mother’s ‘birthday curse,’ whatever that means.”
Giles chuckled softly, his mind still dwelling on Angel and the memories that were not even a week old, turning his laughter dark and bitter.
“Angel would have liked to come, but he didn’t think you or Buffy either one were ready for that.”
“I appreciate his consideration.” Giles absently rubbed at his aching fingers, remembering the sharp pain as each one of them had cracked.
Wesley sighed. “I am sorry for what you suffered, but Angel had nothing to do with Darla’s actions. I hope you won’t let this become an issue between you.”
Ah, yes, it wasn’t Angel, but Darla; it wasn’t Angel, but Angelus. It was never, never Angel. He’d heard that chorus a thousand times through the years, from others and from himself. It didn’t change the fact that he remembered Angel’s face, Angel’s voice, that he wanted to shrink into a corner when Angel entered the room. Intellect be damned, his heart couldn’t just accept the facts on a moment’s notice. Angel would have his clean slate again, but Giles needed time to heal first.
“And have you spoken to Faith recently? How is she getting on?” Giles knew it was a low blow, but it shut Wesley up on the subject of Angel.
They strolled into the backyard, the noise of nearly twenty squealing preschoolers hitting them like a force ten hurricane.
“Dear Lord,” Wesley murmured.
Giles agreed with his fellow countryman.
The theme of the party was indistinguishable, because Buffy had been unable to decide on any one, and so had chosen to mix them all together. Robin had wanted fairies, and so she and several of the other little girls wore little fairy wings as they frolicked about the yard, Robin covered in a generous amount of glitter so she shimmered in the sunlight. Alex had wanted something different every time they asked him: racecars, and Harry Potter, and the Lion King, and Narnia, and he had begged for a pool party and stormed off to his room in tears when they both said no. He wore a little wizard’s hat and a lightning bolt painted on his forehead and argued with the other children over whose turn it was on the little go-carts, which Giles had groaned would tear up the grass and Buffy had insisted would be worth it. There was a clown and a juggler, three-legged races, pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, and piñatas. Despite the party’s lack of pony rides or lion tamers, their backyard had become a complete and utter circus of activity.
“You can see why I’ve stationed myself at the front door as welcoming committee.”
Wesley nodded. “Do you require assistance?”
But Cordelia was waving him over to help dish out ice cream, and Giles abandoned the other watcher to return to the relative peace afforded him inside.
More children were dropped off by their parents, and Giles directed them to the backyard. He wondered where Buffy had found all of them, as he couldn’t remember Alex and Robin having so many actual friends. Next came more of Xander’s construction buddies: large, strong men who always gushed over the twins whenever Giles brought them onsite.
And then came a very unexpected guest.
“Hello, Ripper.”
Giles didn’t move from the door or invite the other man inside.
Ethan held up two neatly wrapped presents. “Come on, now. I’ve even brought gifts for the little brats.”
“Now, I wonder why I have such a strong aversion to any gifts you might bring for my children?”
Ethan rolled his eyes. “They’re harmless, boring books. Same rot you probably liked at their age. Let’s call it a truce, old mate, pretend we actually like each other for the day.”
“Ha! You can bloody well go to hell, Ethan. The last time I saw you, you had a hand in kidnapping my children.”
“And a hand in getting them back - the boy at least.”
“Ah, your chaos spell, which I’ve long since undone.”
“And what about my recent acts of goodwill? Little witch asked for my help, which I generously provided. Got you off the hook with those lawyers, didn’t it? And I undid your shortsighted spell on her magic in time to save your precious slayer, didn’t I?”
“After which you bunked off to retrieve the ring from said lawyers.” Giles held out his hand, palm up, and cleared his throat significantly. “The Ring of Gorlois, which I would have to be crazy to even consider leaving in your possession.”
A slow grin spread over Ethan’s face, an expression Giles knew all too well. “Believe me when I say you don’t want the ring, my friend. Let the lawyers have their fun with it.”
Giles narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms. “Ethan,” he warned, his tone becoming threatening. “What did you do?”
“Nothing!” Ethan feigned outrage at Giles’ mistrust. “Nothing horrible, at any rate. It’s just a bit stickier than they remember it. Might be rather hard… well, alright, impossible to remove. Gives new meaning to the parental warning: ‘Careful or your face will freeze like that.’ And isn’t that way more fun than simply stealing the ring back?”
Giles knew he shouldn’t, but he couldn’t help but laugh. He hoped Lilah would be the one to give the ring a try. He somehow doubted she would choose her new persona wisely. Ethan was laughing as well, and there was something comfortable about it, in spite of all the things that had come between them, the two of them laughing together until they were out of breath, and Ethan hadn’t even needed to get him drunk first.
“Little Willow-tree said you missed me, Ripper, that you might be willing to bury the hatchet.”
“Bury it in you maybe.” But the animosity and anger had faded from his voice, replaced with the teasing banter from their youth. He had missed Ethan.
“So… Going to introduce the kiddies to their Uncle Ethan?”
Giles shook his head sadly, the laughter fading. “I’m sorry, but I can’t trust you, Ethan, not with anyone I care about.”
His old friend nodded, not angry or disappointed, just resigned. “I know. Can’t expect a tiger to change his stripes after so many years. And I can’t exactly live in your world either. Too structured, too controlled, too… too…” He made a face and said the last as if it were a dirty word. “Too orderly.”
Giles tilted his head in acknowledgment of the gulf between them. They looked into each other’s eyes for several moments, and for once there was no hostility between them. Giles smiled at his old friend. “Is there a place in the middle, between chaos and order? I would… would like to see you sometimes, I think.”
“Come out for drinks with me tonight, after you’ve tired of the birthday festivities. Bring the fair witch along if she’s game.” Ethan gestured with his chin, and Giles turned around. Willow was walking through the dining room towards them.
“Giles, Buffy says to stop hiding out in here and get your butt out in the backyard. It’s time to open pressies.” She stopped abruptly when she caught sight of Ethan. “Oh, hi. You coming too?”
“No, I just stopped by to invite Ripper out for an evening of debauchery.” He quirked one eyebrow at her. “Care to join us? I’m always up for a threesome.”
She crinkled her nose at him. “Ewww. You are disgusting, Ethan, and being locked in a room with you for a whole day is more than enough Ethan-time to last me a while.”
He glanced back and forth between them. “Your magic seems more or less intact. Quite the day for mending fences, it would appear.”
Willow stammered something unintelligible and beat a hasty retreat back outside.
Ethan’s smile grew wider. “She’s amazing. Power, ambition, with just enough recklessness to make things interesting. Your girl may be the Slayer, Ripper, and downright gorgeous to boot, but this one’s got her beat, hands down.”
Giles laughed again, a full-throated laugh that bent him in half as he tried to catch his breath, a hand to his side in an effort to contain the stabbing pain from his ribs. “Oh, my poor Ethan, forever doomed to rejection. Willow’s quite gay, and no matter how effeminate you may appear, I’m afraid she won’t look twice at you.”
Ethan scowled. “Just for that, see if I don’t slip something in your drink tonight.”
“I’ll meet you at eleven. Same bar as before.” Giles shut the door, still chuckling as he made his way out into the backyard. The horde of rambunctious, sugar-fueled children cheered his arrival loudly. Apparently, they had been waiting for him before beginning the present opening activities.
Giles worked his way over to Willow, sliding an arm around her and giving her a playful wink. “It would seem you have an admirer.” She blushed and ducked her head. Giles squeezed her shoulder, his demeanor becoming more serious. He murmured to her softly, “Be careful, Willow. I’m serious. Ethan has his eye on you, and he’ll play on your sympathies, perhaps even convince you he’s trying to reform. He’ll feed you sweet lies, but he’s a slave to the Chaos. You can’t forget that.”
“He was so nice to me, Giles, when everything was so awful, when all I could think about was you going to jail, losing you forever, and then what Darla did to you…” Giles squeezed her shoulder again, and she rested her cheek against him. “He was nice to me when I needed it.”
“I’m sure he was. Ethan can be decent sometimes.”
“And you two are friends again, right? I mean, it seemed like you weren’t hating each other. Plus, Ethan wasn’t bleeding. Would it be so bad if I was his friend, too? Maybe that would be good for him.”
“The difference is that I know what I’m getting into. If I choose to be friends with Ethan, I also know well enough not to turn my back on him. He can be kind, Willow, but he’s still dangerous. Just promise me you’ll be careful? You’ll come to me if you ever have any concerns about him?”
She nodded against his shoulder, and he gave her another half-hug. Buffy was waving him over to the main table then, and the twins were clamoring to show him some of the presents they’d already unwrapped, and so he slipped away from Willow’s side, putting Ethan out of his mind for the time being, vowing to himself to keep a close eye on whatever relationship sparked between the two of them.
The twins were eagerly opening the mound of presents the party guests had brought for them. They had made a fairly good dent in the pile when Giles motioned for Marianne to bring down his own gift.
“Would you like to open Daddy’s present now?”
It was really more of a rhetorical question, as he hardly expected either of them to refuse. But they each answered quite noisily in the affirmative, begging to know which of the boxes was his, and if it was the biggest, and if it might be one of the things they had asked for.
“Marianne’s gone upstairs to get it, and no, it’s not anything you’ve asked for. But I think you’ll like it all the same.” Buffy gave him a suspicious look, which he ignored. “Now, it’s one gift for the two of you, so you’ll have to share.”
Alex and Robin glared at each other. Sharing was not usually a voluntary action between the two of them. The drawback of having been only children for three years, he supposed.
“Will you be able to share, or shall I take your present back?”
They each turned up wide, desperate eyes to him, shaking their heads emphatically. No, no, they would share, they insisted.
Buffy pinched him to get his attention and whispered in his ear, “You’re making me nervous here, Giles. We got them each a b-i-k-e, but you never mentioned getting them something from just you, something they have to share. What is it?”
“You’ll see,” he replied enigmatically, kissing her on the cheek.
Marianne carefully made her way through the press of children around the table, holding a medium sized box, still unwrapped, because that would have been rather difficult to accomplish, but topped with a bright bow on the lid.
“Giles,” Buffy gasped, nudging him hard enough to make him flinch. “There are holes in the box. Why are there holes in the box?”
Marianne deposited the box in front of the twins, who immediately lifted off the lid and stuck their heads inside, knocking foreheads.
“A puppy!” they shrieked, four hands lifting the poor sleeping creature from its cardboard bed.
“A puppy!” Buffy shrieked a moment later, turning outraged eyes in his direction.
“Yes, well…” Giles cleared his throat and shifted guiltily. “I thought it should be my turn to spoil them.”
Robin had claimed the pup first, a small chocolate lab that gently licked the face she pressed close. Alex skipped over to give his father a crushing hug.
“Tank you, Daddy,” his son gushed, tilting his face up for a kiss.
“Tank you, Giles,” Robin echoed, the puppy beginning to squirm in her arms.
“You’re welcome,” he told them both, aiming a wide smile in Buffy’s direction. “My gift would appear to be a hit.”
“Showoff,” she grumbled. “You can clean up after it and walk it and feed it, and it is sooo not sleeping in our bed.”
She did seem annoyed with him. Maybe he should have discussed it with her first. He would apologize for it later. For now, he would worm their new family addition into her good graces. “Robin, let Mummy hold the puppy while you both finish opening your presents.”
Only the promise of more presents distracted the twins from their new pet, and Buffy quickly found herself holding an armful of adorable, squirming cuteness, licking her face and everything. How could she possibly resist that?
She crinkled her nose up. “Ewww. I think it just peed on me.”
The children all giggled, and she passed the puppy over to Giles, disappearing into the house to change.
He set the little thing on the ground to finish its business. A pair of legs stopped in front of him, and he glanced up.
“In the doghouse?” John punned.
“Ha bloody ha.” Giles lifted the pup back up when it was finished. Its whole back end was wagging with its tail.
“You should name it Lucky.”
“And why is that?”
John grinned. “Because you won’t be getting lucky for at least a month.”
“You are enjoying this far too much.”
“Hey, if you can’t laugh at your fellow man’s misfortune, what point is there to life?”
“There must be someone else here you can pester. I don’t think Marianne’s seen the latest photos of your grandson.”
The puppy continued to squirm in his arms, wanting down to run and play, something Giles didn’t think was wise in this sea of tots. Xander and Willow saved him the bother of looking after the thing when they came over to admire Robin and Alex’s gift, scooping the pup from his arms and spiriting it off.
Robin and Alex were still diligently working their way through their birthday gifts, a tangle of wrapping paper at their feet and a stack of opened presents to either side of them.
Wesley stepped forward and offered them each his own gifts. “It’s not a puppy,” he apologized. Nothing else could quite top that gift, but the children still seemed pleased with everything they received.
Robin opened hers first: a small wooden sword. Alex had a matching gift, but it had different implications for Robin. Beneath her sword, lay a larger sword with a wooden handle, its grip large enough to suit an adult. Giles met Wesley’s eyes across the table. They’d had many discussions about this. Four years old was the typical age at which a potential slayer began her training, at least in the old ways of the Watchers’ Council. While Wesley had been willing to back Giles up when Travers had threatened to force him into training her, it was a different matter altogether now that Robin was the only potential slayer left. She would be the next slayer, and that meant she needed to be trained for it. As a watcher, Wesley had insisted that Robin receive such training, but he was not her father. Giles found it much harder to cut such black and white rules where she was concerned.
He reached over Robin’s shoulder and picked up the wooden sword that was meant for him. He couldn’t imagine ever using it, couldn’t imagine ever sparring with his daughter as he did with Buffy, not now, not ever.
The children had no qualms about using their toy weaponry however: the clack, clack of wood smacking together rang out across the yard. They knocked a few boxes from the table in the midst of their eager play, hopefully nothing breakable. Giles confiscated the wooden swords quickly, promising they could play with them later, while supervised in the training room.
Xander whistled. “Wes, man, I know you’re new to the whole annoying gift giving gig, but wooden swords… Stroke of genius, especially with the whole twin thing. Wish I’d thought of it.”
Giles spied Buffy returning from changing her clothes, and he hurriedly gathered the swords back into their box, knowing she would go ballistic if she saw them, knowing she would deduce the meaning behind the gifts more readily than Xander.
“Okay, where’s the leaky little monster?”
“Leaky,” the twins chorused together, giggling.
“Oh dear,” Giles groaned. “Why do I foresee an unfortunate moniker for our new addition?”
Assorted guests pointed towards where Willow and Anya were playing tug of war with the puppy. Zoey sat in the shelter of her mother’s arms, watching with wide eyes, still deciding whether she wanted to be afraid of the puppy or play with it.
Giles took advantage of Buffy’s return to slip into the house, motioning for Wesley to follow him. They stopped in the kitchen, and Giles placed the box with the swords on the island counter.
He removed his glasses and rubbed at his eyes wearily. He had endured too much in the last week to deal with this now, but neither would it accomplish anything to delay the inevitable conversation. “We’ve had many discussions about my daughter’s training, Wesley.”
“I know. And I was willing to set aside Council precedent on the chance that she would never be Called. But as much as you’d like to avoid the issue, as much as you’d like to pretend things were different, Robin will be the next slayer. The chances of Faith living until… even in prison… it’s almost nonexistent. The only responsible thing we can do is to plan for Robin’s eventual future.”
“I can’t do it. Buffy was my slayer before she was anything else to me. She’ll always be my slayer, first, foremost, and always. Robin is my daughter. I’ll never be able to see her as anything else.”
Wesley’s voice hardened, his stance showing some of the backbone he had developed since leaving Sunnydale. “She must be trained. As much as you dislike the prospect, surely you must realize that if you deny her this, you greatly decrease her chances of survival. Training will buy her time, maybe enough time to have something like the life you’ve given Buffy.”
“I know. You’re right. But I can’t do it.” Giles removed the wooden sword from the box, the one meant for him, and offered it out, hilt first, to Wesley. “I can’t be her Watcher.”
Wesley was struck speechless by the gesture and made no move to grasp the hilt. Giles felt rather silly holding out the wooden sword, nothing more than an oversized child’s toy, and bequeathing it to a fellow adult as if it were the Holy Grail. On the other hand, objects become imbued with the significance given them, and this was arguably one of the most critical decisions he would ever make. Somehow the sheer magnitude of his choice transformed the plain timber into something sacred, as precious as any ancient text or mystical artifact.
Wesley seemed to understand this, and so when he finally did take the toy sword from Giles’ hands, it was with great reverence and humble awe.
Giles fixed the younger watcher with a stern glare. “I’m warning you right now: I’ll fight you tooth and nail for every last shred of normality I can keep in her life.”
Wesley nodded, accepting this, and returned the glare with one of equal resolve. “And I’ll fight you just as hard to make sure she gets the training necessary to keep her alive.”
“Then here’s the first battle we’ll wage: you’ll not train her ’til she’s ten.”
Wesley’s resolve quickly turned to outrage. “While I agree that four is terribly young, no matter how the Council has done it for centuries, your daughter is in a unique situation: It’s highly possible she could be Called before then.”
“Even if she is, she’ll not take up the mantle of Slayer until she’s at least fifteen.”
“Well then, we’ll simply have to reschedule any impending apocalypses to fit in with your timetable, won’t we?”
“I’m serious about this. It’s the age Buffy was Called. It’s the age most slayers are. She won’t go before then.”
Wesley seemed inclined to argue, but let the matter drop for now, perhaps deciding to take a wait-and-see approach, to pick his battles when they became unavoidable and not before. But the stubborn set of his chin clearly indicated that he would not simply bow to Giles’ will, now or in the future. And Giles would not have it any other way. Robin deserved a watcher who would fight for her.
“There is something else you should know.” Giles glanced behind him, to assure himself that they were still alone. Earlier, they had decided to limit the number of people who knew this important detail. It was safer for Robin that way. “She will have magic. To the best of my knowledge, she will be the first to be both slayer and mage.”
“That’s… that’s quite unprecedented. Are you certain?”
Giles flexed his fingers absently. “Positive. She’s come into her power already. She… she healed the worst of my injuries.” He took a deep breath, raised his hand to stall Wesley’s questions. “Willow and I warded her magic. We believe the spell will hold until it’s lifted, and then… she’ll need to be trained for that as well. I can help with that part of her education. Willow, too. But I don’t know how it will affect a slayer’s gifts, the magic. I just thought you should know.”
Wesley nodded thoughtfully.
Xander walked into the kitchen at that moment, took in the sight of Wesley holding the wooden sword, and grabbed for one of the twins’ smaller weapons. “En garde,” he cried dramatically, making a few half-hearted feints before Giles disarmed him from behind.
“Now see here,” Xander explained. “No fair confiscating the kiddies’ toys to play with them yourselves.” He pointed a scolding finger at Giles. “That goes double for Alex’s new drums.”
Giles rolled his eyes, the mood suitably lightened with the young man’s entrance.
“Time for birthday cake and candles.” Xander lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Buffy got the kind that won’t blow out.” He wrapped an arm around each of the watchers and escorted them back outside.
There would be time enough later to research and deliberate, to seek portents and signs, to shape the course of one girl’s destiny and to mold the gifts given her by fate. For now, her father and her watcher would celebrate her fourth birthday together and leave all the rest for another day.
***
Ethan lounged in a corner booth, his back placed cautiously to the wall, and watched the early evening crowd gathering for a pint after work. He was surprised by how much he was looking forward to seeing Ripper. Knowing that the meeting was unlikely to involve him getting his teeth knocked down his throat was also a bonus. Maybe this could become a regular event, the pair of them spending time together on neutral territory, toasting old times and dead friends.
Ethan knew it couldn’t last. It wasn’t in his nature to conform, and sooner or later he’d cross the line again and Ripper’d show him the door. But until then, they could enjoy each other’s company, could reminiscence about things that no one else could possibly understand, because no one else was left to remember.
And then there was Willow. Ripper had misunderstood Ethan’s interest, had laughed off his admiration and informed him quite bluntly that she was gay. And while Ethan’s imagination could appreciate the fantasy of two women in his bed, he was far more interested in the witch’s power than her body. More than a day locked in Lilah’s office with her, trading insults, thrust into an unwilling partnership, only confirmed his initial gut instinct.
Willow was a prize worth earning.
He could see that she hungered for the kind of knowledge Ripper would never give her. She had decided to walk the straight and narrow for now, but he could also see that she might be easily tempted to stray from the path. He wanted to show her how much more interesting life could be if one skipped the museum tour, took risks, broke rules. He wanted to take her under his wing and show her the world. She would be the student who rose above her teacher, his protégé, his legacy, his ultimate gift to Chaos.
And so Ethan would drink with his old friend, and mend fences, and actually behave for once in his life.
Because Ripper was his way to Willow.
***
Wesley waited for Cordelia to unlock the door, but she just stood there in the hallway.
“Cordelia?”
“You know, I think it just hit me that he’s not going to be there when I walk through the door.”
His own thoughts had been so preoccupied with the unexpected duty bestowed upon him that afternoon, he had completely forgotten about Dennis’ passing. It seemed odd somehow to mourn someone who had already died. Then again, very little in their lives could be considered normal.
“We don’t have to stay here if it upsets you.”
She nodded. “Let’s go back to the Hyperion. I’m sure Angel has a spare room or eighty he could lend us for the night. It is a hotel, after all.”
She turned to go, and he stopped her with a hand on her arm. “I didn’t mean just for tonight, Cordelia. I meant… We could stay somewhere else permanently… A place of our own, a place that was ours.”
“Oh.” She considered that for a moment. “Okay.”
Just like that. In just one day he’d become both watcher to a potential slayer and live-in boyfriend to Cordelia Chase.
***
The bedroom light was still on when he tiptoed up the stairs, much later than he had intended on returning home. The stairs seemed to be rocking slightly, and he grabbed at the banister for balance. Going to feel like hell in the morning, he thought to himself.
Buffy was sitting up in bed, reading a book, exactly as he had left her after the evening’s patrol. Of course she had waited up for him. She considered the whole idea of drinking with Ethan to be a very bad one. Earlier, she had reminded him of the laundry list of Ethan’s sins against them, before finally sending him out the door with cab fare and stalking up to their bedroom for a good sulk. If Spike had still been around, Giles suspected he would have had an assigned shadow for the evening. As it was, police cars happened by the pub more often than strictly necessary.
She set aside her book at his approach and gave him the disapproving look which used to be his stock and trade. She could tell straightaway he was drunk. No point trying to cover it up.
“Evening, luv. You get the pup squared away for the night?” A tried and true tactic: distracting her from one bad judgment call by reminding her of another.
She sighed, his evening’s carousing with Ethan momentarily forgotten. “I put him in his little cage to go to sleep, but he cried for like an hour.”
He sat on the edge of the bed hard, misjudging both the distance and the coordination of his limbs. “I am deeply sorry about the puppy, Buffy. I should have discussed it with you first.”
“Better to ask forgiveness than permission?”
He chuckled. “That wasn’t my intention. I really thought you would adore him as much as the children.”
She blushed and lowered her lashes coyly. “Well, ummm… about that.” She slowly peeled back the blankets, and there was the little chocolate lab, snuggled against her leg and sleeping soundly.
“Buffy!”
“Well, okay, he is really cute, and he was all sad and pathetic, crying in that little cage, and I couldn’t help it.”
He kicked off his shoes and climbed into bed beside her. Reaching out with one hand, he pulled her close enough for a kiss. She squirmed slightly, perhaps wanting to keep up the pretense of still being angry with him, but he didn’t stop kissing her until she’d relaxed against him. Just enough of Ripper left in him from the booze to still make the girls melt.
“I’m assuming, then, that you don’t wish me to take him back?”
“Nah, I guess Leaky can stay.”
He groaned as he flopped back on the bed, drawing the puppy over to rest against his chest. “You’re not seriously considering naming him that?” He lifted the little dog into air as he stared at him speculatively. “You do realize he’s the tie-breaker. The women of the house are now officially outnumbered for the first time since I moved here, and I think he needs an appropriately masculine name.”
“Because ‘Rupert’ just screams ‘I’m big and tough and don’t mess with me?’”
“People in glass houses, Miss Buffy.”
“Yeah, well, the twins seemed pretty decided on ‘Leaky,’ and he is their dog, after all.”
The puppy yawned and pawed his feet in the air, searching for solid ground. Giles laid him back down on his chest and pet him fondly. “Oh well, I did try to stick up for you, you poor thing.”
“You still should have asked me first,” Buffy grumbled as she snuggled up next to him.
“Yes, you’re right, I should have.” He stroked the puppy quietly for a moment, thinking of other decisions he had made that night. She hadn’t exactly been happy about him allowing Ethan back in his life, however marginally, but she at least had the sense to know she didn’t get a say in his friends anymore than he got a say in her vocation. But Robin was another matter altogether.
He turned his head to look at his slayer and his wife. She was scratching behind the puppy’s ears and making cute faces at it as it made a few sleepy attempts to lick her nose.
“Buffy, you do know that there are other decisions that I have to make without you, right?”
“Like what clothes to wear and what to eat for breakfast? You seem pretty capable on those fronts. Although, you might need a little help with the ‘when to stop drinking’ kinds of decisions, ’cause you don’t have the best track record there, and if I wake up tomorrow with some kind of slimy demon in my bed, Ethan is going to wish he was never born.”
“At the moment, I wish I was never born. And maybe this isn’t the best conversation for me to be having while I’m two sheets to the wind, but it’s the first chance I’ve had to speak with you alone since this afternoon, and I want to get it off my chest. After the whole blackmail fiasco, I don’t want to have secrets between us, not even for a day.”
She stopped fussing over the puppy and propped herself up on one elbow. “I’m thinking this can’t be good. Well, you already have the little red two-door convertible, so it can’t be that, unless you bought something even more midlife crisis, like one of those little Porsches, which, personally, I always thought looked like little toy cars.”
“It’s not a car, Buffy.”
“You didn’t invite Ethan to crash here, did you? He’s not downstairs on the couch or something, is he? ’Cause that’s where I draw the line.”
“No, Ethan has gone… wherever Ethan is staying. I didn’t ask.”
“Okay, so what did you do that you should have asked me about first?”
“I honestly can’t remember. You keep changing the subject, and my thoughts are swimming in half a bottle of Jack Daniels.” He held one finger up in triumph. “Wait, I’ve got it. Not something I should have asked you. I was trying to explain why I had to decide this on my own. A decision I had to make as a watcher, you see.”
“That’s fine, honey, but you do remember that your slayer doesn’t listen to most of your decisions anyway?”
“Not about you. About Robin.” He clenched his eyes shut. The drinks were beginning to catch up with him in a headache sort of way, and he wanted to get through this while he still could. “There are parental decisions which we share. But this one I made as the head of the Council, and it was mine alone.” He opened his eyes again. “I asked Wesley to be Robin’s Watcher.”
He braced himself for the inevitable tirade. Perhaps he should have waited until he’d fully recovered from an evening out with Ethan.
But she only looked sad, not angry. “You’re not going to teach her?”
“I can’t. I honestly can’t.”
“Okay.”
He frowned. Buffy never failed to surprise him. “Okay? Just okay? You’re not angry with me? I just made what could possibly be one of the most important decisions regarding our daughter’s life without even consulting your opinion. You should be just a little bit angry at least.”
“You always expect me to get angry at the wrong things. I wasn’t mad about Longsworth and Sulla; I was mad you didn’t tell me. And now you’re telling me about Wesley and Robin, and it really is okay, Giles. I get it. I’m the Slayer, and you’re my Watcher, and we’re a team. But then you’re also rebuilding the Council on top of that, which is a whole separate thing. You don’t come down to the precinct and tell me how to run my cases, and I don’t tell you how to run the Council. Sometimes you ask my opinion, and sometimes you don’t, and sometimes I just give it to you anyway, but in the end it’s your call, your responsibility. So you made Wesley Robin’s watcher. That’s your job. And when more potential slayers are born, you’ll give them watchers, too.”
“When did you get to be so wise?” he murmured.
She started to strip his clothes off, making a face at the cigarette smoke still clinging to them. “I’ve always been this wise. You’re just now starting to notice.”
He snorted, then giggled. It was only partially the whiskey.
“Besides, this means we can just be Mommy and Daddy, right? Wesley can be in charge of all the watcher stuff, and we can worry about all the normal stuff, and Robin will hopefully grow up to be the kind of slayer who is fully capable of telling her watcher to go stuff himself.”
“I suppose you’ll teach her that?”
“Tormenting Your Watcher 101, as can only be taught by one slayer to another.”
“Come here, slayer.” He kissed her until the puppy wiggled between them, and they pulled apart, laughing. He settled for curling up beside her and falling asleep in peaceful contentment.
Slayer and Watcher. No secrets between them. No lies. Giles felt free, as he hadn’t since making that call to the Council’s black ops. Free of Longsworth and Sulla, free of his own guilt, free of Lilah’s threats. A free man with wife, son, daughter, friends.
He slept without dreams in the shelter of Buffy’s arms.
***
Lilah fidgeted in her seat and crossed her arms. Granted, crossing her arms only reminded her that there was nothing left of her chest to interfere with that action. Crossing her legs was also a whole new experience.
She glared at Gavin Parks, who was sitting next to her and couldn’t seem to stop staring. “This is all your fault,” she told him venomously.
“My fault? In what possible way is this my fault?”
“You let them go! The slayer would be dead, and Angel would be dark, and I would be having drinks right now with the junior partners to celebrate my new promotion if it weren’t for you.”
“And who told you to put the ring on?”
“How was I to know it wouldn’t come off again?” Lilah tried to run her fingers through her hair in frustration, but she had much less than she remembered.
“We could always cut your finger off. I’m sure your health plan would cover another.”
“But the ring would still be on my finger, even if my finger weren’t attached to my body, and so the damn spell would still be in effect.”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” a voice scolded from behind. Nathan Reed entered the conference room and closed the door behind him. He glanced back and forth between the two lawyers with undisguised amusement. “It would appear we have an interesting dilemma on our hands. Until Wolfram and Hart can find a way to rectify the situation, we’d like to take advantage of it.”
He looked back and forth between them again, this time with confusion. “Mr. Parks?”
Gavin raised his hand. “That would be me.”
Nathan smiled. “Then you must be Lilah.”
Lilah Morgan, stuck in a replica of Gavin Park’s body, courtesy of the ring of Gorlois which Ethan had cursed, raised her hand. “Yeah, that would be me.”
~Finis~ June 26, 2002

DBC Home Back: Part 6: Bloodlust Back Home

Next: Book Five: Unchosen
Part 1: We Don't Always Get What We Want
Giles wanted to prevent his daughter from inheriting her mother's destiny. He wanted to give his son the choice he never had. He wanted Buffy to live a lifetime beside him. Fate had other plans...
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