G/X Ficathon

[doyle]

Title: The Wake
Author: Doyle
Pairing: Giles/Xander (friendship. Or pre-slash.)
Rating: G
Notes: for voleuse for the G/X Ficathon – request was post-Chosen, Slayer training.


Xander spent a little less than a year in Africa, and when he returned to the new Council’s base of operations in Hampshire he brought with him four Slayers. The youngest was eleven, he said, the oldest, twenty. Andrew faithfully jotted down names and places of birth, all the while keeping up the stream of words that seemed to come automatically from his mouth. Giles had given up on trying to stop him talking new arrivals to death. Either it improved their English immensely in a short space of time or they resorted to violence to shut him up, and either had proven excellent methods of orientation.

The time away had changed Xander. Giles had known it would, but didn’t realize quite how much until he found him in the dojo not long after dawn one morning. He was there with the youngest of the new girls, Halimah – Giles hadn’t known the names of several of the Slayers who had died in the Hellmouth, and it was the first thing he did, now, attach a name to them like a talisman – running through some of the basic exercises. The girl swung a roundhouse kick at the pads on Xander’s hands. She’s dropping her right side, Giles thought, and Xander said, “Dropping your right side, Hali,” then repeated it in what sounded like pidgin swahili.

At that moment it was like looking at an Escher picture. His perspective shifted and where he’d seen an awkward, kind, often exasperating boy, there was suddenly a grown man, a Watcher.

It was to be expected that the time by himself, the responsibility, would force some semblance of maturity on him, Giles thought. But he watched him more closely in the following days, noting how good he was with the girls he’d brought, how they already had rudimentary training schedules, and he wondered if Xander had been different before he had ever climbed on a plane. He had lost a lot, those last days and weeks in Sunnydale. Lost his eye, and Anya, and the pieces of himself that were left formed into this new Xander when no-one was watching.

Giles would have liked to talk to him about it, at the very least have the conversation they’d never had time for in the confusion and euphoria immediately post-Sunnydale. He’d cared for Anya too; he hadn’t realized quite how much until their little group of survivors was climbing back aboard the school bus at the crater’s edge and he realized who was missing. There was too much work to be done, though, now that the school was finally in a habitable state, and they didn’t have a lot of time for in-depth conversation. Willow dispatched two girls from South America on the same day that Faith and Robin’s Asian contingent arrived, and there were suddenly four times as many Slayers as Watchers to work with them.

When he had a chance between working out rotas and meeting the new students and keeping up with the training of the Slayers who had already settled in, he called Buffy in Italy. The plan had always been to let all the girls train in England, at least for a while, but the sheer weight of numbers meant there would have to be some kind of order. Waiting lists. More red tape and paperwork.

He was beginning to appreciate the late Quentin Travers’ disposition.

“Sure, we can keep the girls here another week. Whenever’s good for you,” Buffy said. She sounded distracted, unless it was just a bad connection. “Teresa’s parents don’t like her training with me, so they could cause problems, but the others should be fine.”

It had been too long since they’d spoken. He drew the conversation out, making some small talk about Dawn’s schooling, and as Buffy became quieter and increasingly monosyllabic he almost asked if she was coming down with something.

Then Andrew came into the office with a stack of files, eyes red-rimmed and a clearly home-made black band on his arm, and Giles remembered the date. He took off his glasses and set them on the desk, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “Buffy, I’m so sorry. It completely slipped my mind.”

Sound that might have been a sigh, or a terrible attempt at a laugh. “Me too. Dawn had to remind me. I just… can’t believe it’s been a year.”

“No, nor can I.”

“Is Xander okay? Tell him I’ll call later.”

“I will.” Xander. He’d have to find him, of course. They should have arranged something, some kind of service. Even for the girls – they’d been Slayers exactly one year today, after all.

Andrew was lingering over the filing. He kept sending faintly accusatory glances Giles’s way.

“Oh, what is it?” Giles sighed, after he and Buffy had exchanged say-hello-to-everyone-theres and hung up.

He sniffed. “I just feel bad for Buffy. Mourning the loss of a beloved one. All alone on this day of her grief.”

This had been a running argument for months, ever since Andrew’s mission to Los Angeles. Spike, if what Andrew had related back was at all accurate, didn’t want Buffy to know he still among the living, albeit not actually living himself. Andrew was unwilling to go against his wishes, but happy enough to put the onus of his secret onto Giles.

For once, Giles and Spike were in agreement. Buffy was better off believing he’d gone out in his blaze of glory in the Hellmouth. If the git chose to use the resources of Angel’s corrupt firm to find her, then there wasn’t much Giles could do about it, but until then it wasn’t his place to tell Buffy.

But he remembered sitting beside her in a motel room the night after the battle, how pride and sadness had warred in her voice and face as she described Spike saving the world. He’d phoned Willow on the second anniversary of Tara’s death. He should have remembered the significance of today.

Andrew was waiting for a rejoinder.

Giles thought of everything Buffy had lost a year ago. “She’s in mourning for more than Spike,” was all he said.

**

Xander clearly hadn’t forgotten the date. Giles looked for him in his living quarters, the training room, the canteen, the library. No-one had seen him all day.

He finally found him in the quad, his back against the dark bricks of the administration building. He was concerned but not surprised to see the bottle of amber liquid beside him, until Xander looked up with that smile that the eyepatch made look odd and asymmetrical and gestured him to take a seat. He sat on the stone bench and accepted a glass. There were two, he noticed.

Xander noticed his look, smiled a little. “Kinda thought since I was stealing your booze I should let you have some.”

Giles sipped it without comment. Xander, once upon a time, would have choked on it, or downed it in one bitter motion. Giles hadn’t been there for the aftermath of the non-wedding, had only heard about it from Buffy and Anya and Dawn, and he suddenly regretted that very much.

Xander said, “The place looks good. Different from last time, though I gotta say, those piles of bricks and lumber? Would’ve made for great training tools.”

That would have been their last proper conversation, Giles remembered. Months ago. Xander had been frustrated at his eye meaning he couldn’t work on the construction of the school. Offering him the assignment in Africa had been an appeasement, a gesture that he wasn’t being sidelined.

“We need a sign out front,” Xander said. “Professor Giles’s School for Gifted Youngsters.”

“Yes, thank you,” Giles said dryly, “Andrew’s never made that exact remark even once.”

“Slayerfleet Academy.”

“Buffy suggested The Quentin Travers Memorial School.”

Xander refilled his drink, his head turned so that Giles could see just the black patch. “She okay?”

He considered his answer for a moment. “She’s quiet. I gather she’s been happy in Rome. She said she’ll call later today, you can talk to her then.”

Xander nodded. “Good. Been too long since I heard her voice. Will, too.” He grinned, a little of the boy he’d been shining through, and he raised his glass. “The scoobies.”

“The scoobies,” Giles echoed softly, touching their glasses together, and he found he couldn’t remember which of the children had come up with that nickname. It didn’t matter. They were none of them children any more.

They drank in silence. Giles watched the scotch swirling gently in his glass, the breeze rippling through the neatly tended flowerbeds. A few of the girls had volunteered their free time to keep the gardens in order; it seemed to remind them of their homes, and Giles was happy to let them. Some received seeds and cuttings from their parents, and were doing a valiant job of growing exotic plants unsuited to English weather.

He’d been too caught up in research to attend Xander and Anya’s wedding. Paid for the flowers instead, thinking that it was a disappointment, but hardly the end of the world.

Xander bent over, head in his hands, and Giles thought he was crying. Then he straightened and his empty eye socket was bare, the skin around it startlingly pink in his tanned face. He scratched the skin beneath the place where his eye should have been. “Y’know, I’m starting to think this thing’s never going to grow back,” he joked, but he kept turning his head to look nervously at Giles, who belatedly realized he must be in his blind spot.

He could be properly reserved. Quentin Travers would have. Ignore the disfigurement entirely, or at least look away, look at something else, until he was covered again.

“Does it hurt?”

“Nah. Not a lot of the time.” He bent his head again, reattaching the patch with the ease of someone putting in a contact lens. “Itches.” Some of the tension had gone from his wide shoulders, and Giles felt as though he’d passed a test.

“Does yours?” Xander asked. “Hurt?” And Giles couldn’t work out what on Earth he meant – there was nothing wrong with his eyes, discounting the glasses – till Xander hesitantly nudged his hand.

Angelus had broken his fingers one at a time, bending them back as far as they would go and then snapping them like matchsticks. His hands ached, still, in cold weather. There was the temptation to lie, to say that he’d forgotten all about that, but lies to children only worked when one was actually talking to a child. “Yes,” he said, “it hurts.”

They hadn’t mentioned Anya’s name once. Giles imagined her petulant and cross with them for making her the elephant in the corner, except if they’d been talking about her she’d be complaining that they were wallowing in misery instead of making productive and efficient use of their time.

He wished he could have seen her in her wedding dress.

“The Anya Christina Emmanuella Jenkins School for Girls and Ex-Vengeance Demons,” Xander said, out of the blue.

Giles smiled. “I believe signwriters charge by the letter.”

“Yeah, Anya’d hate that. Remember the chickens’ feet?”

He’d misplaced a nought, ordered ten times as many as they’d needed. The suppliers had refused to take them back. Anya had given him the cold shoulder for days. “I don’t think she ever forgave me,” he said.

He wasn’t serious. The vehemence in Xander’s voice startled him. “An liked you, Giles.”

He closed his eyes, thinking of a memory he couldn’t share with Xander, a kiss when neither of them had known who they were. “I know,” he said, surprised by the roughness in his voice, more so when he felt a hand press against his own.

They stayed that way until Andrew came and fetched them for dinner.

Comments

[wesleysgirl.livejournal.com]

Beautiful. You almost made me cry! :-)