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Story by Joanna C, no linking or archiving without permission and acknowledgement. Angel and Buffy characters belong to Fox, Joss Whedon etc. used without permission but for entertainment only (no profit). Feedback adored.

Book of Days Series

1: Twilight Sleep

She had her own entrance she used when she came back from the patrols. She had to tramp through the rosebush to get to it---around the circular driveway, through a hedge and to that tiny little opening in the brick, just beside the front entryway. It opened into what had once been a linen closet, but was now jokingly referred to as the decontamination room--- they put it in five years ago, when Giles came to live with them, because he couldn’t tolerate vamp dust now. It gave him migraines.

Tonight’s patrol had been unusually active---four fresh ones, corralled and shipped off to the lab for re-souling, two resisters she had to kill in self-defense, and two she had been too late for---blood on their mouths, death on their souls, she had no choice but to euthanize them. It was always a shame when that happened. They did not re-soul every vampire just because they could, of course---logistical issues aside, it simply was not responsible. In the first year of the New Regime, there had been so many guilt-induced suicides that the council resolved to only re-soul the fresh ones who had not yet killed. The ones whose souls were not tainted. The ones who were not monsters, but people who had had an unfortunate accident. And to have two like this---so close to salvation, and to lose them by hours---the council had planted a slayer or souled vamp in nearly every cemetery and funeral home they could by now, but there were some newbies who inevitably slipped through the cracks. And she was the most experienced slayer in the region, by far---she hated to set a bad example.

She pulled frost-bitten gloves off with her teeth and shook them out before stepping inside through her little door. There was a hook immediately to her right, and she took off her long, brown coat and hung it there. She stepped onto the plastic drop-sheet and jumped three times just to be on the safe side, before removing her toque and finally unraveling her sweaty hair from its scrunchie. Then she walked over to the wall monitor and placed her hand on the heat sensor to let the house computer know she was home. There were three large, round buttons beside the monitor. One---her sister’s name printed neatly in Sharpie marker, the D accessorized with a happy face in its middle---was dark. Her own button lit up as the sensor registered, but she noted with a frown that the one for Giles was flickering.

“Computer,” she said. “Location, Giles.”

A floor plan sprung into view, and as best she could make out from the blurry image, it placed him in the sauna. Well, that explained it, then. The computer couldn’t always pick him up in there---the steam interfered with the sensor readings.

“How long has he been in there?” she wondered aloud. Then, to the computer, she phrased it properly. “Duration?”

“5h37” blinked beside the sauna arrow. She frowned again. That couldn’t be right…

She began shedding clothes as she headed upstairs, knowing that Dawn was not home to walk in on her. Giles often ended his day with a sauna and she usually wore a bikini top under her clothes when she went patrolling so that she could join him when she got in.

“Hey,” she called softly as she reached the top of the stairs. She noted with suddenly mounting concern that the hallway was dark. Maybe the house computer’s estimate of five hours plus was not as off as she feared. He had clearly gone in when it was still day enough that he hadn’t needed to turn lights on…

“Giles?” She pulled on the sauna’s heavy wooden door and blinked at the sudden rush of heat. “You in here?”

There was a grunt from the benches, and she smiled brightly when she finally saw him through the steam. “Hey! I’m home.”

A dribble of sweat oozed down his forehead. He did not wipe it away. “So I see.”

“Patrol went okay. A few episodes here and there, but nothing I couldn’t handle.”

She looked at him expectantly. “So I gathered,” he said after a moment.

“Giles…”

“Well, you’re here, aren’t you?”

She sat causally down beside him, aiming for patience. “Want to join me for dinner? The house computer says you haven’t eaten yet.”

He shrugged.

“The house computer also says,” she continued sternly. “That you have been in here for five and a half hours.”

That finally got a rise out of him. His mouth puckered into a tiny wry smile as he cast a glower upward at the sensors. “The house computer,” he intoned archly. “Is a tattletale.”

She had sufficient ammo for concern now, and she did not try to reign it in. “Five hours, Giles? Five HOURS?”

“Well, not continuously,” he said. “I did come out for breaks.”

“I should certainly hope so! Dr. Keating says…”

“Oh, don’t start.”

“Giles, Dr. Keating says…”

“Dr. Keating is even more useless a ponce than the house computer.”

“Dr. Keating says these moods of yours are a natural part of the healing process,” she finished. “And that with the amount of scar tissue you have, you’ll have some pain for…”

“Forever,” said Giles, voice hollow and flat. “I’ve seen the x-rays, Buffy. The scar tissue runs straight through the muscle, squeezing around it like a cage.” He flopped his steam-soaked limbs dumbly to his side. “There’s no room to MOVE in here.”

“Giles…”

Sweat dripped off his fingers as he reached gently for her hand. “Muscle.” Then he wrapped his fist around her palm and squeezed. “Scar tissue. Now, try to wiggle your fingers around in there.” He gave her a moment to quietly struggle, then unclenched and took his hand away. His fingers left an angry red imprint in her palm, and she had to admit, she found the steam suddenly soothing.

“That wasn’t necessary,” she told him. “I know what you’re…”

“Really? With all due respect, Buffy, I’m not sure this is something you can understand by spying on me with the house computer.” He flexed his fists experimentally and slumped again with a tired sigh. “I suppose you’ll want me to come out of here now.”

“After five and a half hours? Yes, I certainly think so!”

“And I suppose it would bother you terribly if I skipped the supper and went straight to bed?”

She put on the chipper smile once again “Suit yourself,” she shrugged. There were only so many battles one could win in one night. Even she got tired of fighting.

**

She saw him to bed, then ate her dinner and called Willow. “Hey, Watcher girl. How goes things in the lab of council wonders?”

“Pretty good,” Willow said. “Busy. Nine more re-souled vamps finished their observation periods today and got their walking papers. Oh, we’re sending one your way.”

“Oh?”

“Your last two reports had Alton Travers concerned. With the population growth in your part of Wales, he thinks it’s ridiculous to expect one slayer to keep up.”

“Did you remind him about all those years where there only WAS one slayer, and how fine I seemed to do then?”

“I did. And he reminded ME that it was on that very watch that his dear darling daddy was blown to bits by a nefarious bad guy, so at that point I shut up. He’s trying to help, Buffy.”

“Yeah. Cause the council’s so good at that.”

“Sounds like he’s not the only one still living in the past. New Regime, remember?”

“Yeah, I guess. So who’s this souled vamp you’re sending me, anyway?”

“Hiram Chalmers, a former banker who had a nasty run-in with a mugger and found himself the creamy centre of a vamp sandwich.”

“One of your science projects?”

“Gosh, no! After that incident in Bath that one time, we lengthened the observation period. They stay in the lab a solid month now so we can be sure they can control the bloodlust before we send them out again, and most of them get jobs working for the council anyway, so we keep pretty good tabs. No, we think the vamp is one of the few lost boys still kicking around from the old days.”

“Still working on that spell to take all of them out in one shot, huh?”

“And how. Every simulation I’ve run, we lose the bad ones, we lose the good ones too, and we can’t afford to have that happen. We need the manpower. The kind of network we’ve been building…still plenty of gaps to fill.”

“You don’t have to convince me. Just came back from two more I was too late for. You’ll see it in tonight’s report.”

“Awwww, sweetie!” She could hear the sympathy in Willow’s voice change suddenly to smirk. “Is that your way of saying Alton Travers is right and you do need some lackeys?”

“Bite your tongue! And what the hell kind of name is Hiram, anyway?”

“An Oxford-educated businessman, that’s what kind. Okay, so he’s not exactly mister imposing biker dude, even with the vamp strength. But, you know, Oxford… I thought he might be good for Giles.”

Buffy nearly choked on her tea. “Yeah. Will…he’s not doing so good.”

“Dr. Keating said he was doing better.”

“Dr. Keating doesn’t live with him. Will, he asked for pain meds tonight. He’s never done that before.”

“Mirella’s on vacation,” said Willow. “So he hasn’t had his treatments in over a week…”

“It’s not just that.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t know. I don’t think I do, even. He’s…”

In the background, she heard sirens. “Look, I’ve gotta go,” said Willow over the noise. “Something in the lab…”

“Willow…”

“Look, I’ll call you back, okay? Buffy, I have to go.”

“Yeah,” said Buffy. But she was already speaking to the dial tone.

**

On her way to bed, she stopped to check on Giles again. He was only half-asleep, his sheets twisted with sweat and his breathing shallow and wheezy.

“Hey,” she said. “You okay?”

“No.”

“Can I get you anything?”

He ran a crackly tongue over parched lips and flinched with a tiny cough. “It’s bad.”

She gently touched his face, then picked up a no-spill sport bottle off his bedside table and squirted a dribble of water into his mouth. “I know.”

“It hurts to move.”

“I know.”

“And I never quite realized how much moving was involved in lying still either.”

“Giles…”

“I can’t go on this way. You know that, right?”

“It’s almost morning.”

He closed his eyes. She gave him arm a final pat, and as turned to leave him, she heard him whisper “You shouldn’t have pulled me out.”

**

She awoke to the peaceful chirping of birds outside her window, and a blinking message light on her wall monitor. “Computer, play message,” she murmured sleepily, stretching onto her back with a yawn.

“Morning, Buffy,” chirped Dawn through the hiss of computer static. “Sorry I missed you again. You were still sleeping when I left. Anyway, just checking in so you didn’t think I stayed out all night or anything. There’s coffee in the kitchen if you’re up before the house computer deems it a health hazard and tosses it away, and I’ll be home late cause I’ve got study group after my chem lab. Oh, and I gave Giles his meds on my way out cause he was awake and kinda whimpery, so he isn’t due for more til like 11. See ya!”

The recording clicked off, and Buffy, now wide awake, sat up, running a hand through her hair as she tried to get her brain in gear.

“Okay, noonish meeting at the funeral home, then weekly convene at the council field office…busy day,” she mused out loud. “Computer, time?”

“The time is 11:09,” the computer intoned.

“Shoot, I overslept. Okay, um, Computer…warm up the shower for me, will ya, while I go check on Giles? Oh, I mean…shower program Buffy 1, Computer.”

The house computer beeped acknowledgement, and she padded down the hallway and into Giles’ room. His bed was unmade---messily, gloriously unmade---but he was dressed, if one could call it that, in boxers and a t-shirt, propped rigidly against a cheerful Dawn-made nest of pillows. His muscle tightness did not allow him to slouch. In a further Dawn touch, an array of files and papers, most of them with the council insignia on them, had been helpfully fanned onto a tray table beside him. They appeared untouched, and when she called his name, he shifted vacant eyes from the digital clock by his bedside to her grinning face.

“You’re late,” he said flatly.

“My meeting’s not til noon. I’ll make it.”

“Not that. There was a message, Dawn said she would leave you a…”

She replayed the message in her head, slowly realizing. “Your meds! Dawn told me you were due around 11.”

“Making you,” he glowered. “Late. By five hundred and forty-two seconds.”

“Giles, I’m sorry! Here…” She unscrewed two bottle caps---a muscle relaxant, and, as of last night, a pain pill---and tipped the capsules onto his palm. “Wait,” she frowned. “You’re counting time in seconds now?”

She plucked the capsules off his clawed palm and slid them onto his tongue, tipping a squeeze of water in after them. “Giles, do I need to make another appointment with Dr. Keating? There are still some things we haven’t tried---if it’s that bad that you’re counting in seconds…”

“Oh, that will interest Dr. Keating immensely, I’m sure. The boy does love numbers. What was the last one he gave me, 0.4 percent? That’s how much I’ve improved in the last year and a half, under his diligent care.”

“Now, Giles…”

“Don’t ‘now Giles’ me, Buffy, I’m not four years old. Dr. Keating…”

“Dr. Keating is the world’s leading expert in neuromuscular trauma.”

“Dr. Keating,” he seethed. “Still thinks I was crushed by a minivan during a car wreck.”

“And if he knew that it was really a large portion of the Cleveland hellmouth, during a near-apocalypse, would that make you feel better? Shall I stop in at his office on my way home and shatter his illusions about the nature of the universe?”

His hands clenched unconsciously into a fist, and she noted with relief this sign that his muscle relaxants were kicking in. “You’ve no right to get pissy with me,” he complained.

She pondered arguing that, then saw the real pain he was in, and softened. “I’m sorry. Look, I’ll stop by the drugstore on my way home tonight and see if I can find you a new ointment or something, okay?”

“On your way home TONIGHT? You plan to leave me alone all day like this?”

“I’ll try and sneak home on my way between meetings,” she sighed. “But I can’t promise, Giles, you might just have to wait until tonight.”

“Oh, sure. Only 28,000 seconds to fill. I’ll be fine.”

She gave him a peck on the cheek, then stood, face neutral, but eyes firm. “You know I don’t like it any better than you do. Especially with this new fun development of codeine and second-counting. But you know I try to schedule all the meeting stuff together when I can. I don’t like killing time with the council blowhards either. And tomorrow I’m all free and clear. We could…”

“Right. Sure.”

“Have a good day, okay? Eat something. And try to stay out of the sauna?”

He grunted, and turned away from her. So she left him.

**

She got out of her meeting at the funeral home at 2, and immediately dialed Willow.

“Regrets to the council,” she began without preamble. “But I can’t make the briefing.”

“Buffy, you have to! Regional meet, everyone comes. Even Travers is flying in for it.”

“Then I am sure he will understand that my personal responsibility to my Watcher is a fine and noble use of my council time for the afternoon.”

“Giles? Is he…”

“He had a rough morning,” Buffy said. “There was snitting, even. I promised I’d try to check in on him.”

“Well, okay, Travers won’t mind ‘late’ as much as ‘not coming.’ You’ll get here when you get here.”

“Okay, can we go out of ‘most high supreme council bigwig and the boss of me’ mode for a second? Friend to friend, Will. I’m telling you, he needs me.”

Willow was silent for a second. When she spoke again, her voice was almost too soft to hear. “It’s really…that bad? Poor Giles…”

“He counts time in seconds now,” Buffy told her. “That was this morning’s cool new trick. Oh, and Dawn rented ‘O Brother Where Art Thou’ for our last video night, and he’s been humming the tune for ‘I am Weary, Let Me Rest’ all week.”

“Ouch. But Buffy, you said last night was the first time he’s really tried the pain meds. Maybe he just needs to give it some time, let it build up in his system a little.”

“Right. Cause Drug-Addict-Giles will be so much more fun than the version we’ve got now.”

“Buffy…”

“Thing is…I was going through some papers of his last week, doing some cleaning, and I came across that picture of him when he was in college, you know, the one we found during that whole Eyhgon thing?”

“Okay…”

“And you remember how he was with that? All guarded and aloof and hiding it all away from us? You know he’s not a sharer. It had me thinking…that he’s probably been in this kind of pain for months. That knowing him, he held out against telling me how bad it was as long as he possibly could, and he didn’t break until he literally could not stand it another second. This isn’t ‘he needs time,’ it’s ‘he needs help.’ And I need to be there right now to give it to him.”

“God, Buffy, I had no idea. Look, I’ll cover with Travers, don’t worry about that. And I’ll give Lorne another call---he’s got some connections a guy like Keating couldn’t even dream of---homeopaths, healer-types, that sort of thing. I know Giles has resisted that because you can’t use magic to heal non-magic wounds, but we might have some latitude on account of the hellmouth factor. We haven’t even come close to trying everything, you make sure and tell him that, okay? Keating says attitude is a huge part of…”

“Keating is not exactly in his good graces. But I get your drift.”

“Okay. Give him a hug for me, ‘kay? We’ll talk later?”

“Always. And Will?”

“Hmm?”

“Have a good meeting.” She smiled briefly as she hung up the phone, then gunned the engine and headed for home 

**

Buffy made two stops en route, and returned home fully stocked for TLC: heat packs, cold packs, gel packs. Ointments with aromatherapy oil. Ointments with menthol. Massage oils and moisturizers. And to top it all off, a frozen pizza and two pints of frozen yogurt. She dumped her loot on the front table, then headed straight for the wall monitor.

“Location, Giles.”

A dotted line traced the route from the entryway to the kitchen. Buffy smiled and picked up her bags again.

“Giles?”

He was sitting at the kitchen table, and he was dressed. Not only that, but he had the remains of a nearly eaten sandwich on a plate beside him, and a still-steaming mug of tea resting neatly on a saucer. He had a pen in his hand and appeared to be working on a crossword puzzle.

“Well, this is nice,” she smiled. “Great to see you out and about a little. You gave me a bit of a scare this morning.”

He shrugged almost contritely, and resumed his work.

“I brought you some stuff,” she said, showing him the bags. “I thought that with Mirella off for another week, you might let me try some of this massage business myself.”

He put his pen down. “All right.”

“And before you get all ick on me, remember that you aren’t due for meds for another three hours or so, so this is not time to be---what?”

He smiled benignly. “All right, I said. Fine. Sure. Is that frozen yogurt? Did you get me the mocha kind?”

“Of course I got you the mocha kind. Are you…are you okay, Giles?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Just…you’ve spent the last week in pissy fit of poor me, and now you’re all…chipper. And not that I don’t enjoy this happy you better and all, just wondering if you’re…well, just wondering what happened.”

“I had a good day?”

“I’m glad to hear it. Just…just remembering my Psych 101, and. this part about how people sometimes get all calm and peaceful…just before they kill themselves.”

“I too studied psychology, Buffy. If I did plan to do what you’re suggesting, I daresay I would be more clever than to tip you off in such an elementary fashion.”

“Yeah, that’s reassuring.”

He attempted to rise, but his muscles suddenly locked on him, and he sank to the chair with gritted teeth. Buffy sprang into action, grabbing his hand to steady him and coaching him gently.

“Breathe, Giles. You’re okay…”

His breath came in sucking gasps, and she could feel the spasms through his skin as his muscles fought for traction. When she finally took her hand away, there was an ironic twinkle in his still-watery eyes. “Don’t look so calm and peaceful after all, do I?”

“Giles, this isn’t funny! I know you. You hate being like this.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Of course I would. But I would take all the help I could get and milk it for every ounce of relief there was. But you---you’re like the two-year-old who covers his eyes and thinks that just because he can’t see you, that you can’t see him. Do you understand that if you told us how it was, we could try to help you? Willow says we haven’t even hit the tip of the iceberg yet. There are avenues we can explore, but we absolutely cannot find the solution to ANY problem we don’t know about! Do you honestly prefer the suffering to the attention?”

He looked back at her with wide, sad eyes, unfazed by her outburst. “To a certain point, yes,” he admitted. “Obviously.”

“But why? Why do you always close people off like this?”

“Well, four hundred seconds ago I was sipping tea and doing a crossword, and now I’m sitting here listening to you squawk at me. Which activity would you prefer?”

“It’s not that simple, and you know it isn’t.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps I could give you some pat answers about my father, about the council, about the stiff upper lip that’s as much a part of my destiny as your calling is to you. But it is what it is. And I suppose part of your job in this relationship is to recognize that and compensate accordingly.”

“And this whole calm and peaceful thing?”

He fidgeted, biting his lip. “Let’s save that for another time. As you correctly observed when you came in here, I’ve still got 2,984 seconds left until I’m to have my pill, and if you really can provide me some relief, I’m grateful for it.”

**

They were recovering in the sauna when Dawn came home.

“Hey, guys,” her sister greeted. “Don’t you look cozy.”

Giles held out his hand with a smile and flexed his fingers---easily. “And look…”

“Wow. Looks like somebody had a good day.”

Buffy beamed proudly. “That’s what I was telling him. See, he was getting all sick and grumpy and all it took was a little TLC…”

“Oh, sure,” he agreed, the hardness creeping back into his voice. “A little four hours solid of near-continuous massage therapy that would surely be a practical lifestyle if only I had nothing else to do and a steady supply of people endowed with slayer stamina and that sort of free time on their hands…”

“And here’s Mr. Grumpy again,” said Buffy, rolling her eyes. “You see what I’ve been dealing with?”

“Pardon my insensitivity,” said Giles. “I had no idea that you were in more pain than I am.”

The room went numb. Dawn carefully took a step backward, away from the steam.

“Okay. I should leave you two alone, and go…um, go do…stuff.”

Giles looked contrite. “I’m sorry. I’m being rather a pill, aren’t I? Ironic, isn’t it? I do feel better than I have all week…”

“That’s good,” said Dawn, looking encouraged again. “That’s good! We just need to keep doing whatever we’re doing and it’s all good, right?”

“And we might be getting some help around here,” Buffy said. “Willow’s sending me a lackey.”

She filled them in on her earlier chat.

“I don’t know,” said Dawn. “That sounds kinda creepy. You, working with a souled vamp again…”

“Oh come on, he’s a banker,” said Buffy. “And if he does turn out to be a lousy fighter, we can always bring him in as a nurse for you,” she teased Giles. “Vamp strength and all…”

His limbs stiffened and his eyes went suddenly glacial. “That’s not funny.”

Buffy hastily backpedaled, trading worried glances with Dawn at this latest temperamental swing. He could be so unpredictable these days…

“You’re right,” she said, scootching closer and starting to rub his back again. “You’re right, that was a very inappropriate thing to say, and I have no excuses for it.”

“Buffy…”

“You’re right, God, Giles, I’m sorry, okay? Just take some deep breaths with me, will you? When you get upset, you get tense, and when you get tense, your muscles lock on you, and then you’ll hurt worse than you do right now.”

“I don’t think that’s possible,” he hissed through gritted teeth.

“You’ll get your meds soon.”

“2,914 seconds.”

“Okay, sure, that sounds good.”

Dawn gave them a funny look. “We’re counting time in seconds now? When did that happen?”

But they didn’t hear her. As Buffy moved to take her hand away, he grabbed it and pulled for leverage, hefting himself away from the wall and bringing his knees to his chest and his hands to his temples. He rocked back and forth as her hand hovered uncertainly over him, then scrunched his eyes shut and snapped “Enough!”

Dawn finally gave in to being there with him. She shrugged off her t-shirt, ignoring the pools of moisture on her jeans, and scooted in to the huddle, taking one of his hands in her own as Buffy took the other. They slowly eased their arms around him and brought him to the floor again, holding him together as his soul gave out.

“Do you understand? They taught me how to give up my life, but they never taught me what to do with only half of it. I can’t breathe without hurting. I can’t move without hurting. I can’t even bloody CRY without hurting.”

“Tell me what you need,” pleaded Buffy. “Tell me what we can do to make this easier for you.”

He shrugged out of their grasp with surprising mobility borne of sudden, decisive calm. “You can let me solve the problem,” he said. “I’ve spent weeks going over the council records. You won’t like my solution. But you’ll let me do it.”

“Council records? But what…”

It was Dawn who connected the dots. “Vampires,” she realized. “Buffy, he wants us to let the council vamp him.” 

**

The silence fell thickly between them.

“Well?” said Dawn. “Giles? Buffy? You’re not saying anything.”

“I’m not saying anything,” said Buffy. “Because I’m giving Giles an opportunity to refute that ridiculous statement.”

Dawn edged close to him again, creeping gingerly on her toes so she wouldn’t alarm him. “I saw your papers,” she told him. “When I was getting you all set up this morning. It was Watcher stuff, on the vamp program that the New Regime’s been doing.”

There was a subtle shaking in his limbs as he fought to regain his composure, but he acknowledged her statement with a steady nod. “Yes. A fascinating project.”

“But I thought they couldn’t do medical vamping,” said Dawn. “The fates don’t like it when you mess with nature, right? Didn’t Willow say that made the re-souling process glitchy?"

“It worked on Cordelia.”

“Cordelia was an exception,” said Buffy. “Her coma was mystical in origin.”

“And in my case, we have the hellmouth on our side.” He smiled. “Never thought THAT would come out of my mouth.’

“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation,” said Buffy. “Do you really think…”

“Now, come on. It isn’t like it used to be, after all. As long as they catch you before the first kill, your soul will never be in even a moment’s…”

“You can’t be serious! This is becoming a vampire that you’re talking about, Giles. A vampire! My Watcher is actually trying to have a conversation with me about becoming a vampire.”

“Well, it hardly has the same implications in this day and age. I can’t be blamed if you still have connotations.”

She huffed to her feet and marched over to the wall panel, turning off the sauna’s steam so she could see him better. “Giles, this is crazy talk. You can’t…the Re-Souling program was meant to save people who had been turned by accident from suffering an eternity of hell and torment. You aren’t supposed to do it deliberately!”

“Willow would do it for me. She did it for Cordelia when Angel asked.”

“But that you WANT to do it…do you even understand how wrong this is? This isn’t just about your soul, Giles. There’s side effects. The bloodlust thing, and…”

“Blood lust?” He chuckled bitterly. “She asks me to live with pain this consuming, and worries I won’t be able to handle mere bloodlust?”

“..and you can never go out in the sun again…”

“I am virtually a housebound invalid, Buffy. I don’t go out in the sun as is.”

“And you think we’re up to our eyeballs in council interference NOW? Souled vamps have to stay registered with them. You can’t even leave town without a special pass! And if they even have the faintest inkling of inklings that anything at all is wrong, they can euthanize you, no hearing, no mercy, no nothing!”

“In my experience with the old regime,” he said coldly. “They did that sort of thing with plain humans too.”

“And if it did go wrong, and I had to stake you? I’m just trying to picture me, having to…”

“I would be under observation for a least a month, Buffy. You wouldn’t get near me.”

“And that’s another thing! God, Giles, after all this time, after everything---is that all this is? Just another excuse to push me away?”

“You might find this difficult to believe,” he said coldly. “But this is not about you. And it is certainly not an excuse of any kind. Did you think I would make a decision like this lightly? I know the dangers better than anyone, believe me. I applaud Willow for the work she’s done with the program, but I have seen firsthand what happens when souled vampires go wrong---not all of my scars are recent ones. And at the same time I recognize that the re-souling program was a miracle ten years in the making. I am simply not sure I am capable waiting another ten years for another one. Not as I am. Not like this.”

“Nobody’s asking you to!”

“You are! This is MY decision, Buffy. I don’t need your consent, or your approval.”

“And there you go again, shutting me out like that! Honestly, after what I’ve seen from you this week, I’m not sure you’re really in a mental state to…”

“Stop!”

“You aren’t doing this,” she said firmly. “We are not having this conversation.”

“Buffy, I won’t go on this way.”

“There might be another answer. Willow…”

“…has access to the same reference materials as I do, and has likely studied them almost as intently. If there was another answer, she would have found it by now.”

“I can’t discuss this with you. I can’t have this conversation with you!”

He gave her the faintest, creepiest smile. “As I expected, We’ll sleep on it, then. And to give you some idea of just what is at stake here, I’ll stop pretending. No more hiding. No more walls. You’ll see how it REALLY is.”

His body seemed to fold in on itself as he gave up all pretense of self-control, and as he was hit with the first cramp of pain, his voice caught, and he struggled out air in raspy heaves.

“I have to call Willow,” Buffy said. “Dawnie, get him to bed?”

“Buffy, I…”

“I can’t look at him this way. I…I have to call Willow.”

She fled to the bedroom, his weeping ringing in her ears as she ran.

**

She bypassed the usual council numbers and went straight for Willow’s emergency line. But it wasn’t Willow who answered.

“Willow Rosenberg’s office, Alton Travers speaking.”

“Where’s Willow?”

“Ah, Buffy, good evening. Missed you at the briefing today.”

“Willow.”

“Miss Rosenberg is in a meeting,” he said. “Which you would know if you had been at the…”

“Stuff it, Travers. Go get her. I’ll hold.”

He seemed to be enjoying having her in this position. “It’s not quite that simple, Buffy. She is in a meeting.”

“And what part of the ‘emergency’ in ‘emergency line’ were you not understanding?”

Finally, that snapped him to attention. “Business?”

“And how.”

“Wait.”

He clicked some cheesy Muzak on, then a moment later Willow picked up.

“Buffy? What’s wrong?”

“It’s Giles,” she said. “He’s losing it, Will.” She took a deep, steadying breath. “I don’t even know how to tell you. Somehow, he’s decided that the only way is…that it would somehow be okay to…god, you’re not going to believe this. To vamp him.”

“The council doesn’t vamp for medical reasons, Buffy. Too glitchy.”

“I know. HE knows. But there have been enough exceptions over the years.”

“TWO exceptions. And while Cordelia turned out okay, need I remind you that Andrew did not?”

“Willow, his last words to me tonight were ‘no more pretending.’ He had his pills about an hour ago and he’s already begging for more. Begging. Dawn’s still in there trying to calm him down.”

Willow went suddenly brisk and efficient. “Give them to him.”

“What?”

“The pills, give them to him.”

“But the dosage says…”

“I don’t care what the dosage says, give them to him. I’ll need some time to get these council guys off my back and to get together the ingredients for a teleportation spell, but I can be there within the hour if I move fast, and I won’t be able to evaluate him unless he’s reasonably coherent.”

“Evaluate him? You’re not seriously considering…”

“I am considering teleporting myself over there and having a look at him, nothing more. Even if it isn’t…well, this…there might be something else that we can do for him…”

“He doesn’t think so.”

“Well, he might be surprised at just what kinds of things I can do these days. Just because we don’t do medical vamping anymore, it doesn’t mean we don't still have the protocols stashed away somewhere. I mean, this is the council we’re talking about---not exactly 'ask and ye shall receive,’ even under the warmer, fuzzier New Regime.”

“But you’re not seriously thinking about actually putting this in motion?”

“Let’s just say that before we can even begin to say we’re beginning to say, there’s a lot of stuff that has to happen. Which I really should get going on if I plan to be there to be there tonight, by the way.”

She closed her eyes, centering herself, then slowly nodded. “Okay. You need me to dig up any supplies or anything?”

“I’ll bring my own. You still have me on file in your house computer?”

“I think so.”

“Well, I’ll have Travers e-send my spectrograph to you anyway. Don’t want to set any alarms when I teleport in. In the meanwhile, you look after Giles. Dose him enough that he’s reasonably coherent, but not so much that he passes out on you, okay?”

“Uh huh.”

“And Buffy?”

“Hmmm?”

“I am really, really good at my job. I won’t let anything happen to him that shouldn’t happen, you understand?”

She nodded slowly, not entirely sure she was feeling better.

**

They were cleaning up the remains of a quick pizza dinner when Willow teleported in. She greeted Dawn with a smile, then enveloped Buffy in a deep, long hug.

“How’re you holding up, kiddo?”

“Okay.”

“And how’s our patient? He didn’t fall asleep, did he?”

“Don’t think he could. He’s completely raw---stopped even trying to handle things. I gave him three times the dosage and he says it barely took the edge off. We’ve been taking turns sitting with him, but…”

“But he started trying to talk to her about this,” Dawn interjected. “And she freaked out, and he got upset and kind of had a meltdown. So she told him he could just sit there and stew until he was ready to stop acting like a two-year-old, and we came down here to have pizza.”

Willow’s calm, efficient smile never wavered, and she replied with an understated “I see.”

“He’d probably love to see you, though,” said Dawn. “He still thinks you’re on his side.”

“Who says I’m not? Look, I brought some things with me,” she amended quickly, trying to reassure a wide-eyed Buffy. “And I think I will be able to help him, even if it’s only temporarily, while we figure things out. Is he on anything right now besides the pain killers?”

“He’s had three of those. And his regular dose of a prescription muscle relaxant. He only gets pain when the muscle tries to flex---it butts up against the scar tissue like it’s hitting a wall, and he spasms.”

“Uh huh. But anything homeopathic? Herbs, teas, that sort of thing?”

“I did some massage work on him today, but he said the aromatherapy oil thing gives him migraines, so we went for the plain. Oh, he did have some tea with a sandwich earlier. Not sure what kind. Why?”

“Homeopathic stuff can cloud the aura sometimes,” said Willow. “Helps to know what kind of filtering I’ll have to do. Tea with a sandwich sounds fine, though. It shouldn’t be a problem. Can I see him now?”

She hefted a giant duffel bag off the floor and followed Dawn and Buffy upstairs.

**

They led Willow to Giles’ room, and she did her best to keep her face neutral and impassive. It hurt him too much to move, but he couldn’t help twitching as his body subconsciously tried to find an equilibrium. His legs were tangled in the sheeting. His arms didn’t know where to go.

She sat down on the bed beside him, gave him a gentle smile, then put her hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eye.

“Calm down,” she commanded.

The twitching stopped, and she did not break gaze with him.

“Wow,” whispered Dawn. “How’d you do that?”

“A little something the council calls pixie dust. Sprinkled it on me before I teleported. It won’t last.”

She gently stroked his hair. “Long time, no see. You look good.”

He squirmed away from her with a little grin. “Liar. You should come visit me more.”

“YOU should come visit ME. Travers asks about you.”

He did not answer, and she feared he was getting gloomy again.

“I’m gonna help you,” she said. “But I can’t really do that when you’re under thrall, so I’m going to break contact now so I can read you. You ready?”

She gave him a moment to steel himself, then took her hand away. His scream was immediate, and wrenching. She angled her body a little to hold him down and minimize the thrashing, then gently ran her finger up his spine, down one arm and up the other.

“What is it?” said Dawn. “You don’t look happy.”

“He’s too murky,” frowned Willow. “The muscles aren’t the only thing his wounds are closing off. The flow of energy is distorted, I can’t read him. And he’s too distracted by his pain to help me out here.”

With a frown, she climbed off the bed and went rooting through her duffel bag. “I hoped it wouldn’t have to be this drastic, but now that I’ve seen how much he’s hurting, I’m thinking he probably won’t mind so much. Dawnie, hold this for a second, will you?”

She tossed Dawn a small bag of powder, and, carrying something else with both her hands, edged back toward the bed and sat down again. She opened her hands and set down her burden, a large glass ball with a shiny purplish tint.

“Powder?” she held out her hand.

Dawn brought over the bag, and Willow dipped in her fingers, then smeared the brownish dust on Giles’ forehead, tracing out a shape that looked almost like a straight, blocky yin-yang. Then she picked up the ball and smacked it into the picture. It cracked like an egg, and when the haze of purple cleared, Giles was clean again, and deeply, comfortably sleeping.

Willow turned her attention to Buffy and Dawn again, but her smile was grim and tight. “Welcome to plan B.”

“What did you do to him?” asked Dawn.

“When surgeons do that---non-magically, of course---they call it twilight sleep. It’s a form of coma they sustain by artificial means---to let the patient heal while their pain is still too great to wake them.”

Buffy’s mild curiosity had hardened to horrified fear. “You put him in a coma?”

“Oh, don’t worry, I can bring him out of it any time I want to.”

“But…”

“I told you I have to evaluate him, and I can’t do that unless he’ll talk to me. And if he won’t do it the usual way, I’ll have to meet him in a place he can. I’ve done this kind of spell before, Buffy. On you, when Glory attacked. On Dawn, when…”

“You’re going into his mind,” Buffy realized. “If he won’t come to you, out here, you’ll go to him…in there.”

“And a tough nut like him, it might take some time, which is why I needed a way to control the process better. Hence the flashy new spell. You guys should go get some sleep,” she told them. She touched her fingertips gently to his cheeks. “I might be awhile in here.”

**

When she blinked, she was on a patio adjoining a large, well-manicured garden.

"Giles?"

She trampled past a rose vine and came upon a white whicker table. Giles was seated in a chair that matched it, sipping a Guiness and apparently waiting for her.

"About time you found me," he greeted. "Nice spell."

"Thanks. I’ve been practicing."

"I think I must be the only one whose head you haven’t been in yet. Buffy, during the fight with Glory. Dawn, when Sahjan returned. Xander, during that incident at Cannes..."

"Faith," she said. "I was never in Faiths head."

"Well, thank heavens for small favours, I suppose. I’ve seen the council’s file on that girl. Present successes notwithstanding, I don’t imagine her head is the happiest place to be."

She took that as her opening and pulled up a chair. It was white whicker, like his, and sported cheerful yellow cushions. "Yeah. Sounds like you’ve been in a lot of council files lately."

He shrugged. "I get around. I imagine you’ll want to get right to it, then. You can go inside, if you like."

He pointed off to the distance, where she could dimly make out the shadow of a large, heavy door.

"Whatever you want," she shrugged. "I’m good out here."

He put down his mug with an incredulous shake of his head. "Oh, I don’t think so. You won’t see anything you like out here."

"This is your scenario, Giles. I want to see anything you want to show me."

He stared at her as if she was stupid. "But you wanted to get inside, and that isn’t here. You’re still outside right now."

"Then take me."

He rose to his feet with an agreeable shrug. "Very well. This way."

The door opened into a cavernous, moss-ridden hallway straight out of a gothic novel. Condensation dripped off foreboding stone walls and the unfinished concrete squelched beneath their feet. The hall was lined with creaky wooden doors, and as her eyes adjusted, she saw that they were adorned with small plaques. One read ‘watchers.’ One read ‘football.’ At a glance, she saw labels as well for books, supper, vampires---and women. He noticed her stare and gave a chuckle at that one.

“Ironic, isn’t it, having those two side by side.”

But her eye was already caught by another door, different from the other ones. Instead of oaken brown, it was a mottled gray as if it had been painted, then repainted again, then had the paint chip off. It didn’t have a plaque on it, either. Rather, it had crayon scrawlings in a child’s hand: “KEEP OUT,” it read. “THIS MEANS YOU.”

She leaned closer for a better look. “What’s behind that one?”

He dismissed the room with a bored wave of his hand. “Oh, you know. This and that. Things. We don’t need them.”

“We don’t, do we? Now, would this be the you and me we, or some other we that I don’t know about yet?”

“It doesn’t matter. We don’t need to go in there. Those are just things in there, we don’t need them.”

“Oh?”

“If we needed to go in there, that would be indicated, wouldn’t it? It’s very well-ordered down here.” He cracked his knuckles, stretched, then headed for the door as if he was leaving. “Well, you have fun. Feel free to look around, just close all the doors when you leave and put everything back where you found it…”

“But where are you going?”

“Why, upstairs, of course. This is the basement, isn’t it? One doesn’t live in the basement. One lives upstairs. The basement is only for storing things.” He said this as if it should be self-evident.

She played along. “Right, of course. So, um, can I come upstairs with you?”

For the first time, he looked uncomfortable. “I don’t think that would be a good idea just yet. There are lots of things for you to look at down here. You know, doors with plaques and such.”

“I see that. But Giles, I want to be with you right now.”

He thought about this for a moment. Then, he turned toward her again with an oddly unsettling smirk. “There is a door down here that is marked ‘supper.’ I think you’ll like that one. There might be tea and custard there.”

“You are shutting me out,” she complained. “I came here to help you, and you’re not letting me do that. I have to do an evaluation.”

“There is a door marked ‘monster’ also, but I would stay out of that one if I were you. There is a blue fellow with sharp tiny teeth and he’ll shred you to pieces if you come too near. Unless you go to the supper room first, mind you. He does have a fondness for tea and custard.”

“Unless this is a riddle,” she mused thoughtfully. “And this particular manifestation of you is some kind of gatekeeper…it would be just like Giles to order his brain like that.”

“But there mightn’t BE tea and custard,” he fretted. “Not this time, anyway. Sometimes a room gets too cluttered and things have to be taken out. I don’t know where they go when that happens. Oh! I wonder if we could take out a whole room that way? You mightn’t see the monster one after all!”

But Willow was only half-listening. If she was correct in her theory that the Giles before her really was some kind of gatekeeper, that certainly complicated things for her. It wasn’t every mind that, when touched, could produce a gatekeeper figure to protect itself. If he was that guarded, even in his own head---well, she’d definitely need more than one trip in to get past his defenses. These little psychic jaunts take a toll on the host as well as the traveler---that his gatekeeper was becoming increasingly nonsensical was a worrying sign of just how drained he was by her presence, by the pretenses his mind went through to protect himself from her.

“I could come back later,” she suggested. “When you’re ready to go upstairs with me.”

“I’ll decide when that happens!”

“Of course you will. I only mean…that I don’t have to stay down here right now if you don’t feel like being here. I can come and visit you again later.”

“That might be nice. You know, I don’t often say this to people---but sometimes I’d like to have a few more visitors than I get. Right now, I feel like sleeping. Must you wake me when you leave?”

It took her a moment to realize that he was referring to the coma she had him in. “I can leave you sleeping,” she said. “But I’ll need to bring some people in, if I do that. Will that be all right?”

He frowned. “What sorts of people?”

“Some nurses to make sure you’re okay while you’re sleeping. They might need to put some tubes in your body to keep things…to keep things running smoothly until you wake up.”

“But they won’t come in with you,” he said. “They’ll wait outside the house. They’ll wait outside the garden, even.”

“Oh, yes,” she assured him. “I’m the only one who will come in here.”

“Maybe not forever. Maybe just for now.”

She smiled back at him. “Just for now.”

He winked out of sight, and she woke up in the bedroom, back in the real world.

**

As Willow regained her real-world bearings, she felt eyes on her: Buffy and Dawn had waited up, and now, they peppered her with questions.

“Did you get what you needed?” asked Buffy.

“Was he okay in there?” asked Dawn. “Are you going to wake up him now? How long can he stay like this?”

She winced and pressed a fist to her forehead, massaging gently. “Whoa. Slow down, okay? Some of us have had a really long day here.”

The two looked instantly contrite. “Sorry,” Dawn mumbled. “We’ll just go now.”

“No! I…look, just give me a minute…I…actually, I might need you guys. Like, research need.”

Buffy pulled a bottle of water from a cooler underneath the bed, and handed it to her. “Oh?”

“Some logistics, first. I need to call Travers. There are some supplies I’ll need, and trip here notwithstanding, some council business I need to attend to. Give me half an hour?”

“Okay,” said Buffy. “Are we…are we just going to leave him like this?”

“For now, yes. Buffy, he’s fine, I promise you.”

They had a long road ahead of them, yet. But in his twilight sleep, he looked mercifully peaceful.

**

It was nearly midnight by the time Willow got off the phone with Travers, and when she rejoined Buffy and Dawn in the living room, she looked like she had aged years.

“Sorry,” she sighed. “I’m really tired. It’s been a rough week. Travers wants to send a special op to Helsinki.”

Buffy poured them mugs of coffee, then joined Willow on the couch. “Helsinki? Isn’t that the council’s third special op this month?”

“Fifth, actually. And after last week’s debacle in Boise, we’re a slayer short---Graham Kelley is still in the hospital with serious injuries, and Kennedy won’t leave her Watcher’s side.”

“So what’s so special about Helsinki, anyway?” said Dawn.

“Some archeologist there turned up some bones that are a little funky. Travers is worried it might be a vampire cult thing. Cause that went over so well in Boise! Stupid Travers.”

“What did he say about Giles?” asked Buffy.

“Asked me if I was having fun on my ‘little trip’ then went straight to business. He did agree to send me the nurse I asked for. We might have to keep Giles under for a few days, and I’ll need someone to get him IV’d and catheterized, and keep an eye on his vitals. I’d do it myself if I didn’t think that would weird Giles out later…”

“A few DAYS? But I thought…I mean, you went inside his head, Will. You had access to his every innermost thought! You’re telling me that wasn’t…”

“You’re assuming,” corrected Willow gently. “That just because I went inside, I had access.”

Dawn frowned. “I don’t get it.”

“Well, say that you’re going to a concert with a bunch of friends. One of you has seats way out in the bleachers. One of you has seats in the front row. And one of you has a backstage pass. You’ll all get into the stadium. But you won’t all see the same show.”

“So you’re saying you went in there thinking you had VIP tickets, and you couldn’t get past the bouncer in the nosebleed section?”

Willow smiled. “That’s actually a really good analogy. It’s been awhile since I’ve done this sort of thing, and I guess I forgot that what I was seeing in there wasn’t really real. It looked like Giles. It sounded likes Giles. But it wasn’t Giles per say---it was just a manifestation that his mind generated to mediate the interaction.”

“Neat,” said Dawn.

“In theory, yes. Everyone’s mind reacts to the invasion of another person differently, but there are some basic archetypes at play that are universal. Dawn, you had a mother figure when I went into your head, and Buffy, you had a child figure. I still tease Xander about the one he had. But Giles had a gatekeeper, and it takes a certain type of person to generate that.”

“Let me guess,” said Buffy. “The gatekeeper tries to keep you away from things. That’s why you want to keep him knocked out---because you’ll need another trip in to find what you needed?”

“I want to keep him knocked out because he asked me too. But yes, I will need another trip in. There is some good news, though---and this is where you guys come in. There’s some homework we can do before we go in again that might speed things along.”

“Oh?”

“I know what we’re up against now. While it’s true that every person’s manifestation will be unique and different and personal, there are some general rules that apply to everyone. The mind tries to process and arrange things, and when I went in there, it tried to represent that to me symbolically. And symbols are something we can analyze.”

“You told me mine was a house,” said Dawn.

“Not just any house,” Willow explained. “But YOUR house. Your childhood house. And you are the only person I’ve met so far whose mediator character was not a version of themselves.”

Buffy frowned. “Who was it?”

“Mom,” said Dawn. “She tried to serve you milk and cookies while you waited for me to come out of my room.”

“But there you see the difference. Mediators are by their natures go-betweens---you can’t just pop into someone’s head and not have their mental hackles go up a little. But the psychology behind them varies. Dawn’s mother mediator operated just like her real-life mother had---her function was to protect her child. As soon as she realized that I wasn’t there to hurt Dawn, she let me through. Now, think of the gatekeeper as the secret service agent who guards the door to the White House. He’ll die before he lets anyone get past him.”

“Wow,” said Buffy. “So Giles really, really doesn’t want people to get close to him.”

“Actually, I don’t think so. The gatekeeper said something to me about how he wished he could have more visitors than he gets. Giles wants the closeness---he just doesn’t know how to have it, because he’s worked so hard over the years at keeping people at a distance. Which sort of makes sense considering that his watcher training pretty much taught him that all the people in his life would die horrifically…”

“That’s sad. That’s something we’ll have to work on with him, when we…”

“Anyway,” continued Willow. “That brings me to rule number two, namely that the gatekeeper generally isn’t capable of telling a lie. They can evade the question. They can try and distract you to get out of answering. But when they do tell you something---however wrapped up in riddle it might be---it’s the truth.”

“Okay,” said Buffy. “So with that in mind, what did you get that can help you?”

She told them about the house metaphor the gatekeeper-Giles had used---the garden, the hallway of doors, and the basement.

“He seemed very concerned with giving everything its proper label,” Buffy observed. “The garden was outside, the basement was inside, and the doors in the corridor all had clear names on them.”

“But that’s what his job was as a watcher, right?” said Dawn. “So that kind of makes sense, that his head would work that way.”

“And it also explains why his disability has freaked him out so much, besides the obvious pain he’s in. When you’ve got your label, you can look up the monster in your book and it will tell you exactly what to do with it---where it lives, what it eats, how to get rid of it if you don’t want it there. It must be hard, having something so huge in his life that he can’t dispose of that way.”

“But he doesn’t know another way to process things,” said Willow. “And I saw some signs that he was trying to work through it. He told me there was a ‘monster’ room, and that the monster was blue and had tiny sharp teeth. At first I thought he meant literal monsters, and that his watcher memories were stored in there. But there was another door called watcher, now that I think of it. I think the monster with sharp tiny teeth is his illness, and it was ‘blue’ to match his mood about it.”

“What about the…the vamp thing?” said Buffy. “Are you going to…”

“It’s too early to say. There were some visual cues I was expecting that I didn’t find---bats and spiders in the very goth hallway, things like that. I didn’t find that, and my instinct is telling me that all he wants right now is relief. An end to the pain. I don’t think he cares how he gets it. But, again, the gatekeeper was not communicating with me in a literal logical sense, so…”

“He told you not to go in there unless you had tea and custard,” giggled Dawn.

“He was actually remarkably child-like,” Willow said. “Very direct, very innocent. But very intent in his purpose and sure of his place in things. If I want to get through him and to the real Giles, I’ll have to play on his level.”

“Too bad you can’t take some tea and custard in with you, than,” teased Buffy.

“Actually, I think I can. Manifesting on the psychic plane’s tricky, but do-able. And definitely worth trying. Getting past the gatekeeper is my first obstacle.”

“And the second one?”

“Figuring out what’s in that mystery room. I have a very strong feeling that it’s going to be key to whatever cure we put together for him. I’m going to need ideas, guys. Dawn, I want you to see if you can find anything in his books on psychic manifestations, and specifically, gatekeeper mediators. The quicker I can punch through that wall he’s putting up, the quicker we can move on with things. Buffy---I want to know what’s behind that mystery door. It must be pretty important if even the gatekeeper doesn’t know what it is. Can you look through his files---discreetly---and see if anything jumps out at you as a likely candidate?”

They both agreed.

“I’m going to try and get some sleep now,” said Willow. “I’ll have to stop by the local council field office tomorrow and check on a few things, but I want to try and get through to him again tomorrow afternoon. We’ll talk before then, see if anybody learned anything.”

They called it a night.

**

When Willow re-joined them the following afternoon, morale had improved considerably. A nurse had come by very early that morning and gotten Giles set up, and Buffy, assured he was doing fine and getting some much-needed rest, had thrown herself into her research with vigor and energy. Dawn had excused herself for a 2 o’clock Statistics class, but Buffy assured Willow that her sister had left a full report with her.

“She says you seem to be on the right track,” Buffy explained over coffee. “The one thing she did want to warn you about, though, is that the gatekeeper might not be his only defense. If his mind is that guarded that this is the mediator he would generate, there might be other obstacles along the way.”

“That’s a good point. But Buffy, I got the distinct impression that there was more going on with Giles. The gatekeeper made several references to being lonely. He told me he would like more visitors. And later, when I mentioned the nurse to him, he asked me if she would be coming inside, or waiting in the garden. I told him I would be the only one to come back inside, and he said ‘maybe not forever.’ Part of him IS really guarded. But part of him really wants to reach out. And remember that the gatekeeper isn’t capable of lying. He told me that Giles lived ‘upstairs.’ So as long as I get upstairs, I’ll find him.”

“What about the council? Did they have anything helpful to add when you were at the field office?”

“Travers is trying to get them psyched about Helsinki, but everyone’s really preoccupied with the Boise incident. Graham Kelley took a turn for the worse this morning, and might need surgery.”

“Geez. When will they know?”

“Travers said he’d call when he knew something, so I should be hearing from him tonight. That’s partly why I want to get the mind meld out of the way now, if that’s okay.”

They finished their drinks, then she returned to Giles’ bedside and put her fingers on his temples. 

**

She woke up in the garden, and Giles was waiting.

“Hello, again,” she greeted him with a cheerful smile. “How are you feeling today?”

“Oh, very nice. I’ve got lots of sleep, and I’m feeling very energetic.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Do you want to come for a walk with me?”

“A walk? To where?”

“I wanted to look around the basement,” she told him. “I thought you could give me a tour. Then maybe we could go upstairs for a little bit.”

He frowned. “I’m fairly sure I made myself clear on that. There’s plenty to see down here.”

“So show me. Let’s go.”

“Perhaps we should stay outside for awhile. You’re looking a bit pale. The sunshine will do you good.”

She leveled her gaze at him with brutally sudden severity. “No more games, Giles. Your situation is serious. You need to show me what’s inside, now.”

“You’re yelling at me,” he pouted. “That’s not very nice.”

“You have five seconds to show me something interesting, or I’m leaving, and I’ll wake you up, too.”

He looked stricken. “No! I’ll take you in there, all right? There are many tiny rooms, I’ll show them to you!”

In his distress, he did away with the pretense of physical environment, and her eyes went blurry on her. When she regained her equilibrium, they had jumped directly to the corridor of his basement, a row of doors stretching as far as the eye could see. “Pick one!” he demanded, a panicked shrill in his tone. “Go on!”

The three nearest doors offered a diverse potpourri of choices: maps, polo and women. She picked the latter, and with a nod, urged him inside with her.

The room was plain and white and simple. It was also surprisingly empty given the potential that open label had offered: just a beanbag chair in the room’s centre, in which lounged…Buffy. His mind had dressed her a little more conservatively than the Buffy of the real world, but the sparkle in her eyes was unmistakable, and Willow had a sudden inspiration. It wasn’t the tea and custard that she should be manipulating…

The gatekeeper-Giles did not look so happy to see her. “You weren’t in here last time,” he complained. “Clara was. I took her to the fun room and we played with some puppies.”

“Who’s Clara?”

“My sister. You haven’t met her, because she isn’t here. SHE is,” he whined, pointing an accusing finger at Buffy.

She’s here for a reason, Willow reminded herself. His mind generated this Buffy here, now, with her, for a reason.

“Hey, Giles,” the Buffy figure said. “What’s she doing here? Coming to talk you out of your little plan? You can’t let her do that!”

Well, that explained things, but she wasn’t sure if that explained them in a way that was better or worse. He conjured up this Buffy to shore up his resolve against her little mental intrusion. Did that mean he was weakening, that he felt himself about to let down his guard, and that his mind was rallying one last defense? Or did it mean…

“She thinks she’s so much smarter than you, all head of the watchers council and stuff, but she isn’t! Who almost destroyed the world that one time, huh?”

That’s it, Willow thought. Time to take control here. She flexed out with her mind and felt a gentle pull.

The Buffy on the beanbag chair relaxed suddenly, and looked at Giles with touching sympathy. “On the other hand,” she crooned gently. “This could be your chance. Let it go, once and for all. Let her in. Let her help you. Maybe she could help you, if you let her.”

“A trick!” he cried. “How did you do that, you aren’t supposed to be able to do that here!”

“I want to help you,” Willow pleaded. “But you have to let me in. No more tricks, no more illusions, no more mediators or gatekeepers. You know which room I want to see.”

And in a flash, they were in front of it: the odd, unlucky door with the crayon warning, keep out, this means you. “I need to know what’s in there,” Willow said. “You have to show me.”

For a second, his guard went down, and he was himself---for a second. “We don’t need that,” he whispered. “We can’t use that. We don’t know how.” The last thing she saw before he kicked her out of his head was his eyes harden once more into grim, guarded resolve.

**

Dawn rejoined them in time for dinner. “Any progress?” she asked.

“Well, you were right about a second gatekeeper,” Willow told her. “But I was able to turn it on him. I think we’re close to a breakthrough.”

“Did he say anything about the…the vamp thing this time?” asked Buffy.

“I can already tell that’s not really the issue,” Willow said. “Like I said before, there would be signs and I’m just not seeing it. No, I think the vamp plan was a cry for help. He just didn’t know any other way to get our attention like this.”

“But what IS the answer?” Buffy asked. “I think we can all agree that he can’t go on like this.”

“But it’s all connected, Buffy, everything is. HE taught me that. I think…I think that a solution is closer than we know. And that this cry of help of his was the universe’s way of letting us get him ready for it.”

“And you think he’s ready now?”

“He gave me a very important clue in there, about whatever’s in that secret room. He told me before that it’s something he doesn’t need. But this time he told me why---because it’s something he doesn’t know how to use. Which means it is very likely something someone else might know how to use. If he let them in there with him…”

Dawn rolled her eyes. “And this week on mystical Sesame Street, Willow and Giles learn about cooperation…”

“Hey, don’t knock it,” said Willow. “It might just be the key to…” She trailed off as her cell phone rang.

They watched her answer, eyes bugging out and face growing pale as she listened. After a moment, she pressed end and slapped the phone back on the table. “I need to go back in,” she said. “Now.”

“Willow, what is it?”

“I’ll tell you after, Buffy, I need to go back…I need to know if he’s ready…”

She felt their curious eyes staring. But Giles deserved to know first.

**

There was no garden this time. She materialized directly in front of the mystery door, and Giles was waiting for her. And she could see at once that it was the real Giles this time---no mediators, no gatekeepers, no mental gymnastics or parlor tricks. He was slumped against the doorjamb, pale and haggard and so prickled with nervous sweat that his hair had lumped into child-like spikes.

“I can’t go on this way,” he said quietly.

She knelt down beside him and gently clasped his hand. “I know.”

“Is that what you wanted to hear? Can we go on now?”

“That’s up to you. I could do what you’ve asked me to. I am smart enough and I am powerful enough that I could even pretty much guarantee that there wouldn’t be glitches. And…I could probably even kill you if it went wrong, if I had to. Do you want that, Giles? Do you really want to die?”

He shook his head, and there were tears in his eyes. “I don’t want to die.”

“Why not?”

His face hardened again. “What?”

“Why not? You’ve got to give me something, Giles. Some reason…”

His smile grew soft again. “I should like very much to be of use again,” he said. “I remember what that felt like. If I could be whole, if I could be strong…”

“You think that’s what this is about? That people won’t love you unless you can be of use to them?”

“No! I just…I don’t know what else I can be!” He ran a hand through his hair with a tired sigh, and finally, gave her what she wanted. “Maybe THAT is what I really need help with,” he said softly. “Willow---“ His voice broke. “I can’t go on this way.”

She shifted on her knees and after a moment’s fidgeting, settled herself on the ground beside him. “You might not have to. Graham Kelley, in Boise---took a turn for the worse this morning. Heart paddles, blood transfusions, the works. Thing is---only blood match they could get on such short notice was Kennedy. And---funny thing. Looks like vampirism’s not the only supernatural trait that transfers through sharing blood.”

His face tensed up as if he could suddenly feel his stiff and ailing body again. “Would it work…on me?”

“There are still some question,” she admitted. “He isn’t showing other signs of slayer powers---just the healing. And it’s not an instant fix---remember that even Faith was in a coma for over a year. It would be a long road---and you’d need to let us help you. No walls. No hiding. No pushing us away.”

He was nodding slowly. “I can’t go on this way. Not in here, not out there either…” He glanced at the doorway in front of him. “Whatever’s in there, I have to know. Will you come with me?”

They pushed the door open, together. The room was a sea, and in its centre…was a lone, drifting lifeboat. They waded out to it together, then she helped him in and paddled him wordlessly to shore.

2: Darkest Dawn

Buffy Summers wasn’t used to having this many people in her house. It had only been three weeks since Giles had come home from the testing at the council lab, but he had brought with him a Watcher spy, a nurse and Willow. The aero-beds littered her living room like bumper cars, and she had just got home from patrol, she was starving, and she was in no mood to pick her way through a maze of them to the kitchen.

Buffy was dismayed to further note that the nurse, a humorless, skittish young thing called Cecelia, was standing expectantly against the doorjamb, apparently waiting for her.

“Evening, Miss Summers.”

“Hey. How’d it go today?”

The girl arched her bony shoulders in gloomy shrug.

“He still up?”

“Yes’m.”

“Since what time?”

“Miss Rosenberg was in to wake him just before noon.”

And she was usually back home again in time to put him magically under by dinner---but it was nearly eight now. “Where’s Willow?”

“Miss Rosenberg was delayed,” said Cecelia. “And Mr. Giles, he’s…well, he’s…”

“Not coping too well?” sighed Buffy, suddenly understanding why Cecelia was so anxious to hand off her charge.

Cecelia was barely able to look her in the eye. “He threw a phone at me.”

“He WHAT?”

“I had given him his supper, and I’d left him so I could tidy up. He had his books and his music and he was resting. Then Miss Rosenberg called again to say she was still at her meeting and suggested perhaps we should do extra stretches since he would be awake so long…” The girl shook her head with a sigh. “I hadn’t realized the meds had worn off by then. He didn’t tell me, Miss Summers, I swear he didn’t, or I never would have touched him!”

It was like pulling teeth to get a straight story out of this girl. It had been three weeks since the possible cure to his illness had been discovered when an injured watcher in Boise had an emergency transfusion with blood from his slayer. It was completely accidental: the blood bank at the hospital had run short, and she had been the only available donor. The council didn’t even know it had happened until after the fact, when they discovered that it seemed vampirism was not the only magic that passed through the blood. Buffy was sure that a jolt of slayer healing would heal her battered watcher. But the council was insisting on a full six week waiting period to make sure there were no side effects, and Giles, relief so close at hand, was not coping well with the delay. This was not the first time Buffy had been subjected to flustered complaints from his nurse.

Buffy took a deep, centering breath and tried not to show her impatience. “So explain to me again about the part where he throws the phone at you?”

“He has to tell me when he needs more meds,” Cecelia insisted. “I can’t know these things if he doesn’t TELL me…”

“So you go in there,” prompted Buffy, trying another tack. “And he’s in bed, reading his books. So you say…”

“Miss Rosenberg will be delayed again.”

“Right. And he says…”

“He says how long? So I say she’ll be back soon, and I ask him how he is feeling.”

“And he says?”

“He says fine.”

“He always says fine, Cecelia. I’ve told you, you have to use other ways to tell with him.”

Cecelia blushed and looked like she was about to cry. “Yes’m.”

“You should know his signs by now. He clenches his hands, and his body goes rigid. You can tell by how he’s slouching.”

“Yes’m.”

“And he doesn’t look you in the eye when he answers. Did he look you in the eye?”

“I…I didn’t notice,” Cecelia flustered. “Miss Rosenberg was delayed. It…it threw ME off schedule too, and…”

“And you wanted to get your extra chore out of the way so badly that you didn’t even look at him,” muttered Buffy, shaking her head. “Honestly, Cecelia, you’re supposed to be the professional here. You’re telling me you can’t handle a little unexpected overtime?”

“He threw a phone at me!” Cecelia whined. “He has to TELL me when he feels that way!”

“I agree,” said Buffy. “And that’s something Miss Rosenberg and I are working on with him. All YOU need to work on is keeping him fed, keeping him mobile and keeping him comfortable.”

“Yes’m.”

“So what happened, then?”

“I sat down on the bed beside him and I told him let’s do some stretches. Then I put my hand on his knee…”

“And he threw a phone at you?”

“He flinched away, then his muscles locked up and he spasmed. I told him to hold still and I would massage away the knots, and he screamed don’t touch me and threw the phone. Miss Summers, I swear, if he had told me he felt that way, I never would have…”

“Go home, Cecelia,” said Buffy. “I’ll handle this now.”

“I’m sorry,” the girl blubbered. “But he really should have..."

Both girls whirled as they heard the heavy front door creak open and Willow, face still flushed from the winter chill, do a double take when she saw them standing there. Her brow knotted in worry. "Guys?"

"We'll handle this," Buffy said. "Go home, Cecelia."

"But Miss Summers, I..."

"Go HOME, Cecelia." Buffy turned to Willow. "He's off the deep end. But we need to talk first, and I won't be any good to anyone if I don't eat something. Come with me."

**

Following a pow-wow to granola bars and orange juice, Buffy and Willow tiptoed upstairs, moving softly on the off-chance that Giles had fallen asleep. They found him huddled on top of his blankets, shivering in his t-shirt and boxers and breathing in harsh but steady rasps.

Buffy sat down on the bed beside him. “Hey.”

“This…is not the time…to talk to me,” he managed. He cast a brief and anxious glance at Willow, unconsciously tensing. Buffy and Willow noted this development with a shared glance, and a frowning Willow kept her distance while Buffy tried to calm him down.

“I’m not sure I’m at the talking stage either just yet.” She nodded toward his twisted legs. “May I? It’ll hurt for a second, but you’ll feel better afterwards.”

He was too overwhelmed to answer. She reached out her hand and touched it experimentally to his bare leg, and when he did not stiffen away from her, she flexed her fingers and gently kneaded the knots out of his muscle. He endured with a low, keening whimper, then slumped in relief when she drew her hand away again.

“Thank you,” he managed, finally composing himself. “That does feel better.”

“Okay. Can you handle a blanket now? You’re all shivery.”

He inched his leg out of the way so she could pick up the flannel blanket, and tuck it gently around him, tenting the fabric so it wouldn’t touch his bare skin.

“There we go. Feel better?”

“Only very slightly.”

“She isn’t so late very often,” said Buffy. “Been awhile since you’ve had a relapse like this.”

“I’ll manage.”

“Sure, of course you will. And I am sure, when you explain that to her, she’ll be as reassured as I am.”

Willow stepped forward and joined them on the bed. "I'm sorry I’m so late," she said.

"Umm hmm."

"Cecelia told us what happened. Are you..."

"Oh, I bet she did."

"You should have told her your meds had worn off, Giles. Why didn't you tell her?"

"I'd had my quota. She wouldn't have given me more."

"So that would be the only reason to tell her? Giles, we've talked about this. Even once we do the slayer blood transfusion, it won't be an instant fix. There are palliative options too, you know, and you need to learn to manage things so that you can feel pain without throwing phones at people! You need to tell us how it feels, so that we can…"

“What? Write it down in your little notebooks and draw some more blood for your magic crystal?”

“Giles…”

His hand clenched. “Yes. All right. You really want to know how it feels?”

“If it can be articulated without throwing anything at me, yes.”

“It feels like I imagine it might feel to be a vampire with his baby finger caught in the pinch of a sun-drenched mousetrap," he said softly. "A bite of pain, a bite of heat…" His fingers trailed whispily up and down his arm. "He would feel his skin start to smoke beneath him, blisters crawling slowly up his limbs until he finally burns up from the inside out…”

He rolled on his side, shying away from them. "It's so late...must we do this now? Can't I sleep already?"

At last, Willow softened. "Poor thing. You've had a long day, haven't you?” She put her hand over his eyes and muttered a short incantation.

Buffy exhaled. “Thank you.”

Willow shrugged. “I’ll still get my talk. Not like he has to be awake for that, is it?”

Buffy did a quick mental calculation. This was at least the third time this week that Willow was leaning on the crutch of psychic magic, and Buffy wasn’t entirely sure that was the healthiest therapeutic technique, for either of them. Giles often complained of the smothering council presence in his life these days. To have it going on in his head too…

“Maybe we should just let him rest for now,” said Buffy. “He’s had a rough day, and you know how wiped he gets when he stresses…”

“Buffy, we’ve talked about this,” said Willow. “Even slayer healing isn’t instant---he’s still got a long road ahead of him, and he needs to learn to manage his condition NOW. We have three more weeks to get him ready. I’d like to get him a little less…brittle, you know? Cause if he thinks he’s up to his neck in poking and prodding and watchers commandeering his bodily functions now, just wait until they guinea pig him and pull out their tools to see how he’s taking it. I told him, there are two ways of looking at this: his way, which is ‘council blowhards trying to assert their power by toying with people’s lives’ and my way, which is ‘valuable window of time to train yourself and get your body ready for some major changes.’ Either way, it will be what it will be.”

“And did this little lesson in perspective help him?”

Willow shrugged. “He has his moments. I work with what I’ve got, Buffy. And what I’ve got right now is Alton Travers coming here in half an hour, no doubt wanting a report on today’s activities. You can stay and watch if you want to.”

Buffy shook her head and, with a final worried glance at her sleeping watcher, left the room. Willow’s psychic jaunts inside Giles’ head still freaked her out a little, and she had caught the panic on his face when he saw them come in together. She suspected they were freaking him out a little too.

**

Willow clapped her hands together briskly and cracked her knuckles, then put her fingers on his forehead and softly uttered the incantation. When she looked up, she found herself once again inside the garden she landed in every time she made these little visitations. She saw Giles crouched in the dirt near the wall, kneeling atop what appeared to be a half-assembled pup tent. He had a small child’s shovel in his hand, and he was digging in the dirt in front of him, face scrunched in concentration.

“Hey,” she called.

He looked up briefly, and she could see that his hair was tousled in the clumps of child-like spikes that were the hallmark of the gatekeeper avatar his mind usually generated to mediate these psychic jaunts.

“Hi, G,” she greeted with a friendly smile, using the nickname to differentiate him from the real Giles, and to put him at ease with her. The gatekeeper was naively child-like and easily spooked.

“Hello,” he said.

“Whatcha doing?”

He traced a circle around himself with the shovel. “I am digging a moat,” he said. He motioned to the pup tent. “I am going to live here now, and I need a moat to keep away intruders.”

“I see.”

“I had to move out of the castle,” he said. “It’s too big to build a moat around.”

“So you’re going to live here instead?”

“I think that would be best. It’s got a moat, see. And you can simply zipper up the door when you don’t feel like talking to anyone.”

“Oh,” said Willow. “That does sound cozy. Maybe I’ll come and visit you once you have it all set up.”

“Oh no,” he said, shaking his head. “The tent is only large enough to hold one person. It says so on the label, you know.” G was very fond of things that were labeled.

“Maybe you’d like me to buy you a bigger tent,” Willow suggested.

He looked suddenly suspicious. “No,” he said. “No, I don’t think so at all. This one is large enough.”

He had a pile of popsicle sticks beside him, and he laid one gently across his tiny dirt hole. A drawbridge, she realized. To go with his moat. He was clearly shoring up his defenses, and she would not get anything else out of him tonight. She left him to his fruitless digging, and zapped herself back to the real world.

**

When Buffy woke up the next morning, she found coffee already made, scrambled eggs and bacon cooling on the stove, and Willow sitting at the kitchen table scribbling busily on a stack of index cards.

“Morning, Will.”

Willow waved, but did not look up from her writing.

“Everything go okay last night with the psychic therapy thing?”

“No,” said Willow, finally putting down her pen. “He was in retreat mode, and I couldn’t get anything out of him. He’ll come around, though. I’ll try again later.”

Buffy helped herself to some scrambled eggs. “What’d Travers think?”

“He didn’t think anything, because I didn’t tell him. We have other things to worry about, anyway. Buffy, Cecelia called in sick today.”

“Think she’s faking because he freaked her out yesterday?”

“Part of me hopes yes, because the last thing we need is a sick person exposing Giles to god knows what. But part of me hopes no, because she is supposed to be a professional here and I’m not sure I’m comfortable leaving him with her if she’s that flaky.”

“Good point.”

“I’m in council meetings all day, so I’ll need you to take him,” Willow said. I’ve written everything down for you, and…”

“Will, I have work too…”

“Take a sick day, Buffy, Giles needs you. Now, normally he gets a triple dose of meds via injection about half an hour before we wake him, so they have time to kick in before he’s conscious. But with Cecelia not here to do that, he’ll have to take them as pills when he gets up. You can expect some grumpiness while you wait for them to take effect, and you can expect some spaciness once they do because he’s getting such a high dosage. He only gets the one dose per day so you won’t have to worry about other meds.”

Willow flipped to the next card. “He gets breakfast as soon as his bathroom stuff is done, and after that he gets some alone time. Usually, he reads or watches the news. Then he gets his exercises---he knows the moves but you’ll need to help him cause he’ll still be pretty spacey. He can go in the sauna after that if he wants to.”

Willow turned over another card. “He gets lunch at twelve---today it’s grilled cheese and tomato soup, and oh, you should eat that too so it feels natural, cause you know, he gets a little grouchy if he starts feeling like we’re regimenting…”

“We ARE regimenting. Honestly, Will, is all of this really…”

“He’s on a carefully planned out nutritional program designed for its homeopathic and palliative properties, Buffy. I’ve got enough pre-procedure issues to work through without worrying about his vitamin levels. With data still coming in from Boise, and Travers breathing down my neck…”

“But is all of this really…”

“Yes, Buffy, it is. He eats what I say he eats. Anyway, after lunch he gets another hour of quiet time---you can put music on if he wants it, but only cheerful things. Nothing blues or jazz. Then he gets a walk, and after his walk he gets his snack. Now, his meds will be starting to wear off by then and he might not feel like eating, but if he gives you any trouble just remind him that people who don’t cooperate don’t get to have sauna privileges…”

“Willow!”

“I usually arrange a visitor for 4ish,” Willow continued, ignoring the outburst. “To give you a break to get his dinner ready. He’ll be feeling things by then, and he’ll need the distraction to keep his mind off it. I’ll see if Dawn or Xander are free, but you might have to settle for Travers, who’s been dying to get in there and run some more scans on him.”

“He won’t like that.”

“I know he won’t. But Buffy, we talked about this. I may seem to you like I am in command over at council central, but I do still have people to report to. Believe it or not, this little battle plan isn’t entirely my doing, and I don’t entirely have control over it. If you knew how hard I’ve lobbied for him already, just to get him at home at least…”

“I know. But it just seems so…he hates this stuff. And you know, I think his mood makes his muscles hurt worse. Does everything have to be so…I mean, will the world really end if he doesn’t want grilled cheese?”

Willow sighed. “Look, I don’t like this either. But you have to believe me when I tell you that I am doing the very best I can to make him comfortable. Buffy, I have researched this from every angle I could, and believe me, we can’t do any better than this unless we go outside the council guidelines, and that would not be a safe thing to do.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Oh, really? You’re telling me you think you can do a better job? Buffy, I’m not saying the New Regime is without its flaws, but I was there, building that place up again too. Some of these guidelines I put in place myself after the early mistakes with the vamp re-souling program, and I’m sure you don’t want to go down that road again…”

“Fine, fine,” said Buffy. “Sorry. Are you going to get him up now?”

“Guess I’d better. I should be back at 8 to put him magically under again. Have a great day, okay?”

Buffy followed Willow upstairs, silently fearing that Giles might not be the only one in for a rough morning.

**

He was balanced gingerly atop his blankets when she got up to him, knees drawn to his chest, hands in rigid fists at his side. He had accessorized the boxers with a pale gray t-shirt that was sweat-streaked and vaguely musty, but he had made no other efforts to rouse himself or get himself dressed.

"Hey," she said.

He looked at her, unmoved.

"Do you need some help with that?" she asked him, nodding to the chest of drawers where his clothes were neatly folded

"No."

She sat down on the corner of the bed. "Okay, um...well, I guess Willow told you that Cecilia..."

"Yes."

"So it'll just be you and me today."

He smiled, faintly condescendingly. "It would certainly appear so."

"Okay. So breakfast, ready and waiting, then we've got exercises, and quiet time, and..."

"Buffy!"

She dropped the chipper act, alarmed at his tone. "What? Are you..."

"Fine," he said. "Just...stop fussing, will you? I don't respond well to over-programming."

"Sorry."

"For god's sake, I only just woke up! Give me some time…”

His legs were shaking, and she eyed them nervously. “Do you want to…go to the bathroom or something!”

“I want to be left alone!”

“Okay,” said Buffy, putting on a cheerful smile. “Why don’t I get your breakfast and bring it up here for you? And you can do…whatever it is you’re gonna do, while I…”

“Buffy?”

“Hmmm?”

“If you smile at me like that again, I shan’t speak to you.”

She wiped the grin off her face and went back downstairs to get him his breakfast.

**

He whined his way through the morning’s exercises, but when she joined him in the sauna during his quiet time, his meds had kicked in and he was in a much better mood.

“Willow called,” he cheerfully reported. “Travers can’t come today. Something about Graham Kelly in Boise…”

Graham Kelly was the watcher who had, by accident, gotten his slayer’s blood in a transfusion, and in doing so given Giles hope for a cure to the crippling damage his body had suffered during a battle at the Cleveland Hellmouth some time ago. A slayer’s power included enhanced healing abilities, and it had saved Kelly’s life. The council had given him six weeks to fail to show alarming side effects before they would consider infusing Giles. If something had gone wrong…

“He’s all right, isn’t he?” asked Buffy.

“Willow did not seem alarmed. And if it will keep that ponce Travers out of my hair…the lad’s as bad as his father was.”

“Maybe so. But Giles, we need to stay on his good side if we’re going to…”

“Really? Do we? I fail to see how they would stop us should you decide to contravene their six week directive and touch a cut finger to my…”

“Giles, we talked about this. We have to follow orders here, or Travers can…”

“What? Be a pest? Issue me prying questionnaires to fill in for him, scan my body with magic crystals, take blood and sweat and other bodily fluids and run experiments on them? And this would differ from the status quo in what way, exactly?”

“Number one, did it ever occur to you that there really might be side effects Kelly hasn’t shown yet? That doing this procedure might hurt you worse?”

“It couldn’t be worse.”

“Number two, did it ever occur to you that he might take it out on Willow if we…”

“Ah,” he said.

“What?”

“I suppose it makes sense she’d be the one you look out for. She’s your friend, after all, and I’m just your old, washed up…”

“Hey! I didn’t mean it that way, Giles, you know I didn’t. I only meant…look, Travers still has the clout to get rid of her, to…to fire her from the council. And where would that leave you? With no friend on the executive looking out for you. No inside loop. Nothing! We’d be pawns again, both of us would, and who knows what they’d do to us then? Giles, I would never hurt you. I can’t stand to see you hurting this way now! But Willow pulled clout on this. She’s working with the council. And all they want to do is make sure this cure is safe before they give it to you.”

“You know,” he said, airily picking a clump of sweat off his arm. “I’m not entirely certain I care if it’s safe. Does saying that beef up my own clout any as far as your opinion goes?”

“I want what’s best for you,” she said helplessly.

“And you already know what that would be.” He slumped back against the wall. “May I be alone, please? I do still have right to assert that much, do I not?”

She left him in the sauna and went to get a head start on dinner. If Travers wasn’t coming as his visitor, he would be alone when his meds wore off, and he would have no one to distract him from his misery.

**

He was seated at the kitchen table watching Buffy ladle out chicken noodle soup when Willow came home, eyes red-rimmed and features positively ashen. Buffy tensed to immediate attention.

“Oh god. What now?”

“Sit down, Buffy,” Willow said. She waited until Buffy was seated, the soup abandoned on the counter. Then she joined them at the table, fidgeted with her hands for a moment, and met their gazes.

“Bad news?” Buffy asked, hand instinctively reaching for Giles.

Willow nodded. “There has been a complication,” she said. “We knew there might be, I mean, this sort of thing, it’s…”

“Is it serious?” Buffy interrupted. “The complication, or side effect or whatever, is it…”

“I don’t care if it is,” said Giles suddenly, pulling his hand away from Buffy. “Willow, whatever it is, I don’t care, I want the procedure, I can’t…”

“I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” Willow said. “Giles, The side effect wasn’t in Graham---it was in Kennedy. The cure…it affects the slayer too.”

He flinched. “What? How?”

“We think it bonds them somehow---she doesn’t ‘give’ her powers so much as ‘share’ them. We didn’t realize it right away because she hasn’t been patrolling, but last night was the first time he felt well enough for her to leave him, and she must have still been off her game. She got horned in the gut by a slaksa demon, and as soon as she started accessing the slayer healing, he…well, he stopped getting it. The power’s still there---but only one of them can use it at a time.”

He looked as close to tears as she had ever seen him. “Ah. I see.”

“But it doesn’t hurt her, does it?” pressed Buffy, eyeing Giles with unvarnished concern. “I mean, if she can still…we might…”

“We might,” Willow agreed. “But we won’t know for sure just how deep this bond goes until we can get some more information. Travers has me on a plane to Boise as soon as I’m done here with you, but we won’t…”

“A plane? But what about…”

“No teleporting,” Willow sighed. “They aren’t sure if I’ll need my magic there, so they don’t want me wasting it.” She turned to Giles. “But they’re sending a car for you, and…”

He tensed, and seconds later, spasmed. Buffy rushed to his side as he flailed to the floor, the pain shooting through him like a seizure. Willow, the picture of calm, remained in her seat while he rode it out, then addressed him with calm, but firm authority. “I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said. “But you really don’t have any choice at all here, Giles. The council infirmary has the tools to manage you palliatively until I get back, and they’ll take good care of you or they’ll answer to me. I can do that much for you. But I can’t and won’t leave you to stubbornly rot in this house until I can get back to you.”

Buffy, one hand still steadying her thrashing Watcher, turned to Willow, eyes shocked and weary. “So that’s it?”

“Oh, come on, Buffy, don’t you go all dramatic on me too. Do you really think he’s better off staying here?”

“I’ll be with him,” Buffy said.

“Oh? And you have nursing skills of which I am unaware? You have training in ancient meditative arts and metaphysical pain management? You have state of the art monitoring equipment, and no, I don’t mean a house computer, at your beck and call? Buffy, honestly, I know you and Giles still have some bad associations which the Watcher’s Council, and even under the New Regime, I can’t promise you all of them are unfounded. But this is me, Buffy. ME.”

“But as you’ve told us yourself, on numerous occasions---it’s not entirely up to you, is it?”

“You think I don’t know that? Buffy, Travers was set to put me on a plane straight from council HQ. I had to call in some favours---big ones---just to get the hour to come here and tell you myself! Did you really think I wasn’t fighting for him?”

Buffy sighed. “Sorry. You’re right.”

“Okay. Look, why don’t you stay with him, get him relaxed, try and talk him down a little. We’ve got maybe ten minutes…I’ll go pack him some stuff…”

Buffy nodded, then turned her attention back to Giles. His breathing did not even begin to calm down until Willow had left the room, and when Buffy finally took her hand away from him, he caught it in his fingers and clung to her.

“Buffy?”

She returned the squeeze. “I’m here, Giles.”

“You’ll come with me, won’t you?”

“Of course!”

“I mean…until we’re out of there. You’ll stay?”

“Giles, if you…”

“Please.” He met her gaze with as much dignity as he could muster. “In our years of association, I have not asked you for many favours. Buffy, I am calling them in. All of them, right here, right now. We are going into the lion’s den, and I am too weak to defend myself. I need…I need you…to…”

“I’m here,” she said. “I’m here, Giles, I promise you. I won’t leave you.”

**

The black car swooped in ten minutes later, dislodging two security guards, and a nurse who announced she had orders to examine him before they departed.

“Examine him?” Buffy repeated. “But…”

“Orders from the council,” the woman said, with a stern purse of her mouth. “Mr. Travers was quite insistent.” She rolled out a stretcher and attempted to pull Giles out of his chair. He spasmed with a whimper of distress and tried to twist out of her grip.

“Now, now,” the nurse said. “I can show you the checklist if you’d like. You’ll see for yourself that it will be much harder for me to be gentle if you insist upon thrashing.”

He caught the ominous tone in that with only the barest twitch, then licked his lips, eyes darting anxiously back to Willow and Buffy. “May I have another dosage first?” he said.

“No. The exam is not entirely physical. And before you consider passing out on me, I’ll tell you that I am paid by the hour. If I must wait for you to revive before I continue, I will do so.”

The nurse pulled out a kit that included several probe-like implements, a reflex hammer, three massive needles, and a small glowing stone that Giles was eyeing with particular dread. As Buffy squeezed his hand to calm him, the nurse began peeling off his clothes, never stopping to ask Buffy, Willow or the two security guards to give them privacy before she began. Buffy did her best to avert her eyes. From that angle, she could not tell if the other spectators had done so as well.

**

Finally, they were ready to depart. Buffy spent most of the car ride on her cell phone with Dawn, explaining the situation and getting bills and chores straightened away while she was to be at the council. Willow spent the ride buried in a sheaf of papers, pausing at every traffic light to smile brightly and Giles, who remained glumly unresponsive to her overtures. They almost had to pull over when they reached the council gates as Giles tensed enough to pitch his muscles into spasm again.

Travers was waiting for them in the council infirmary, hair slicked back, suit polished and sharp, and impatient glower turning to fake smile when he saw Buffy marching down the corridor with the others.

“Ah, Miss Summers. Come to see your watcher settled in, have you?”

“Actually, I’ll be joining him,” Buffy grinned, watching the smirk fade from his face as he processed the news.

“Ah,” he said. “Well, that’s…Miss Rosenberg, you did explain…”

“I did,” Willow said, apparently enjoying his discomfort too.

“Well, we don’t….that is to say, we haven’t…well, we haven’t made up a room for you, I’m afraid,” he said.

“She stays with me,” said Giles. Someone had put him in a wheelchair. He was sulkily watching them.

“Ah, yes, of course she does. Well, this is a development, isn’t it?”

“She’ll behave,” Willow said. “I promise…”

He smiled again. “I’m sure she will. Well, then. I’ll just do a quick little search, make sure she’s not carrying any weapons on her, and we can proceed…”

He pulled a pair of crisp rubber gloves out of his pocket and snapped them on. “Miss Summers, if you’ll just step away from him for a moment…”

He pulled a crystal out of his right pocket and ran it up and down in front of her, then he patted her down, lingering over her chest, her ankle and other common concealing areas, and sticking his hand beneath her clothes at the sleeve, waist and sock. His smirk sickened her, and when he at last pulled his hand away, she almost smacked it.

“Well, that’s done. Shall we get them settled, then?”

Willow nodded. “I’ll just see them in…”

She took the reigns of the wheelchair from the council flunky and ushered Buffy and Giles into a private room just off the main infirmary. It was spartan, but sufficient---the bed looked comfortable enough, and a futon graced the far wall, just beneath a window.

“Sorry about that,” Willow said to them both, helping him out of the chair. “I guess they have their protocols.”

“Right,” muttered Buffy. “I bet they do.”

Willow shot her a warning glance, motioning that Giles was listening, and Buffy gave her a resigned nod. She watched Willow gently ease him onto the bed. With a grunt of defiance, he pushed Willow’s hand away, but seemed to accept her implied suggestion and stretched himself out on the mattress.

“There we go,” coached Willow. “I’m gonna put you out for awhile,” she said. “It’s going to wear off on its own this time, though---I won’t be here to bring you out of it. You ready?”

He nodded, and she put her hand to his forehead and muttered a short incantation. His body relaxed and his breathing softened. He was out.

Willow sat down on the mattress with a sigh. “Well, he was sure in a mood,” she observed.

“Can you blame him?” said Buffy. “Three weeks of council mucky-mucks treating him like a science project, only to pull the plug on the experiment?”

“That’s not our fault,” Willow said. “Buffy, it’s not his choice anymore. If the procedure affects the slayer too…”

“And what if she’s willing to accept the risk?”

“She’s too important. Buffy, on that matter, the New Regime is entirely in agreement with the old one: if you’re asking them to weigh the wishes of one girl over the needs of the entire world…”

“But it’s not just one girl anymore, is it? It hasn’t been just one girl in a long time, Will. And if I recall correctly, you were the one who saw to that. First the potentials, then the vamp re-souling program…”

“And look how that turned out---there were consequences, Buffy. There were accidents, horrible accidents before we got it right. There were people who couldn’t handle it who killed themselves! You think I’ve been living in some ivory tower all this time, toying with people’s lives without the slightest thought to the consequences? Buffy, please! Give me a little credit here!”

Buffy bit her lip. “Will, it’s just…it’s like he’s made up his mind already, you know? He’s made up his mind that the end is near, one way or the other. If he doesn’t get the procedure…”

“Buffy, I promise you, if there is a way to salvage a treatment from this, I’ll find it. We’ve got a very solid protocol in place---we’ve been prepared for side effects ever since we got the news. I’m going to look into this as thoroughly as it is humanly and magically possible.”

Willow turned to Giles again. “Travers wants one last report before I go. You wanna stay for this?”

Buffy concealed a disgusted shudder with a shake of her head. “I think I’ll take advantage of the down time to get us settled in,” she said. “Once he’s awake, he won’t want me to leave him.”

“Oh?”

“He’s calling in his favors,” said Buffy. “Did you know they have him that scared? He’s asked me to protect him---in my capacity as a Slayer---while he’s here.”

Willow frowned. “He thinks he needs a slayer to keep him safe from the New Regime?”

“You tell me, you’re the one who knows what that glowy stone thing that almost made him pitch a fit is for. Don’t look at me like that, I’m trusting, I’m behaving…but just know this: I’ll do it, Will. I love you, but if it comes down to it…I’ll do it.”

**

It was night-time in the garden when she beamed her way in to his subconscious. Willow walked down the little stone-lined path, body tense and alert. Buffy had no idea how valuable that little warning was to her: Giles was frightened enough to enlist a slayer. Such defensive fortification would likely manifest on his mental plane too, and she had to be prepared for booby traps.

“Giles?” she called out gently. “G? Are you asleep? Are you here?”

He’d finished setting up his little tent outside the castle since the last time she had been here, and now, she saw a blink of halogen peeking through the wall of canvas. She heard the sound of a zipper opening, then blinked as her eyes were assaulted by a large flashlight beam.

The Giles that faced her had the tell-tale spikes in his hair of the child-like gatekeeper avatar, and over his camouflage-print flannel pajamas, a pattern of body armor had been layered on with masking tape. In the hand that was not carrying the lantern, he was carrying a plastic Star Wars light sabre toy.

“Well, look at you,” she grinned. “Looks like you’re ready for action.”

“Oh yes, anytime,” he said. “I’ve done lots of work since you’ve been here last. Making improvements, see? My moat got finished, and I’ve added reinforcements to the drawbridge.”

He angled the beam of the flashlight downward so she could see. The moat was indeed finished, a shallow, muddy hole with a thimbleful of water floating inside. When she squinted in the light, she could see the reinforcements he spoke of: three plastic toy soldiers, patrolling the gangway of the popsicle-stick drawbridge with little Barbie-size guns. She stifled the urge to smile at his cuteness. In a mental landscape such as this, every item was symbolic, and these developments were alarming.

“You can go away any time,” he told her. “You see, I’ll be fine here.”

“That’s good to know,” she said. “Cause that’s actually what I came to talk to you about. I will be going away for a little while, and I wanted to talk to you before I did that.”

He fidgeted, biting his lip and tightening his grip on the light sabre. “But you can just go away,” he said. “We don’t have to talk. You can just go away.”

“I know we don’t HAVE to talk, G, but I want to. I want to make sure…”

“We don’t have to talk,” he repeated, his voice taking on an alarming tone. Then he untensed suddenly, falling back off his knees and looking into the space behind her with a satisfied, comfortable smile. She followed his gaze, and barely stifled a scream.

There was a monster behind her---and not a playful, child-like monster either, but a giant beast with razor-sharp claws and thick monster-movie fur that covered a massive, lumbering frame. It roared at her, and she jumped.

“Oh god!”

“That’s Dog,” Giles explained.

“Ah, right. Um. good doggie…”

“I told you, I made improvements,” he said. “We don’t have to talk.” Then he shut off the flashlight, climbed into the tent and zippered shut the door. Next thing she knew, the large, wet nose of Dog was prodding her onto the path and watching her with beady eyes as she followed the trail out of the garden.

**

Buffy returned to their room an hour later to find the infirmary deserted, Giles still sleeping, and a sheaf of phone messages piled neatly upon the futon. There were worried requests for updates from Xander and Dawn, and a note from Willow saying that Giles should be out for most of the evening, and that she needed to talk to Buffy before he woke up. Most of the evening still left her time. She grabbed a quick shower in the attached private bathroom, then returned Willow’s call.

“Hey, Will. Good flight?”

“Still in progress. And the Travers flunky has not shut up the entire time.”

“Flunky? I thought Travers himself would go.”

“For legwork? Are you kidding me? When he’s got you and Giles locked up at council HQ to play with?”

“Very encouraging there, Will.”

“Sorry. Ummm…he’s a pussycat. A harmless, fluffy pussycat.”

“Oh yes, a harmless pussycat who hates me, has a grudge against Giles so bad that Giles practically goes into seizures at the thought of spending time with him, and who has convenient access to the entire council arsenal of magical and medical technology. But other than that, he’s a harmless little puppy.”

“And with that helpful segue…Buffy, we should talk about what I saw when I visited Giles just before I left you guys.”

Buffy shuddered. “Yuck. No offense, Will, but I find these little psychic mojos of yours kinda creepy. Cliffs notes version?”

“Okay. I almost got mauled by a giant hairy hellhound.”

“WHAT?”

“Elementary psycho-symbolic theory. Whatever he does in the real world gets represented somehow on his psychic plane. I think that Dog was the mental equivalent of his recruiting you.”

“Okay, I guess that makes sense. So why did it freak you out so much?”

“Well, I was expecting to see some defenses. But this one didn’t…it didn’t match. His gatekeeper is a child-like figure, and his defensive props so far have been in character: body armor made from masking tape, drawbridges made from popsicle sticks, little toy soldiers guarding the fort, that sort of thing. But this monster was real, Buffy. It had teeth!”

“So what…what does that mean?”

“I don’t know. This is new ground for me too, you know. Just…just be careful, okay? He’s stepping things up, and I don’t want him doing anything stupid.”

“Like hurting himself?”

“For instance. Or like magic, for another instance. In his state, if he tried anything like that it could go wonky. I’m not sure I’d want to go into his head right now even if I was there and I was able, but Buffy, he’s in a dark place. Try and talk to him?”

“Oh sure. ‘Hey Giles, let’s talk about the giant hairy hellhound that your subconscious tried to sic on Willow.’ Like that’ll get me far.”

“Buffy, he’s not consciously aware on what happens on his psychic plane. That’s why they call it the SUB-conscious.”

“Oh. Sorry. That’ll teach me to be snarky, I guess.”

“Understandable, under the circumstances. Just remember that he may not be directly aware of what’s going on in inside his mental landscape, but these are real, conscious feelings that are doing the interior decorating. Those, he can talk about.”

“Right. Any suggestions how I go about doing that, then?”

“He can be a tough one, that’s for sure. I guess what I would do, if I were you…is just be there for him. Show him you care about him. Show him you’ll protect him, that he can be hurting, but he doesn’t have to be frightened too.”

On that inspiring note, Buffy hung up and went in search of dinner.

**

She did not remember dozing off, but she was thankful she had been keeping watch from the relatively comfortable perch of the futon—as she tried a few experimental stretches, her muscles were blessedly free of kinks.

Giles, on the other hand, was not resting as comfortably. As Buffy approached the bed, she saw that his breathing was shallow and his arms were reflexively twitching.

“Hey,” she said.

He smiled weakly.

“You been awake for a long time?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She swallowed uncomfortably. There was nothing she could say to that.

“So will you be okay for a few minutes if I wanted to go grab a quick shower?”

“Depends on how quickly you can get out of it if I need you.”

She looked in his eyes. He wasn’t joking.

**

They had a slow morning. By the time Buffy was done with her own ablutions, Giles was restless and in no small amount of discomfort. The infirmary was empty. She had no idea where the sauna was.

“Shower?” Buffy suggested. “I can give you a hand, if you…”

He shook his head, looking mortified at the suggestion, but he let her run a bath for him, and he kept the door open at her request. By the time he was clean, dry and dressed, it was nearly eleven and they had yet to see a single council flunky.

“Kind of weird that they would just leave us here,” Buffy observed. “I mean, Willow said they’d take care of us…”

“Willow says a lot of things,” Giles snorted. “It’s clear who really runs the show…”

“Now, come on, that’s paranoia, and paranoia leads to stress and stress leads to anxiety, which leads to panic attacks, which leads to scary spasmy hyperventilating, which leads to me freaking out, so let’s not go there.”

“Especially as they’ve neglected to supply you with medical personnel to clean me up after such a tantrum?”

Buffy frowned. “Thanks for reminding me. I was actually still on the ‘neglected to supply us with food’ part until you said that. I had almost forgotten that you’re probably due for meds…”

“I have not forgotten.”

She flushed guiltily. “Sorry. Is it…is it bad right now?”

“I would like to think the steam from the bath relaxed it some. But yes, it is bad. Buffy, where ARE they?”

**

Two and a half hours later, it was no longer a frivolous question. He was hurting, and she had no idea how to help him. Never mind the infamous wetworks of the Old Regime, all it took was no food, no sauna and no medication and her watcher was reduced to a quivering fetal ball of whimpers.

She tried to sooth him, and he thrashed and grouchily turned his back. It embarrassed him: the dependency, the helplessness. She flashed back to the exam they’d done on him yesterday, stripped him down in the middle of the floor, while he writhed and screamed and tried to escape…and she’d talked to him too, as she examined him, that nurse had whispered in his ear. Even with slayer hearing, Buffy had not been able to make out the words…

She touched his arm again. “Giles?”

His hands were fisted in the sheets, which were already damp with sweat again. She touched his face and gently smoothed the away the squint around his eyes.

“I’m here,” she said. “You can talk to me, Giles, I’m here…”

He shook his head, eyes tearing as he fought for relief. Buffy backed away. She couldn’t stand seeing him this way, couldn’t stand touching him and watching him squirm. When she thought he was too far gone to notice, she tried to sneak away for a quick bathroom break, but he yelped in protest and gripped her hand reflexively. This is what it had come down to---watching Giles disintegrate while she starved to death and her bladder exploded.

On the stroke of noon, Travers finally appeared---impeccably dressed and smirking the oiliest smirk she had ever seen.

“Good morning, Buffy.”

“Good morning, my ass! Do you have any idea…”

He held up a hand. “Now, now. One thing at a time, my dear…”

Travers walked over to the bed, then took out the crystal he had used to scan Buffy the day before. He ran it up and down several times, nodded with apparent satisfaction, then pulled up a chair beside her. “Well,” he said. “Let’s have a little talk, shall we?”

“Bite me,” she said.

His disgustingly smug little grin widened. “Well, now. This is precisely why we need to talk, my dear. It seems---it seems that you and your watcher have a bit of a reputation."

“Yes. And?”

He opened a file folder and shuffled some papers. “Let’s see---you’ve missed 3 of the last 5 regional council meets…”

“Due to emergencies,” she protested through gritted teeth.

“Yes, well, other slayers have emergencies too---but THEY don’t miss 3 out of 5 regional meets. Either I’m to believe that you simply have appalling time management skills, or I’m to assume that you have a blatant and willful scorn for the council and all its activities.”

“I have a sister to take care of, and I have a sick watcher who almost died saving the world!”

“Well, that’s just YOUR record I’m talking about. Shall we go over his? Lost you---twice. Fired---twice. And there was that whole incident with Faith…”

“The incident where the council tried to kill her, you mean?”

“Now, Buffy. This is the New Regime, you know that we…”

“Gee. I’d really like to believe that, Alton. But it’s kind of hard to do from the room that you’ve been locked in for the past three hours with no food, no phone and a half-dead watcher who hasn’t had his medication…”

Travers sighed. “Now, look. I promised Willow that you lot would be taken care of, and I plan to honour that promise. But given your record, and his…well, I thought it would be best to send a message.”

“A message. I can’t believe that even the council would stoop so low as to…”

“A message,” he repeated pointedly. “That I am not entirely sure you’ve gotten yet. Perhaps the proof was to be at the end of that little rant I just interrupted?”

She looked over at Giles, then caved to the higher ground. “What do you want?”

“You will behave, both of you. Number one, you will not snoop or get under foot while you are under my care. Your meals will be brought to you. Your watcher will be medicated and cared for by nurses. You will have access to a phone, computer, gym facilities and the library. But you will stay confined to the infirmary save for those areas.”

“Fine.”

“Number two, you will allow us to do what we must to ensure the safety of the procedure you are seeking. It’s you that wants it done, not us, believe me. You might think we are ogres, but we are going quite out of our way for you and your watcher. You will be properly grateful, and let us do what we must.”

What choice did she have? She numbly nodded her assent. Travers snapped his fingers, and the room was suddenly besieged with activity. 

**

The damage from the morning's show of council power was thankfully quick to reverse. Lunch, a good lunch, descended upon their little room in a flurry of nurses and supplies and equipment. Giles was now resting, peacefully, on a dosage of sedative the nurses swore they could not safely repeat, and Buffy, having finally dispensed with her bathroom needs, was getting caught up on her messages.

She made brief calls to Xander and Dawn, then dialed Willow's cell number.

"Hey," she greeted. "Please tell me you didn't know what Travers was planning when you dumped us here!"

"Planning? Buffy, what happened? Is everything all right?"

"Oh, sure. Following an hours-long confinement with no food, no sauna, and no medication, my exhausted and nearly incoherent watcher is resting on a dosage of sedative high enough to euthanize a small elephant, and Travers and I have had a 'conversation.' Other than that..."

"Oh, Buffy, I am so, so sorry. He promised me he would take care of you!"

"I suppose he will, now that he's gotten across his little message. Behave, or I reduce your watcher to a whimpering child while you sit helplessly and watch, unable to protect him, after you promised him you would. This wasn't part of the deal, Will."

"I'll talk to Travers."

"And? Giles is trusting me, but Willow, I'm trusting YOU! You've got to give me something here."

"I am doing the best I can, Buffy. You have to believe me on that, I really am doing the best that I can. He's got ways of playing with me too, you know."

"I don't even want to hear it right now, I swear to god, I don't. Just tell me what's going on over there. Any hope for going ahead with the treatment?"

"Well, it's a complicated situation," Willow said. "Remember when we first got the vamp re-souling program up to speed, and we noticed that it was glitchy for people who were sick?"

"Andrew," said Buffy.

"Yes, exactly. Andrew. Attempts re-soul a vamp who had been sick as a person were glitchy, because the universe always tries to maintain a balance. Can't save a sick person by vamping them, can't super-power a watcher by hijacking his slayer's blood. Because the only way to guard against abuse of a power is to build in some safeties."

"What kind of safeties? Risky how?"

"Well, there's good news and bad news there. The good news is that each slayer power seems pretty self-contained. He can access her slayer healing without affecting her speed, strength and stamina."

"Okay. And the bad news?"

"Seems we have a proximity loophole. The closer she is to him, physically, the easier it is for him to access the power. If she's too far away, he can't reach her."

"So if he puts his own interests ahead of hers and forces the bond..."

"She could get injured, or dead, if she's too far away to get her powers back when she needs them. And if she dies, he loses the link altogether. Clever loophole, no?"

"That's not what I was hoping to hear," Buffy sighed. "Not that I mean to be selfish, Will, but it's bad here..."

"I know it is. And I'll be back there as soon as I can, Buffy, I promise. But first, I need to figure out a way to break this bond. It still might have therapeutic applications if I can convince the council that we can turn it off once the watcher heals."
"And also, Kennedy is pretty much freaking out about it?"

"That too. Look, if you can hang tight for a day or so, I might be able to move them back to HQ with me and continue working on it from there."

On that encouraging note, they made their goodbyes, and Buffy returned to her vigil.

**

The next three days passed in a blur of exhaustion. When that first high dose of sedative wore off, they found that safer doses weren't enough for him. After two solid nights of ceaseless screaming and thrashing, she told them to use whatever dose they had to to keep him out. Side effects be damned. They had no other option but to risk it.

"Mr. Travers won't be pleased," the nurse had warned her.

"Mr. Travers can go to hell," Buffy said. "Clear it with Willow."

"But Mr. Travers said..."

"Mr. Travers," said Buffy. "Is a member of the council executive. Miss Rosenberg is also a member. Can you explain to me why she can't sign off on this, and he can?"

When Travers returned to the infirmary, he had Willow with him.

"Hey," Willow said.

Buffy looked up, put down her papers and nodded tersely.

"Hear you had some trouble," Willow said.

"Uh huh. When did you get back?"

"This morning. Had to get Graham and Kennedy settled in the other wing."

"Any progress?"

"No. How's he..."

Buffy blinked back tears. "I don't know. He's at his breaking point. If we don't do something..."

"I want to see," said Travers.

Willow turned to him, shocked. "What?"

"You claim you know what's going on inside his head. She talks to him about it. You actually go in there. And all I am getting is dry, second-hand reports. I want to see for myself what's going on in there."

"Why?" said Buffy. "What can we do about it even if I am right?"

"We can't do anything without information," Travers said. "Look, you can get me in, can't you?" he asked Willow.

"Alton, it's not..."

"But that's what you were about to do, isn't it?" he persisted. "Go into his head to check on him? Well, can't you get ME in there instead?"

Willow did not look happy about it, but she acquiesced. She gave him the incantation, then ushered Buffy into the hall so they wouldn't have to watch.

**

Travers emerged from the bedroom about half an hour later, looking whipped.

"I must say, that was quite a bit more challenging than I expected," he complained. "The castle was boarded up, and I had to battle a hideous hellhound to get through to it."

Willow frowned. "When you say battle, you mean what, exactly?"

"Why, what you would expect I mean. Swords, flames, fight to the death..."

Willow carefully edged her way toward the door to Giles' room. "I am assuming," she said slowly. "That since you seem to have escaped relatively unscathed, you mean its death and not your own?"

Travers shrugged.

"Goddamn it, Alton!" Willow fumed. She pushed her way past him and to Giles' bedside, Buffy hot on her heels. "Do you have any idea how much damage you might have done?"

He stepped calmly into the room, behind them. "Damage? It was a hellhound, Willow. A giant hairy hellhound. It tried to attack me! It tried to keep me back..."

"Of course it tried to keep you back. It was his gatekeeper avatar, you imbecilic moron. That's what they're supposed to do!"

Travers stared blankly at them. "Gatekeeper?"

"Please tell me you didn't jump into someone else's head without even the most elementary understanding of psycho-symbolic theory," Willow groaned.

Travers frowned. "Miss Rosenberg, honestly, I fail to see the need for such histrionics, Mr. Giles was under enthralled sedation the entire time, and..."

"Yes," Willow seethed. "He was under sedation, lucky for us, or you might have sent him straight into neural shock and killed him. As is...well, I'll have to go in there and see for myself before I know just how much damage you've done, but suffice it to say that interfering with someone's avatar while you're on their psychic plane is, in addition to being a horrific invasion of privacy and abuse of trust, really dangerous. You've touched the part of his psyche that mediates his relationship with the world around him."

"And then killed it," Buffy winced, finally sensing the implications. "So if we woke him up right now..."

"He'd have no filters," finished Willow. "He'd go into overload. Like those horrible spasms of his, but in his brain this time."

Even in coma, he was already showing signs of stress: his skin was blotchy and pale, and his breathing was a tiny bit too fast. Willow put a hand to his forehead. "Temperature's up," she reported with a frown. "Heart rate too, I can feel it all the way from here."

She took her hand away again. "Well, this changes things. Alton, take Buffy to the lab and get her ready for the procedure."

"But the waiting period..."

"Screw the waiting period, he won't last that long."

"But..."

"But nothing. I'm not sure he would have lasted six weeks anyway, but I was prepared to go to bat for you. But now...that psychic sucker punch of yours had the effect of throwing a fireball onto a very dry forest floor. You've ignited an inferno, Alton. You've got to put it out."

She turned to Buffy. "And if he gives you any bullshit? You have my consent, with the authority of the Watcher's Council behind it, to snap his neck and feed his bloodied corpse to the vampires. Go, get ready. I'll see if I can stabilize Giles before we start the transfusion."

**

The garden was cold and empty. There was a wind, hot and dry, but in a way that made her shiver. The flowers were singed and the trees lay disassembled at her feet in jagged clumps of fallen branches. She smelled smoke. She tasted frost. It was like a forest fire, tornado and ice storm had all descended at once.

Willow gently stepped over the branches, covering her mouth against the smothering air. "G?" she called softly. "Giles? Are you here?"

She scanned the barren landscape, trying to reign in her anxiety. If he wasn't here, if there was no manifestation of Giles within his own mental landscape, she wasn't sure what that would mean. If she woke him up, would his sanity be intact? If she let him sleep, would his mental safeguards re-surface? She supposed it was encouraging that his mind was even bothering to generate the garden construct for her, but where was Giles?

She moved further in, past the castle, past pup tent with its little moat (the popsicle stick drawbridge had been crushed in the battle, she noted with a wince) and toward the centre of the tableau, to the little gazebo where his mind had put them the first time she had jumped into his head. The wicker table and chair set had been minced by the storm that had blown through the oasis. She could barely recognize them from the pieces. But the yellow cushions that used to adorn the chairs appeared to have survived the disaster intact, and three of them shone atop the wreckage like hopeful beacons. But there had been four chairs...

She quickened her step, hoping this meant what she assumed it did---that Giles was here, somewhere. That he had holed himself up somewhere safe to wait out the storm, and taken the missing cushion with him.

She came through the clearing, and she saw him---he was over by the fountain, laid out on his stomach, head hiding underneath the tuft of yellow. She called out to him.

"Giles?"

He started to shake, his iron grip on the cushion wobbling.

"It's all right, G. He's gone. It's over now."

From beneath his futile cover, she heard a single abortive sob.

"I'm here to help you," she said. She knelt down beside him and gingerly laid a hand on his back. "You can come out now, sweetie, I'm here to help you."

Two flinty eyes peeked out at her.

Most people had gatekeeper avatars that were child-like. She kept up the baby-talk as she gently coaxed him out. "There you go. You can come out now, sweetie, it's all right."

His fists loosened, and she easily pulled the cushion away. "There you are. I was worried about you."

The tears on his cheeks were still wet. He held her gaze, but his lower lip trembled. He was still too overwhelmed to speak with her. She sat down beside him and began to stroke his hair.

"That must have been scary for you," she said.

He did not answer.

"But it's over now," she said. "It's over, and you need to start putting things back where they go."

He finally answered her, in a flat, broken whisper. "I can't."

"You can."

"The trees fell down. The flowers burned up."

"The trees are still standing, it's only the branches that fell down. And the flowers will all grow back again." She shook off a wave of dizziness. This was the longest she had ever stayed in his head in one trip.

"You're going to sleep for awhile," she told him. "But when you wake up, you'll feel much better. You need to do some things before that happens though. Can you do some things for me, G?"

"My tent fell down. My moat got filled with ash. My drawbridge turned to splinters."

"I know they did," she said. "And I'm really sorry that happened, G. But you'll start to feel much better when your flowers grow back. And they can't do that with all of this debris!" Her head was spinning. "I need to go away for awhile, but I'll come back. While you wait for me, I need you to pick up all the branches and splinters and put them in the garbage bin. Can you do that for me, G?"

She braced herself against another wave of dizzy nausea. "But I've got no tent," he said. "Where shall I sleep? Where shall I hide?"

"You can move back inside the castle," she said. "You should never have been out here all alone like this."

"It's cold inside the castle. It's dark and wet and there are scary things."

"It's safe," she said. "It's strong and tall and beautiful. G, I need to go away for awhile. You know that I'll be back though, right?"

"And I must stay here?"

"Yes."

"And clear away the rubbish?"

"Yes, exactly. Clear away the rubbish."

"But you'll be back to help me, soon?"

He had to do the rebuilding on his own, it was his psyche after all. She hated to leave him now, like this, but she was very close to passing out on him, and that certainly wouldn't help things any. "I'll be back," she promised him. She rose to her feet, turned to leave him. He called her back.

"Willow?"

"Hmmm?"

"Can you...can you take care of Dog for me?"

It was then she realized just why he'd snatched the pillow when he'd gone hiding. The shredded, leaf-less tree branches made a poor cover for the bloody corpse of Dog. She'd taken the shield away from him, and he had been staring straight at the lifeless remains the entire time they'd been talking.

**

She came to to find a pale but bright-eyed Buffy staring down at her.

"Hey, Will."

"Hey. We ready to go here?"

"You tell me. Is he...is he all right? I mean, is he..."

"He's still in shock," Willow said, pushing to her feet. "I don't think I would wake him. But once he has access to your slayer healing, that might speed things up a little, help him stabilize. Did...did Travers give you any trouble?"

"He tried to speech me to death. I told him that I didn't need weapons to hurt him, and he'd better shut his mouth."

"And?"

"And he didn't shut his mouth, so I made him shut it. I haven't patrolled since we got here," she grinned. "So I had all this pent-up energy..."

"Buffy!"

"And don't tell me he'll make me pay later. I've had about as much of that little toad as I can stand, and I think you have too. We've got some recovery time here. I think I'll spend it going through the council by-laws and looking for a way to depose that power-hungry little ant. So...so how does this procedure work, exactly? What happens now?"

A nurse rolled in an IV with several bags of Buffy's blood already hanging on the pole. "You'll want to sit down," Willow warned her. "We've already taken out the blood, but once it hits his system and the bond is in place, he'll start drawing on it. Might make you a bit woozy and tired."

Buffy nodded. "How long will I feel that way?"

"It'll take you both some time to get used to things and establish a new equilibrium. Buffy, before we do this, are you sure? I don't know how to undo it yet, and..."

"I'm sure."

"And you can't go patrolling until his condition stabilizes. If you try and draw your healing powers out of him before he's strong again, you might..."

"I don't care about my powers. Willow, it's Giles. How can I not?"

Willow nodded, then the nurse swabbed Giles' arm and plugged in the IV. Buffy settled herself on the futon, gave a final thumbs up, then Willow flipped a switch, and came to join Buffy on the futon.

"It's started," she said.

Buffy nodded.

"It'll take some time for it to filter through his system. You'll feel a little weird for a bit, then you might feel like you want to sleep. It's okay if you do."

"Will, thanks for your help. I mean it. I know I doubted you, but..."

"Don't thank me yet. I mean it, Buffy, I still don't know what's going on here, and if Travers hadn't...what I'm saying is, I can't promise yet that this is safe, for either of you. I might have...might have killed you both..."

Buffy swallowed, then wobbled a little as she was hit with a wave of dizziness. "Whoa..."

"Lie down," Willow said. "Lie down, Buffy, and breathe..."

She closed her eyes, breathing slowly, rhythmically. When she opened them again, she was not in the council hospital room anymore.

**

The air smelled humid and faintly burnt. She was outdoors, that much was apparent, and a neat cobblestone path spread before her. With a shrug, she followed it. What else did she have to do?

After a time, she came upon a fountain---the stone was cracked and chipped, but the water was still running, and it infused the tired air with the faintest tinge of sweetness. She looked around her, taking it in. This had been a garden once...

There was a castle in the distance, and ahead, there was a small, flattened tent, atop which Giles was sitting, legs crossed in meditation, arms on his knees, eyes closed. His breathing was steadier than she remembered it being, and his hair was clumped in damp little spikes.

She called out softly. "Giles?"

His eyes snapped fearfully open, then he saw who it was, and smiled. "Oh, it's you. How did you get here?"

"Not sure," she said, drawing closer to him. "How did you?"

"Oh, I've been here awhile," he said. "There's a breeze coming in, and it's not so hot anymore."

"Okay," she said. "Right. Of course there is."

"But you've got to be careful," he said. "You aren't wearing shoes, and there might still be splinters. I haven't picked up all the fallen branches yet."

"Oh," she said.

The skies darkened, and Giles suddenly twitched, his body tensing. "Oh gods..."

"Giles? Is everything..."

She ducked as a deafening roar whooshed past her ears. Beside her, she could hear Giles whimpering.

"What is it?" she whispered.

He was incoherent with terror, and mutely shook his head. She waited for the wind to rush by her again, then cautiously lifted her eyes and looked upward. A swarm of bat-like creatures was circling overhead.

"What are those?"

Giles huddled closer to her, still curled up in tight little ball. "Those are demons," he said. "They come out when there are clouds. I tried to run the last time, but they almost got me." He lowered his voice and sheepishly admitted "I was sick. Over there, don't step in it when you run away and leave me."

"I am not running away," she said. "And I am not leaving you, Giles."

"Oh? Willow can't stay here very long when she comes. It makes her dizzy."

Buffy paused and assessed her current state. She did not feel dizzy at all. Perhaps their new and growing bond protected her from the ill effects of psychic sharing?

"Well, we can't stay out here," she said. "If they'll be back again..."

"Whenever the clouds pass over us," Giles confirmed. He looked up. "They seem to be drifting away, though. We can sit up again."

They sat up together, and she noticed some fresh scratches on his arm. "Did they get you when they flew above us?" she asked.

His lower lip trembled. "I...I think so."

"Hey, it's okay, we'll fix it," Buffy said. She tore off a corner of her sleeve, dipped it in the fountain and gently dabbed the wet cloth over his wounds. "There you go. All better. You ready to talk now?"

He nodded.

"Okay. So how long before they come back again, Giles? When will there be clouds?"

"Might be more often now that there's a breeze again," he said. Her gut tightened with guilt as she intuited that was her fault. The breeze that was coming in was from her---it was the healing powers she was sending across the bond, and it was accelerating a process it didn't look like he was quite ready to have accelerated. She thought briefly of helping him dispatch the demons, but she wasn't sure just what they represented, and if they would be that easy to kill. And she remembered Willow's warning to Travers about destroying things on somebody else's psychic plane...

They would have to hide somewhere, somewhere secure where they could keep out the monsters. She scanned the horizon, remembering the castle she had seen earlier.

"Can we go inside the castle?" she suggested. "Make a run for it before the demons come back?"

He shuddered. "No. The castle is too dark, too wet. There could be monsters in there, and we wouldn't see them."

"Well, it's better than staying out here," she said. "And I will be there with you, Giles. They won't get past me!"

He hesitated, looked skyward again, then nodded to her. "All right. But you walk in front!"

She nodded, then took his hand and made a run for it.

**

The castle corridor was dank and musty. Something squelched underfoot as they walked.

"I don't like it," Giles complained. "I don't like it at all. We should go outside again."

"And get mauled by the giant bat things? I don't think so! We should keep walking until we find a door. Maybe it leads somewhere."

"Maybe somewhere worse," he complained.

"Or maybe somewhere better. Look, I see a light. Maybe it's an exit."

"Oh that? That's just the back door. It doesn't lead anywhere."

"Oh? How do you know that?"

"Because it's locked. If it led somewhere I could go, it wouldn't be locked, would it?"

She urged him forward. "Try it," she said. "I want to see..."

He looked faintly ill, but she urged him again. "I'm right here, Giles. It won't hurt you..."

He turned the knob. It opened. "But...that's..."

"Uh huh. Shall we go see?"

They stepped through the door together, and into a garden more brilliant than any they had ever seen. It was cluttered, over-cluttered, with flowers and plants of every description, blooming bright and strong. The sun was shining. There was not a cloud in the sky.

"Where are we?" Giles whispered, taking it all in.

Buffy grinned. "On the other side of the door," she said. "I think this is MY garden, Giles. The bond...we're connected now. It worked! I can reach you...and you can reach me!"

**

Buffy came to in the council hospital, anxious faces peering down at her.

"Thank god!" Willow breathed. "Buffy, are you okay? You kinda passed out on us..."

She propped herself on her elbows, blinking groggily. "Really? For how long?"

"It's morning now," said Willow. "And I have good news for you, Buffy, I think the bond has taken."

"Well, I could have told you that. Giles and I figured that out as soon as..."

"Wait, Giles and you? You...you communicated?"

"Sure. I think I jumped into his dreams or something. We were in a garden, and there were these bats that chased us..."

"Wait, a garden? What kind of garden?"

As she described the dream, Willow's eyes grew wider and wider. "Buffy, you weren't inside his dreams, you were inside his subconscious! That garden is where I go when I jump into his psychic plane! I'll have to ask Kennedy if she's..."

"So will this happen every time I fall asleep?" Buffy asked.

"I have no idea. It could just be part of the bond taking effect, or it could be because he's still in a magic coma...we're monitoring his vitals, by the way, and they look stronger today. I think he's starting to heal."

"Thank god for that. So what happens now?"

"Well, I'm not sure I'm ready to wake him yet. His mental state is another matter altogether, and if I jump the gun...remember that it's not just physical trauma we're dealing with here. Travers did a very bad thing. Anyway, I keep an eye on you, I keep an eye on Graham and Kennedy, then I play it by ear...you think you can fall asleep again, if I left you? I want to see if you'll jump into his psychic plane again."

"Why not? He's drawing pretty hard on my slayer powers here. I'm already feeling kinda dizzy."

"Just be glad he's still unconscious. He'd pull harder if he was awake."

Willow left her, and she drifted off again. But she did not find the garden in her dreams.

**

It was almost time for lunch when she next came to, and Willow was back, arranging a ring of crystals beside her bed and making notes on a clipboard.

"Willow?"

"Buffy! Did you see Giles again?"

She shook her head.

"Well, that's kind of a relief! Would kinda suck to get thrown in like that every time you fall asleep. I'll teach you the incantation and you can try it next time you feel sleepy. It might be that you'll need to say it to get in like that."

"Did Kennedy say anything about something like this happening to her?"

"She said she had a weird dream the night the accident with Graham happened, and she said he was in it. But she hasn't reported anything unusual since then. I gave her the same incantation I'm going to give you, though, and when she tried it, they both fell asleep at the same exact moment. They haven't woken up yet, but it wouldn't surprise me if they have the same experience you and Giles did."

Buffy nodded. "I've been thinking about that. Will, it really does look like the channel goes both ways. I can get into his psychic plane, but he can get into mine too. I was thinking...do you think he'd heal faster if I left him there?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, if I go in there again, take him into MY garden and leave him there until his starts blooming again. Sort of a safe harbor, a sanctuary..."

Willow frowned. "I'm not sure that's such a good idea, Buffy. He has to be in his own mind while it's healing. You can visit him, and let him visit you. But letting him stay with you...I don't think so."

"Makes sense. It was worth asking."

"Well, do you want to try going in again? See how he is?"

She nodded. Willow gave her the incantation, she recited it, and she was back inside his head.

**

She materialized on that same stone path, on the same spot she had found herself the last time. The air was sweeter, and a few tiny green buds peeked through on the tree branches. But the sun was gloomy and the air tasted like dirt.

"Giles?" she called out. She walked further down the path, and finally came upon him by the fountain. He was kneeling in the flower beds. The dead branches had all been cleared away, but the soil was tangled with weeds and the fountain's pump was clogged.

He greeted her with a faint smile. "You again."

"Hey. How are ya?"

"Tired," he said. "I feel like I have been cleaning for a long time. And yet...I clear the branches away, and there are weeds. It doesn't seem fair."

"I know," she said.

"And you can't help me. I guess you know that."

She nodded. "I know. Willow says you have to clean things up yourself in here."

"That doesn't seem fair either," he sighed.

"I know. But...I can give you a break, though."

"Oh?"

"We can go walking again, to the other side. It's safe and it's pretty. We can have a picnic."

As she said the words, she felt the heft of a basket in her arms. Well, that was convenient.

"All right," he said. "We'll go now, before the monsters come back again."

He rose to his feet, and she noted that his clothes were tattered nearly to the point of disintegration. He had clearly had some more run-ins with the beasts in her absence.

The walk through the castle corridor seemed shorter this time, both of them knowing that it was now a finite space with an end in sight. She took him over to her side of the door and they walked through the brilliant colour to a small clearing. She spread a blanket on the ground and began to unpack the basket.

"What did you bring?" he asked her, clapping his hands with an eager grin.

"Let's see...chicken salad, hummus, egg salad, pita bread, fruit salad...oh, looks like we've got a mini-cooler too. With ice cream."

"Let's eat that first," he said. "It's our picnic, we can if we want to."

She laughed. "All right. Here..."

She arrayed two containers in front of him, a bowl and a spoon. He studied the labels carefully, then reached for the green one.

"That's pistachio," she said.

"Yes. And?"

"Well, I like pistachio. You like the mocha."

He frowned. "Really? Are you certain?"

She shrugged casually, but she was alarmed. Just how deep did this bond go, if he was drawing not only strength and healing, but ice cream preference from her too?

"I just love what you've done with the place," he was saying. "Hydrangeas are lovely at this time of year."

"Oh?" She pulled a bud off the nearest plant and pinned it to his crumbling t-shirt, like a corsage.

He grinned playfully. "Don't I look handsome?"

"I've always thought so," she said.

"Really? You have?"

"Silly, of course I have."

He slurped up a spoonful of pistachio ice cream. "I didn't think you thought of me that way," he said. "Thought I was just..."

"What?"

"Your watcher? Your friend?"

"Oh, Giles...we've...we've been through so much together, sacrificed so much for each other. How could there not be...a bond? And no, I don't just mean the one that Willow gave us. Giles, you're..."

He shook his head. "Not as strong as you. Not as selfless."

"What do you mean? You let the Hellmouth cave in on you to save my life, Giles!"

"Yes. And..."

"Wait," she said. "You really did, didn't you? You took the hit you took...to save me. Giles, do you..."

"Yes."

"Have you always..."

"Well, perhaps not always," he admitted. "But...as you say, we have been through much together. How could there not be a bond?"

"I need to hear you say it," she whispered. "It won't be real until you say it."

"I love you," he said. He leaned over and chastely kissed her with pistachio lips. She drew him into a deeper embrace, licking her ice cream off of his mouth with a moan of pleasure.

**

It was several weeks before Willow raised the subject of waking him up again.

"His vitals are strong," she told Buffy. "And he's been off his feet, one way or another, for almost 6 weeks. As is, he'll need physio, but he can't mend much further until he wakes up and starts moving."

Buffy shrugged. "I guess."

"Well, don't sound too happy about it!"

"Just..."

"Look, I know I still have work to do. I still haven't found a way to break it, but Kennedy's had the bond with Graham for almost two months now, and it doesn't seem to be hurting them. I mean, it's an annoyance, sure, and they are not entirely happy with some of the compromises, but it's not hurting them..."

"No, just...Will, remember before you went to Boise and we talked about the psychic stuff some?"

"Yes..."

"And you told me...you told me that he's not consciously aware of what happens on his psychic plane. Does that mean..."

"What, Buffy?"

"That he won't remember?" she finished, voice small. "Will, I've been sharing something really special with him as he's healed. We have...we have a connection. A relationship. When he wakes up, will he...will he remember?"

Willow shrugged. "Who knows? He won't consciously. I mean, specific events, specific conversations, he won't...but he'll know, maybe. On a deeper level..."

"Are you just saying that? Or do you really think..."

"Buffy, I just don't know. There are so many variables at work here. There's the bond, for one thing. And there's the fact that you have had a sustained and prolonged psychic contact with him that is unprecedented in any of the literature I've read. Will he remember? Who knows. But Buffy, whatever he's felt, whatever he's said...he does really feel that way. It might be buried deep down there somewhere, or your contact with him might have brought it closer to the surface. But it's there. And if he could express it on his psychic plane, he can express it in the real world too."

"I don't want to lose him, Will."

"Then don't lose him. You want to go back in there, talk to him again before we decide?"

Buffy nodded, and Willow let go of her hand. She muttered the incantation, and was in his head again.

**

The garden was blooming, and when she rounded the fountain she was relived to see buds---purple-tinged buds. Hydrangeas, like the one she had given him...

"It looks great in here," she said when she at last came upon him. "You are doing a great job, Giles!"

He smiled shyly. "Well, you gave me seeds. And so I planted them."

"Well, they look very nice. So are you gonna give me the grand tour?"

He surveyed the expansive tableau with beaming pride. "Yes, of course. There are the shrubs, see. And the rosebushes, those are down that way, and the lilies, those are near the fountain, of course, and over there..." He pointed in the vicinity of the tool shed, smile briefly tensing. "And over there is the monument..."

She let go of his hand and wandered over, taking in the elaborate display with measured caution. He had built a monstrous fort-like base of stones atop which were perched some branches decorated with leaves and flowers. The whole concoction was at least as high as he was.

She felt his breath beside her. "A monument?" she prodded gently.

He bit his lip, then acknowledged her question with a quivery nod. "For Dog. He bled here. He died here. But he was brave, you know. He was strong. He fought to protect me..."

"Well, yes. But Giles...you know that Dog is you, right?"

He frowned. "I don't understand."

"He was part of YOU, Giles. He was..."

"Part of me?"

"Yes."

"It was I who bled? It was I who fought?"

She was unsure how he was taking this news. She knelt down beside him and gingerly took his hand. "Yes. It was you."

His lip briefly quivered, then he took a shaky breath and straightened himself, composure restored. "Well," he said, clapping his hands together briskly. "That certainly changes things. I shall have to fix the monument now."

He gave her a curt nod, and she blinked out of his head, leaving him alone to his renovations.

"He's not ready," she told Willow when she woke up. "The fountain is still smashed. There are buds, but he's still pulling up weeds.

"Let's leave him another week," Willow said.

**

Days passed, and soon she went in again.

Once more, she materialized on the stone path, and once more she followed the trail and met him by the fountain. He was veritably basking in the tableau: he had turned on the water since the last time she had been here, and it burbled over verdant clumps of lily pads. The hydrangeas were in bloom and dropping purple petals on the water, and Giles himself was flounced beatifically in a lounge chair, face upturned to the glowing sky, enjoying the scenery.

"Well," she greeted. "Aren't we cozy."

He inhaled deeply, chest puffing, lungs filling healthfully. "Yes. There's another chair over by the tool shed if you want it."

She got the chair and unfolded it beside him. "So, how are you doing today? Feeling good?"

"Yes," he said. "And now you're with me."

"Yes. Giles..."

"You've worried," he said. "I felt it. The door...the door was warm when I touched it, and when I tried to open it, the hinges squeaked."

"I'm sorry," she said.

"It's all right, it didn't open. I can't get in there unless you're with me."

"I know. Just...I don't want you worrying."

"But you can? That's okay?"

He was strong enough now that he felt her equal. That was encouraging. But still...

"I won't forget, if that's what has you fretting," he said.

"What?"

"It is your hydrangeas I have blooming in here. How could I ever forget?"

A cloud passed them overhead. His face, now shadowed, looked suddenly tired and gaunt. He reached underneath his chair for a juice box.

"This seems nice in here," she said. "Happy. Cheerful."

He shrugged again and the clouds cleared. The sunlight washed out his bare arm and made him look stick-like and pale.

She studied him carefully. "It's NOT happy? Not cheerful?"

He sighed. "No, it is. Of course it is. Just...I do miss the sunshine..."

She looked around her, confused. "But the flowers are blooming. There is lots of sunshine here."

"Well, yes. But it's not...it's not REAL, you know?"

She processed the implications of this statement, her smile growing. "You know?" she finally said. "I think you're ready...to wake up..."

His sunglasses were crooked. He squinted thoughtfully. "That would mean I wouldn't be here?"

"Well, here is part of you. But as such, no. You wouldn't be here."

"I'd be someplace else."

"Yes."

"And you would be there?"

"Yes. I would be there."

He nodded, taking off his sunglasses and slipping on his shoes. He was ready, at last, for the next step.

3: High Noon

The sentry examined her identity card with a critical frown.

“It isn’t scanning,” he said.

Buffy Summers tried to suppress a groan. “Come on, Mikey, let’s not take all day.”

He shook his head. “No going through the checkpoint without proper ID.”

“I have proper ID. The ID of you know me.”

“Maybe I don’t. If the ID won’t scan, it could be a copy.”

She blew out a frustrated breath and rolled her eyes. “Well, it worked yesterday. You yourself signed me in at this exact same time. Come on, Mikey…”

He shook his head. “I’ll have to call Travers. Without the proper ID…”

“It’s me! You know me!”

“Well, sure. But you could be a robot, or a shapeshifting demon, or a copy from another dimension, or a manifestation of the first evil…”

With an impatient snort, she snatched the card out of his hand, rubbed at a tiny speck of dust, then slapped it back into the terminal. It beeped approvingly.

“There!” she pounced. “Do you see?”

He waved her through with an off-handed shrug. It was just another day in the life of a superhero.

**

Giles was in his room, doing chin-ups off a bar that was hooked into the ceiling directly above his bed.

“Hey macho man.”

He lowered himself back onto the bed with a grunt. “Buffy. Did you bring my books?”

“Yes, I brought your books.” She dumped a canvas knapsack onto the bed. “And they weigh a ton, by the way. Not sure if that’s ‘cause you were drawing slayer strength off of me, or because they really do weigh a ton…”

“I wasn’t drawing.”

There was steel in his voice. She flinched guiltily. “Sorry. Just…trying to maintain a sense of humour about it, right?”

He sighed, sank back into the pillows with a pout and fiddled with an empty water bottle. He was in a mood, it seemed. Again. In the month since an experimental procedure had saved his life by allowing him to draw on Buffy’s recuperative slayer powers, his apocalypse-crippled body had healed remarkably fast. His mind, on the other hand, had been slower to recover.

A large part of it was residual shame and embarrassment---at his condition, at the dependency it had engendered, and at the continued scrutiny his mind and body were being subjected to as the council studied the effects of the cure. But some of it was trauma too, and that was worrying. There was a form of therapy they had been using that accessed his subconscious directly. Willow’s council co-hort, the junior Travers, had horned in on one of her sessions and been less careful. There had been an accident, a violation…and it had been deep enough inside his psyche that his conscious mind could barely make sense of it.

“But he’d be able to make sense of it if we just explained it to him,” Buffy had complained to Willow a few weeks ago, after yet another rough night. “Just tell him, in a nutshell, that Travers went into his head and beat him up. Can’t we just give him counseling or something?”

“We could, but it wouldn’t help all that much. He has to process the psychic trauma himself, Buffy. He has to deal with what’s happened to him. On some level, he knows. It’s his psyche, after all. But he has to work through it in his own time. If he can’t articulate what happened yet, it’s ‘cause he isn’t ready. And if that’s the case…well, there really isn’t a way to hurry it along. It’ll come out when it’s ready to come out.”

“And in the meanwhile, we nurse him through the tantrums, panic attacks and stress migraines and just say ‘there, there’ and hope for the best?”

“What else can we do? He’ll get there, Buffy. I mean, it’s Giles we’re talking about, right? He’ll get there…”

Buffy had returned Willow’s weak, encouraging smile, knowing that it wasn’t only Travers they were talking about. Buffy herself had contact with Giles during the psychic therapy. More than contact, even. They had fought together. They had spent time together, significant time. They had picnicked and camped and strolled through gardens of flowers. Manifestations, she understood that. Symbolic representations. It was his head after all. But…the flowers had grown. The sun had started peeking through the clouds. It had been…she thought it had been safe for him. There were words they shared, significant words. And words that hadn’t come up again since he had woken up all those weeks ago. Obviously, it was more than just trauma that he was still repressing…

Today, he was looking focused, determined and fit. As he finished cleaning himself up from his exertions, Buffy ticked the exercises off on his chart for him, then scanned the day’s other notations.

“This is the last round?” she asked him.

He nodded, pushing himself off the bed, using his hands for leverage. She could see the veins pulsing in his arms; his body was responding well to the regimen. The muscles in his chest and torso were hardest to unknot, and he still had a tightness there that could knock the wind out of him when he moved too quickly. But at least he could move again…

“Willow been in to check on you yet?”

“Travers said she’d be in later and that she’d sent you home to get my books. Could have fetched them myself if she’d let me leave the bloody compound, but…”

“Let’s not go there,” Buffy interrupted firmly. The argument was not a new one. Buffy and Giles were currently not the only bonded watcher/slayer pair, and while Kennedy and Graham did not seem to be enjoying the confinement any more than Buffy and Giles were, they were enjoying the bond itself even less. Willow was racing to find a way to undo it before they hurt each other, and having both pairs together under one roof made running the pile of tests she had easier. Easier for the council, anyway. As far as Giles was concerned, their imprisonment had yet to yield benefits.

“She plays the violin, you know,” Giles suddenly said.

Buffy looked up from the clipboard. “What?”

“Kennedy. She plays the violin.”

Buffy tried to picture it. “Is she terrible?”

“Actually, no. Seems her privileged upbringing included lessons at one point. She’s quite good.”

“Oh. Well, that’s nice.”

“Not really. It relaxes her, Buffy. She plays it when she’s stressed. Her room is right next to mine and I can tell you, she’s been at it all morning.”

“Ah. You’re thinking mutiny?”

“I’m thinking that you and I at least knew what we were getting into. Buffy, you need to talk to her.”

“Me? To Kennedy?”

“To Willow. I know she has her needs, her…her responsibilities. But she simply has to loosen the chain a little. On them, and on us too. She simply has to."

“It’s not that easy.”

“I don’t care.”

Buffy sighed. “Seems like that’s a recurring theme with us, isn’t it? We knew…I mean, she told us we’d…”

“We’d have to sell our souls to save my life? Yes, she did tell us there would be strings, didn’t she? I recall though that she also swore the New Regime was different. I’m only saying that from where I’m sitting, it doesn’t feel all that different to me.”

Again, this was not an unfamiliar refrain. “I’ll talk to her,” Buffy said. “Anything else?”

He flipped wordlessly onto his back, feigning sleep until she left him.

**

Buffy stopped in the makeshift kitchen they had carved out of the council’s infirmary office and grabbed a snack before making her way to Willow’s office. She was not looking forward to this little chat---she much preferred Giles and his sulking to Willow and her defensiveness. Willow was trying her best, or so she kept telling them. This was the New Regime after all, wasn’t it? But lately, the New Regime was seeming less and less new. And to make things all the more unproductive, Willow seemed far too inclined to dismiss all of Giles’ concerns as trauma-induced paranoia.

Buffy finally tracked Willow down in one of the labs, running a large, flat crystal over a row of microscope slides.

“Will?”

Willow jumped, stubbed her toe on a desk and dropped the crystal. It neatly teleported itself back onto the table seconds before it would have hit the floor, and Willow touched it briefly, obviously relieved. “Buffy. You scared me.”

“Sorry. You busy?”

“Just finishing up. Why? Do you need me for something?”

“Geez, don’t sound too suspicious there.”

Willow put away the last of her equipment with a sigh. “Sorry. Just---I’ve had everyone on my back today. Travers wants to talk progress, Graham wants to talk vacation pay, Kennedy wants to talk killing her Watcher…”

Buffy winced. “That bad?”

Willow nodded. “It’s like we’re all on different agendas here. I mean, we all want this over and done with---except for maybe Graham, who’s treating this little confinement like some kind of holiday. It’s just that we all seem to want it done for different reasons. I just want to help you and Giles, Buffy, honestly I do.”

“Okay.”

“But it’s a complicated situation here, you know? And I can’t make any moves until I know exactly what those moves are going to do. Look, there’s a briefing tonight, when Travers gets back. Him and me, Kennedy and Graham…I was just on my way to invite you and Giles…”

Buffy nodded. “Sure. Okay.”

“Is he going to be able to behave himself this time? Cause I know Travers still makes him a little twitchy, but…”

“He’s good today,” Buffy said. “I’ll talk to him.”

“Great. See you tonight?”

With a sigh, Buffy nodded, then began the trudge back to her watcher’s room to update him.

**

When she returned to his room, Buffy found Giles was sprawled on his bed again, limply paging through a book.

“Hey,” Buffy greeted, sitting down beside him.

He put the book aside, eyes betraying cautious suspicion.

“That is a Willow look,” Buffy said. “You’re giving that to me now?”

He softened his features, but his eyes remained stony.

“Okay, so there’s some kind of meeting,” Buffy said. “Us, them, and the other them. Soon as Travers gets here.”

Giles shuddered involuntarily at the name. Buffy kept up her encouraging smile, not breaking his gaze.

“It has been suggested to me that we be on our best behaviour. Can we do that, Giles?”

He shuddered again, just obviously enough for her to notice it.

“Look, we have an hour or so,” she said. “Why don’t you rest a bit? So you’ll be nice and refreshed for Travers?”

“I’m fine.”

“You always say you are, which is why I didn’t ask.”

“Buffy…”

“Look, I’m not mad. I’m not criticizing. I’m only saying that it’s been a long day. Full-on with the physio, and all those books I brought you…”

“I like to keep up with my research.”

“Uh huh. Look, humour me, will you? Rest your eyes a little from the tiny print, get yourself recharged before the big meeting…”

He pushed the book aside, clearly as much to end the conversation as anything else. But she would take that for now.

“Fine,” he said.

She smiled again, hoping the forced cheer did not betray her impending deception. Her newfound slayer bond with Giles gave her the same access to his psyche that Willow’s spell had. But he had to be asleep for her to do it. She knew he hated this sort of psychic meddling, but he was too edgy today, too wound up. She could not resist the temptation to peek at what was going on in there.

**

When Buffy opened her eyes, she was on a stone pathway that she recognized from some of her prior visits. There was a garden here, all around her, bursts of flower and green and sweetness. The plants still grew plentifully, but she noted with the first twinges of alarm that the colours seemed dull and the stems were flat and droopy. And unlike her last visit here, the grass was dotted with tiny patches of dead spots.

Giles was standing by the fountain, using a sieve to scoop debris off the pond. He was wearing bright yellow hip-waders, and his hair was styled in the tell-tale spiky tufts of the child-like gatekeeper avatar that mediated these psychic contacts.

She came up gently beside him. “Hey, you.”

He did not look away from his careful work. “Oh, hello.”

“How are you doing?” she asked him.

His eyes immediately narrowed in suspicion. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, your plants are all droopy.”

At last, he put down the sieve, sitting gingerly down on the grass beside her with a heavy sigh. “It’s such a lot of work to keep them tended. I get so tired of running around with the watering can.”

This was not a good sign. Willow had explained to her once that whatever Giles was dealing with in his real life would be manifested somehow on this mental plane. And last time the flowers in his garden had died, it had been after the incident with Travers, and it taken weeks to draw him out of the coma…

“Do you want me to help you, Giles? Get them all watered and taken care of?”

He squinted. “Can you do that?”

She tried to remember the rules Willow had given her. It was his mental landscape, so he had to be the one to do the work on it. But she could offer moral support while he did that, couldn’t she?

“You have to carry the watering can,” she decided. “And you have to do the actual watering part. But I can keep you company, walk around the garden with you…”

She followed him over to the shed and waited while he turned on the hose and filled the watering can. She noticed that when he walked, he carefully avoided the patches of dead grass.

Buffy bent down and pointedly jabbed at the nearest brownish clump. “Should we start by doing something about these?”

“No!” The can tumbled out of his fingers, gushing water onto his clothing and flustering him to the point of near-hysteria. His eyes wove spastically around her, to the dead patch of grass, to his sodden shoes, his mouth trying to form words but only managing incoherent little noises of distress. She reached for him and he sank to his knees, too overcome to even know which problem to address first.

Buffy stepped back, stifling a wince. She had made a critical error here. It was easy to think of her encounters with the gatekeeper as some kind of little game with a child-like Giles she found oddly adorable. But this was actually a part of his psyche she was dealing with. There was potential to do serious damage here with only a slight misstep. He had been improving so much these past few weeks, she had almost forgotten he was still damaged. Was that what these dead patches were? A mental manifestation of scar tissue?

She forced his eyes to focus on her. “It’s okay, Giles. It’s okay. You want me to stay away from those?”

He nodded.

“Okay, I’m staying away, see?”

He was breathless, still trying to shake off drops of water. She gave him a moment to collect himself, then moved closer again. “Can I help you dry off?”

He spit out a few last ragged breaths, then kicked out his knees and sat. She pulled off her sweatshirt and used it to mop up as much as of the water as she could.

“All dry. You ready to try again?”

He shook his head, closed his eyes, struggled to centre himself. His breathing slowed, and when he opened his eyes again, they were bright with anxious energy. “I’ll do it later. I have another chore right now.” He heaved himself to his feet. “Come, you can help me.”

Her skin prickled with that ominous feeling again, but she followed him as he moved behind the gardening shed and picked up a stained and foul-smelling bucket, heading for the clearing. She saw it now: he had cobbled together some splintery debris into a makeshift pen. As she drew closer, she could make out a half dozen snarling balls of fur corralled within, hopping excitedly at his approach. He flung the bucket’s contents into the melee, and the creatures strained against the guideposts, snapping their jaws.

Buffy felt suddenly sick. These were not widdle puppies he had conjured to frolic in his happy garden. Frothy drool hung off their hooked teeth, and there were long, sharp talons extending from the ends of their hellhoundy little paws They were beasts. And last time he had one running loose in here, he had very nearly been killed by the psychic trauma when it failed to protect him…

She swallowed hard, trying to keep her voice light. “Um, Giles? How did these get here?”

“Well, I should think it would be obvious. Dog…you remember Dog?”

His gatekeeper avatar. The one Travers had killed…

“I remember,” she said.

“Well, Dog…Dog had puppies…”

“Puppies.”

He nodded earnestly. “I found them. I saved them. And now they are going to stay and protect me.”

“Protect you? Protect you from what, Giles?”

“Oh, enemies, adversaries, that sort of thing. I have been training them, see.”

“Is that why you haven’t had time to take care of the garden?”

“But there won’t BE a garden unless I can defend it, will there?”

All she could think about was how badly this had ended the last time. She tried to find the words to talk him down.

“Giles, you don’t need this. You’re safe now, you’re healed.”

“It’s never safe. Haven’t you learned that yet? You must never relax, you must never forget…”

“Giles…” She broke off and tried again. “Rupert. Look, I know it scared you, losing Dog the way you did, but that doesn’t mean…”

He was already shaking his head. “No, but Dog was only one, see? The puppies, they’re more than one. And I’m training them this time. See how alert they are? How strong? How brave?”

She wasn’t sure it was quite that simple. Dog had been brave. He had been strong, too---Giles had conjured him as a manifestation of his recruiting Buffy herself, the slayer, to protect him while they were in the council’s hands. But Dog had proven just as ineffectual a gatekeeper against the psychic version of Travers as she had been against the live one…

She tried to catch his eye again. But Giles had already turned back toward the pen full of snarling fur, and in an instant she blinked out of his head and back to the real world.

**

Travers returned an hour later to personally summon Buffy and Giles for the meeting. Giles was still sleeping. Buffy begged half an hour to get him awake and cleaned up.

“And send Willow in, would you?” she asked him.

“Why?” Travers asked. “Is something wrong? Because if there’s something wrong, I need to know about it too.”

She smiled sweetly. “Girl stuff, Alton. Come on, Giles. Up and at ‘em.”

Travers departed with a pointed frown, but a few minutes later Willow came. “Buffy? Everything all right?”

“Sure, Will. Giles, you want to wash up before we go?”

She waited until Giles was in the bathroom and out of earshot before she filled Willow in on her little psychic jaunt.

“Puppies,” Willow groaned. “Perfect. He’s populating his mind with psychotic hellhound puppies.”

“And he’s wearing himself out ‘training’ them,” Buffy said. “So much so that he’s too tired to take care of the lovely, healing garden. Will, if he’s spending that much mental energy just on being defensive…”

“I know, I know. I guess the New Regime still hasn’t won him over, has it?”

“He’s scared. Tell me, honestly. Should he still be scared?”

Willow sighed. “Let’s go to the meeting.”

**

Kennedy and Graham were already in the conference room when Buffy and Giles arrived. Graham was seated placidly at the large oak table munching a donut. Kennedy was pacing like a penned animal, glaring darkly at Alton Travers. Beside her, Buffy felt Giles stiffen.

“Best behaviour,” she whispered. “Come on, Giles. We’re okay…”

“We’re okay,” he repeated mechanically, stepping in after her. “Not sure why that bloody ponce unnerves me so…”

It was one of the complications of psychic therapy that they had learned about early on: what they saw when they jumped into his head was too deep in his psyche for his conscious mind to be aware of it. He had no idea what happened in there. He had no idea just how deep his fellow watcher’s betrayal had been…

“Hello, Buffy,” said Travers too brightly. “Hello, Giles.”

She could hear Giles’ teeth grind together. “Alton.”

Kennedy was drumming her fingers on the table impatiently. “Can we get on with this already?”

“Yes, let’s. Willow, do tell us---what progress have you made, exactly?”

“Very little, Alton.” She took a few deep, centering breaths then turned to the others. “The situation is---complex. It seems the magic isn’t working in each of you the same way.”

Buffy and Kennedy traded glances. “Why not?” Buffy asked.

“Well, Buffy, with you and Giles, the bond seems a bit more---well, you seem to be able to control it better. Not as well as I suspect you could with focused practice, mind you, but in Giles especially there seems to be a definite control. He can draw on your power with intent.”

“And Graham can’t?”

“It’s more of an instinct with him, which is, I suspect, why he’s driving Kennedy nuts. Because he can’t turn it off when she wants her powers back.”

Kennedy nodded confirmation.

“Think of it like a rope that’s strung between you,” Willow said. “Giles and Graham can both exert pull when they want to. But Graham can’t let go. If it’s you the rope was anchored to, the tension would exhaust you.”

Kennedy was nodding vigorously and shooting her watcher glares across the table.

“He isn’t trying to, Kennedy,” Willow hastily clarified. “Just…well, watchers do generally get training in mental focus. It possible Giles was simply better at it than Graham was…”

“Or perhaps our longer association has strengthened the bond somehow,” Giles suggested.

“That’s possible,” Willow agreed. “But my theory is that what changed the spell for you is the element of volition. You guys CHOSE to bond. And that made the magic different somehow.”

“So bottom line, Will,” said Kennedy. “Where does that leave us?”

“The royal us, or the you and Graham us?”

Kennedy rolled her eyes.

“You and Graham are done here,” Willow said, at last putting down her clipboard. “There is nothing more I can do with you. Congratulations, Kennedy. You’re sprung.”

“They can go?” Buffy whined.

“Well, not back to active duty per se. Can’t have one of them getting hurt while they’re still sharing powers. But home, yes. They can go. For now.”

“And us?” Giles asked.

“You stay. I’m so, so sorry that I can’t give you better news, Giles. But if we’re going to crack this thing, we need you. We need your help.”

His twitch was barely noticeable. “For how long?”

“Well, that depends. I’d like to…to amp things up a little, if you’ll let me. To run some more advanced…well, some…”

“Experiments?”

“That is such a loaded word. But…yes. I am so sorry, Giles.”

His hands shook but he kept his voice even. “What sort of experiments?”

“Well, we’ve got you drawing off her well enough. And unlike Graham with Kennedy, we’ve got you releasing. So what I’d like to do is see if we can get it going the other way. To get Buffy to draw from YOU.”

“You aren’t going to hurt her?” Giles wondered, horrified.

“No! Well, not…that is to say…look, I need a couple hours to set this up, and…”

Giles deflated. “Yes. Fine. May we go?”

They could hear his teeth grinding together in his jaw. It was like the scratchy bark of a newborn hellhound pup.

**

They sent Giles back to his room in the care of a council flunky. Willow had said she wanted to speak to Buffy about what came next, but as soon as they had cleared the room of the others, it came out that she had another agenda.

“It’s out of my control,” Willow said. “I just wanted to tell you that, before anything happens.”

“Whoa, Willow, calm down. Before WHAT happens? What are you talking about?”

“The tests, the…the experiments. They…it’s out my hands.”

“I am getting a very ominous feeling about this, Will. What are you trying to tell me?”

“But I already told it. I told you before, we’re all on different agendas here. And Alton…he kinda has the wrong idea about this.”

Buffy’s frown deepened. “Do I even want to ask, wrong how?”

“Well, he supposes…that is to say, he intends…well, he figures that the only thing stopping us from creating the bond again is that it can’t be undone. But if that obstacle was solved…”

“Oh,” scoffed Buffy. “Of course. He’s not enough of a power-hungry toad as is, so he intends to give himself slayer powers?”

“Well, him, or anyone, really. Do you know how many watchers have died from battle injuries that might have healed if they had some slayer powers to borrow for awhile? Do you know how many have…”

“My god, I hope you’re not actually endorsing this!”

“Buffy, please! Nobody knows better than I do that it isn’t quite that simple. The kind of magic it took to do this spell, it’s powerful, it’s draining. I’m not sure even I have what it takes to undo the ones that have already been done, never mind do new ones. And if I did, there would be consequences, there always, always are. You know that.”

“That whole nature loves to maintain a balance thing.”

“Right. The same way we didn’t find out until after that only one of you can have the slayer power at a time. It’s been harder on Graham and Kennedy, but I know you’ve been feeling it too.”

“Well, yeah. I mean, if something’s a part of you and then it’s not, you do notice. I think with me it’s more a confidence thing.”

“Really? How so?”

“Well, if I do feel weak---is it because he’s drawing, or is it because I’m weak? If I screw up in training, is it because he’s getting in the way somehow, or is it just that I’m being sloppy? It’s hard to tell sometimes.”

Willow was jotting all of this down on her clipboard. “These are serious concerns, Buffy. You should have mentioned them before.”

“Haven’t much noticed. I mean, I haven’t exactly been on a full patrol and training schedule since we got here, have I? And I’ve been so focused on him…”

“That’s going to change,” said Willow. “Tomorrow morning. That’s going to change. We focus on you for awhile.”

**

They awoke the next morning to find breakfast trays already set out for them: tea, orange juice, bagels, donuts, bacon & eggs and yogurt with muesli. Giles picked suspiciously at an especially large and glossy jelly donut.

“I almost feel as though I shouldn’t eat it,” he said, pouring himself a glass of plain water.

Buffy paused, fork dangling over her laden plate. “It does seem a little…I don’t want to use the word bribe, per se, but…”

“Why not? We’ve already used the word ‘experiment’, haven’t we? Whatever line there is, we’ve already crossed it.”

She put down the fork completely. “Can we not start? Please?”

“Oh, sure. Now that it’s her they plan to poke and prod, she doesn’t want to talk about it.”

“Whoa, back up there for a second, passive-aggressive-boy. Point the first, when did this become about me? And point the second, I am not denying that Willow does have her inclinations as far as politicking goes, but she promised me she has it under control.”

“Like she did in Cleveland, when the hellmouth caved in on me?”

“Do you really want to go there right now?”

He sighed. “I suppose I don’t. I apologize, Buffy. I find it hard to be fit company in this place.”

“I know the feeling.”

“And I don’t mean to put you in the middle. Just…Willow won’t tell me anything these days. I get reports from her with vast sections blacked out. She tells me not to worry so much, to trust her, to be patient. Or she tells me it was part of my psychic therapy and that it isn’t safe to tell me.”

“She told me that too. Whatever goes on in there is a manifestation of your real feelings. If they are still too buried in your subconscious for you to articulate them…”

“Then they haven’t been processed yet and they’ll come out, in their own way, in their own time, yes, I know. It just…frustrates me to no end that SHE knows it. I really would prefer to keep my psyche to myself.”

She flinched a little in remembered guilt at the times she herself had hijacked her way into his head uninvited. He caught the look in her eyes and softened. “I didn’t mean you.”

She brightened, hoping he would at last confess his feelings. “You didn’t?”

“Of course I didn’t. We’ve worked together for years, Buffy. I know YOU can do your job.”

“My job,” she repeated, swallowing her disappointment with a forkful of ill-gotten pastry. “Right. Well, right now, that’s to get you to the lab with me for this morning’s heap of fun. You ready?”

**

Half an hour later, Buffy was floating in a coffin of water tinged faintly with slime.

“Not slime,” Willow had corrected when Buffy had first skimmed her hand appraisingly over the oily slick. “It’s a special chemical they put in the water to keep you level while you’re in the water. And it’s not a coffin, it’s a sensory deprivation tank.”

“Right. One of those.”

“It was Alton’s idea. He says it a very good environment for meditation because it’s completely closed off from outside stimuli. It’s just you your thoughts. And he supposes…that is to say, WE suppose…that if you got into that sort of mindset, if you had the peace and quiet to really focus…well, you could draw your powers back willfully. If you wanted to.”

“And the little suction cup thingies are for…”

“For hooking you up to a monitor, so we can keep an eye on your vital signs and so we can communicate with you. And you with us, of course. Travers and I will both be behind that glass in a control room, monitoring this whole thing. It’s very safe, Buffy. I have been in one of these myself, and…”

“Uh huh. So Giles, he gets to play too?”

Giles had been dismayed to learn that he was expected to strap into a sensory deprivation tank as well. Travers wanted Giles to develop awareness of the sensations associated with the power hand-off, should they complete one successfully—what it would consciously feel like for Buffy to cross his boundaries, for her to cross over his…

“You might try resisting her,” Travers had suggested. “Put up a fight and see how she takes it. Tussle a bit.”

Buffy had traded an uncomfortable glance with Willow at that remark, and in the back of his mind, he felt faintly uncomfortable for a reason he couldn’t quite pin down. Something about the idea of two minds touching, and using that link to…well, to tussle…the very thought sent a wave of aspiring migraine along the back of his ears that he had to will his mind to disperse.

“Giles gets to play too,” Willow had affirmed, watching his face with undue attention. “You okay there, Giles?”

He was not up for another round of fawning scrutiny. He let them lock himself and Buffy into the adjoining tanks without a word.

**

The water had been warm, almost comfortable, and Willow’s voice had immediately piped in through the speaker with words of comfort.

“Just lie back, Buffy,” she coached. “Feel the water nipping up around you, cushioning your arms, your hands, your body…”

She felt the water. It was faintly sticky and smelled like copper.

“Breathe,” whispered Willow, her voice hushed and reverential. “Breathe, and listen to the silence. It’s just you in there.”

“And you,” Buffy said.

In the control room, Willow traded nervous glances with Travers. “And me,” she affirmed into her microphone. “But not for long, Buffy. I’m staying with you just long enough to get you settled…”

She paused, and dropped her voice back to that soothing, hypnotic tone. “You are relaxed,” she said. “You are breathing. You aren’t even feeling the water anymore. There is no light, no sound…it’s just you, Buffy. You and your mind.”

Her skin itched, and she couldn’t help but squirm a little, wiggle her fingers, try to free them from the viscous drip of the doctored-up water. One of the electrodes on her chest was coming loose.

In the control room, Willow was watching the readouts unhappily. “It isn’t working,” she told Travers.

He was staring at the computer screens too, but his attention appeared to be on the lower block of readouts. He had to look up to see where she was pointing. “Oh?”

“Look at this one,” she said. “Her heart-rate? It should be slowing down as she enters the meditative state.”

“Hmmm.”

“She should be there by now, Alton,” she insisted, angry by his lack of concern. She knew that he had his share of difficulties with Buffy and Giles, but she thought the purpose behind this experiment had been clear. It wasn’t working.

Alton watched her face for a moment, then with a sigh, depressed the talk button on his microphone. “Miss Summers,” he commanded. “Please relax.”

“Alton!” Willow pushed him away from the controls. “I’ll handle this.” She took over control of the microphone and dropped her voice to its smoothest, most unctuous tones.

“Just breathe, Buffy. I don’t want you forcing anything here, just relax, and breathe, and let it happen. Close your eyes…”

In the tank, Buffy forced herself to concentrate. The sooner she did this, the sooner she could be done, the sooner she could get out of this dark, wet…thing…

She tried to focus on Willow’s voice, focus on the quickening rhythm of her heart and on the echo of her breath against the tight, close walls on the chamber. She fidgeted, trying to give herself space. Her hand butted against the side of the wall.

In the control room, Willow noticed a sharp spike on the readout. “Should that be happening?” she asked Travers.

He looked at the reading. “Perhaps she just needs to settle in?” he suggested. His smirk was bothering her.

“No,” Willow answered carefully. His attitude was becoming faintly suspicious, and she shivered a little, trying to shake off her growing alarm. “If anything, she’s relaxing less the longer we keep her there. I don’t know why she’s tensing up so bad.”

There was no room. Buffy scrunched shut her eyes, trying to focus inside herself like Willow had told her to, trying to find the point of connection, whatever it was, between herself and Giles. Her hand unconsciously reached toward him, smacking into the side of the chamber and falling claustrophobically back into the slippery muck. She stretched, desperate for space. She was trapped in here. The air smelled fetid and sick, like a grave, and she was trapped in here…

She moved her arms away from the walls with a conscious act of will, hugging them tightly to her wet, sticky side. The sensation was not unlike rubbing her fingers into blood…

She closed her eyes, opened them again, straining for a wisp of light to warm her. There was only dark. She swallowed back the rising panic and called out. “Willow?”

**
In the control room, Willow reached for the microphone, but Travers was at her side, his hand closing around her arm in a tight, firm block. “Don’t,” he said.

Willow rattled her fingers, trying half-heartedly to un-pry them from his grasp as she heard him out. “What…what are you doing?”

“Well, I should think that’s fairly obvious, Rosenberg. I’m watching.”

“Watching? Alton, her heart rate’s going through the roof! We have to…”

His thumb edged around the cuff of her shirt, finding footing on her bare skin as he held her back. “What? We have to what, Rosenberg?”

“Well, get her out! She obviously won’t reach a meditative state in this condition, will she?”

Alton heaved a dramatic sigh, then reached with his free hand for the control panel, punching the mic button with an errant finger.

“Miss Summers?”

**

In the second chamber, Giles flexed his hands, allowing the water to coast over him with a pleasant sigh. With relaxation came clarity. Giles had not been thrilled about today’s events, but now that they were underway, he found himself succumbing to the atmosphere and to his surprise, enjoying himself a little. It really was nice to be alone with one’s thoughts sometimes, and while his body would ordinarily protest under even the best of circumstances to a confinement like this one, his physiotherapy regimen was clearly showing dividends, and the water had a pleasantly numbing effect that dulled whatever pain he wasn’t managing with slayer powers.

The slayer powers. They had been on his mind today. Willow had been clear with him this morning that he must not relinquish them, must not push them toward Buffy if he felt her reaching. She had to learn to draw them away herself, and that was fair enough, he supposed. But it had him thinking. She would be successful. Perhaps not today---Buffy was not what he would call the meditative sort to begin with, and her resistance to the experiment itself would not help things along in that regard. But eventually, she would be successful and she would draw her powers back from him. Or, her almost chivalrous attempts to spare him pain would finally be undone by her need for activity, and she would injure herself and draw them back that way. Lying in this tank, numbed by quiet and cold and solitude, he was thinking for the first time about what would happen next, that there might be a next step here---and that he might, to his surprise, be ready for it.

Why had he not thought of this before? He had been so unhappy, so sick and so bored and so fretfully, painfully afraid (with good reason, he reminded himself, but even so) and it had been so hard to see beyond what was happening to him at any given moment. There it was again----he was hearing it for the first time in this silence, this word, ‘happen.’ When had he become a person who just sat there and let life ‘happen’ to him? Certainly, he had yielded in the past, when it was important to him to do so. But it was never about simply…simply submitting, simply existing like a passive vessel in the hands of another. Oh sure, Oxford, the first time, had been all his father. But the second time, after Eyghon, that had been him. He had gone back. He had chosen a path. He had righted a wrong and faced the consequences of his actions. That had been a big one. He had DONE that! He had refused, so many times, to accept the word of an elder or a prophecy or a council, and he had changed things, changed lives, changed the world. And now…now he was reduced to floating on command in a puddle of smelly chemicals, expected to just…just sit there, because they told him to? Just sit there and shiver and brood and wonder when somebody was going to come and get him? Dear lord. When had he become that sort of man?

**

In the chamber, Buffy shivered unhappily, trying to remember, amidst her misery, to keep her breathing even. God knew how long she had been in here. Long enough for the water to go cold, long enough for the air to use up. She could barely move in here, it was too tight and she was too cold and wet and unhappy. The special gunk stuck to her. She could feel it seeping into the pruned cracks of her hands as they floated limply at her side

“Miss Summers?”

She flinched at the voice. It wasn’t only Giles that Alton Travers had that effect on.

“Breathe,” came the voice again, not gentle like Willow’s voice, but tight and impatient and almost bored. “Focus. Find your centre…”

“Willow?” she called again. “Willow, are you there?”

In the control room, Willow reached for the mic, but Travers tightened his grip on her arm again. Her eyes unwittingly clouded as she drew her magic to fight him off.

“I wouldn’t do that,” he said.

“Alton, they…”

He shook head. “Do it, and you’ll make this harder than it has to be.”

“Are you threatening me? Are you threatening them?”

“I don’t have to threaten them. Look at the readings, Willow. Why do you think she hasn’t fought her way out of there by now? She’s so terrified, she can barely think.”

With dawning horror, Willow realized. Buffy was a slayer. Fighting did not scare her. Death didn’t, even. But coming back…

“You planned this. Son of a bitch, Alton, you planned this.”

She slumped in her chair, headphones perched on her ear as she listened to Buffy struggle. She was kicking herself for not seeing just what Travers had been up to, for not remembering just where Buffy’s claustrophobia had originated. Travers had planned this so perfectly, and she never even clued in, not when she saw the tank, so like a coffin, or when she felt the water, stiff like earth, thick like blood. It was resurrection, all over again. It was fight or flight, the most primal human instinct, and she hated to admit it, but it probably was the only thing that would work. Buffy would not meditate her way out of this one. She would fight. Travers, damn him, really had devised the perfect experiment.

“You didn’t want her calm and relaxed and meditative. You wanted her wound up. ‘Cause if she isn’t thinking, she’s on pure instinct, isn’t she?”

“She is. And that’s what will bring her out of this, won’t it?” He watched her face carefully as he spoke. “You’re angry. I accept that. When have you ever supported me on something like this? You have a blind spot as far as these two go, and don’t deny it.”

“If by blind spot, you mean that I would have looked for a solution to this problem that did not involve actual, willful torture, then yes, I have a blind spot.”

“And sometimes it prevents you from doing what has to be done. Look at the readings, Willow. Her heart rate’s about to spike. She’s reaching critical mass here. This will work, you know it will. It may repulse you, but it will work.”

She slumped in her chair with a deflated sigh, trying to tell herself that there were other lives at stake here. Travers was right, and that stung her almost as much as watching Buffy suffer.

**

There was nothing but darkness. Buffy’s arms and legs shivered so badly they made little splashing noises, but she couldn’t see where they were flailing. Beneath her, the water was congealing and the slime felt unpleasantly like mossy dirt. Her fingers skimmed it experimentally. Yes, like dirt. Like wet, deep dirt.

It was too tight in here. How did they expect her to focus when all she could think about was how damp and cold and trapped she was? She hated small, enclosed spaces. She had ever since…

She winced, closed her eyes, fighting the memory. It had been just like this. She had been powerless, she had been trapped. Weakened from too long spent in the cold, in the dark…fighting for snippets of air and light and strength…reaching, and butting into solid mass all around her…

With an arm, she whacked. With a leg, she kicked. Nothing. Her head felt weightless from the water, heavy from the clinging, sticky air. It tired out her neck, supporting it. It tired out her eyes, tracking the stars that swam before it…

There was power, somewhere. She was foggy from pain and panic, but she remembered that much. There was power somewhere. All she had to do was follow it to its source and grab hold of it again. She closed her eyes, tried to centre herself for one last rally.

“Not another grave,” she whispered, struggling for focus. “Not another grave, not another grave, not another grave…”

She closed her eyes, clamped the tears, reached inside herself and flailed blindly in the darkness. There was power there. She lunged for it. Then she kicked.

**

Giles awoke in a hospital bed, with an IV needle stuck in his arm and a headache that made him want to hit something. He was piled high with blankets, and the pale, gentle face of Willow stared down at him.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” he croaked back.

She nodded to someone just out of his view. “He’s awake now. You’ll probably want to increase the drip.” Then, to Giles, she said. “Your head must be killing you. This will help.”

He let the drip settle for a minute, then tried sitting up. “I am back to a hospital bed, it seems. Have I had a relapse?”

Willow frowned. “You don’t remember?”

“There was to be an experiment…”

“Yeah. That happened.”

“And?”

“And…well, the good news is Buffy was successful in drawing her powers back. The bad news is…”

“Yes?”

“The bad news is it wasn’t the smoothest ride. For either of you. She pulled hard, Giles. Fight or flight. She fought.”

“Where is she now?”

“Beside you. Look.”

He tried to turn his head, but it hurt too much. “Will I…will it hurt her, if I draw some of it back a little?”

“I don’t know Giles, I honestly don’t know. This is new stuff for all of us. We got some good readings, but I haven’t been able to go over them yet. I…”

“Hmmm.”

“Look, Giles, I just want to say…”

“Later, Willow.”

“But…”

He had to think, had to process, settle himself enough to get a better grasp on what had happened here. That word again! He had to think, think about what he was going to…to do. He sighed and offered the best meek excuse he could.

“I’m tired. I know I just woke up, but I am tired. My head hurts. Save it, please…”

She looked conflicted, unhappy. But she left him. As soon as the door clicked shut, he forced himself to turn. His slayer, his Buffy, was indeed in a hospital bed beside him. Her hair was still damp. She didn’t look right. What exactly had happened to her? What had they done? He had to get the story, from Buffy directly. This was too important to leave to the others. He ignored the daggers of pain that still grazed his forehead, and closed his eyes, muttering a short incantation.

**

Giles materialized in what appeared to be a garden, a lush and verdant one with flowers and greenery and an adorable little duck pond that looked like it had taken some work to build. It was raining, hard. Bits of lightning lit up a small paved trail that was obviously an invitation.

He followed the trail, keeping his eyes peeled for signs of life. He knew that people tended to generate an avatar, a mediator to manage the exchange when their psyche was invaded. He would not necessarily encounter the Buffy he knew. He had to admit, after she had apparently been in his head so much, he was curious to be in hers for a change. He wondered what form her avatar would take.

After some time walking, he came upon a clearing, and when he stepped out of the shadow of the trees, he was before a small gazebo. Buffy sat on its bare, dirt-packed floor, huddled in a blanket and shivering as the rain pelted down around her through cracks in the ceiling.

He joined her, willing himself not to surrender to the mood. This was all imaginary, wasn’t it? There was no rain. He had no reason to be so numb and cold…

She looked up at him with wide, unhappy eyes. “How’d you get here?”

“Same way you would have, I expect.”

She turned away from him to gaze out at the sodden landscape. “You should have stayed inside. It’s so cold and wet. I’ll never get warm.”

“You will. Come back with me, and I’ll warm you up.”

“Will you? I don’t see how you can do that. You’re so cold yourself…”

This was starting to feel uncomfortably metaphorical. “Meaning?”

“Meaning…look, she loves you, okay? Buffy…loves you…”

“You do?”

“SHE does. I’m just a mouthpiece. Look, she loves you, she does, but honestly, you don’t have the best track record of dealing as far as this stuff goes, do you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, she’s retreated, somewhere back here, behind me. She’s retreated because she got scared and she got hurt and she got traumatized. By them. But when she’s ready and she comes back out again, she’ll be OUT, you know? But you…”

Slowly, it sank in. “I stay in my head,” he realized.

She gave him a confirming nod. “You do. Even when you’re out there, a part of you stays in here, doesn’t it? A part you never bring out for her. Well, how can you come in here and expect her to respond to it when even you can’t?”

“I can respond. I do respond.”

“But only in here. Look, in here is not the problem. She can manage in here too. But if you want her to follow you out there? You have to be prepared to go with her.”

He zapped out of her head and woke up in his bed, still feeling the dampness from the rain on his arms.

**

When Willow finally tracked Giles down again, he was not in his room anymore. He had retreated to the gym, where he was pacing before a punching bag, trying to steel himself for a hit.

She came gently up behind him. “You’re not ready for that.”

“Sod off.”

There was a hardness in his eyes. She deserved that, she supposed. “Look, Giles, I just want to say, about this morning…”

“What? What would you like me to say about it?”

She shifted uncomfortably, trying to get closer to him. “Nothing. I don’t want you to say anything. But I want to say something. Giles, I didn’t know. He…”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“Well, I want to say it! You’re mad, okay, I guess I would be too in your position, but…”

“Would you? You think ‘mad’ covers what I’m feeling right now? Willow, what happened this morning was an abomination. A betrayal. Of all buttons for you to push…”

“TRAVERS pushed it.”

He dropped his defensive posture and faced her with tired eyes. “No, Willow.”

“Giles, I didn’t know, I honestly didn’t know he was going to do that.”

“Well, if you know that little, perhaps you shouldn’t be in charge of us, should you?”

She closed her eyes, a little desperately. “That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it? You knew he would do something, didn’t you? All right, perhaps you didn’t know he would go quite as far as he did, but you knew he would do something, and it would be horrible. And you let him! You let US walk right into that! And for what?”

“For you! For you and Buffy!”

“Enough. You care for me and you care for Buffy, but admit it, Willow. You would sell us out. If you thought you were serving some higher purpose, restoring some greater balance, saving a life, saving the world…you would sell us out.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“You did!” He sighed heavily, at last coming up beside her. “It is the council way. I suppose I can’t blame you for it. But…I can’t endure it either. Willow, I will not spend one night further in this place. No more protocols. No more guards or nurses or babysitters. You will get us out, tonight.”

She bit her lip. “It’s not that simple.”

“I don’t care, you MAKE it simple. I will not spend one more day in the same building as that monster and his lackeys.”

“And…and me?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

She nodded, feeling her emotional side shut off as her brisk, watcher-trained brain took over the conversation. “You still have the issue of the bond, though. I’ll have to do a certain amount of monitoring…”

“You may. Discreetly. But not here. You’ll get us out, Willow. Before the day is done, you’ll get us out.”

“Giles, please, just calm down for a second! You need to calm down.”

“Do I? I don’t believe I do. How, exactly, will calming down improve things?”

“You’re still recovering. It’s a very delicate time, and…”

“And what? You know the extent of my injuries as well as anyone, Willow. Even with the slayer healing, I’ll probably always be, as you say, ‘recovering.’ Did you expect me to just…just LIE there, forever?”

“Nobody is expecting that. Look, Giles, I just want…”

“I don’t care what you want!” he exploded. “I don’t care what the council wants! Do you not understand that? Do you know what they’ve done to me? Do you know what they’ve done to Buffy? She is traumatized, Willow. She is curled up inside herself, small and cold and sad, and…”

“I know! And it hurts me too, that I didn’t see it coming, didn’t…didn’t stop it in time. But Giles, I…”

“Stop. I don’t want to hear it, Willow, I honestly, truly don’t. Yes, I do blame you a little. I blame Travers too, of course. But I blame myself as well, for…for just submitting, I suppose, for allowing you to run my life, and convincing myself that I needed Buffy to protect it.”

There was no way she could respond to that. It was like this morning, with Travers, she hated what he was saying, but at the same time, she was in awe at the rightness of it. It was clear to her now. His mental state had been on her mind ever since Buffy had told her about those hellhound puppies, and she had been wracking her brain trying to decode the symbolic meaning behind it. Dog had failed to protect him, so why should his mind try again with its puppies? And now, she saw it. Dog had represented Buffy, hadn’t it? It had been a symbolic representation of the promise Giles had extracted from her to protect him. But the puppies…those were coming from Giles. Those were him, standing up and saying he was okay again, that he could protect himself. He really was getting stronger, and she hadn’t seen it, and she hadn’t respected him for it, and he deserved that.

“Don’t blame yourself,” she said quietly, barely able to look him in the eye.

“Oh, I’m already over that. I’m moving on, Willow. Stepping up. And I’m taking her with me. This time, I get to be the protector. Travers won’t get near her again.”

Willow nodded slowly, blinking back a swelling tide of emotion as she tried to take his hand. He flinched away, and she left him, to go begin her preparations.

Giles waited until she was gone, then resumed his pacing. As he simmered off his anger, he felt his muscles warm. He stood before the heavy bag and tested it with a low, experimental kick. It rattled gently in its moorings. Stepping back, he shifted his weight into his hips, testing the joints. The muscles in his core were strong enough, just strong enough to support him now. It might ache a little, but the ache could be tolerated. He flexed, settling into a stable, balanced stance. Then he let loose with another kick, firmer and stronger than the last one. The bag snapped back with a satisfying thud, and Giles smiled. It felt good to be fighting again.

**

Buffy awoke to find herself in Giles’ room, on the spare cot she kept in there for his bad nights. Her watcher was pulling bits and pieces out of drawers and tossing them into a pack that was resting on his neatly made bed.

She called out, surprised to find her voice timid and scratchy. “Giles?”

He turned to her, smiled. There was a new fierceness in his eyes. “Buffy. How are you feeling?”

“Uh, fine,” she answered warily, clearing her throat and sitting up. “Um, how are you feeling?”

“Splendid. You needn’t worry about your belongings, by the way. I already have them packed.”

“Right. Cause we’re…going somewhere?”

“Yes. Somewhere hot, I expect. With beaches. I was quite clear about that when I checked in on Willow after my gym session.”

“Uh huh. Giles?”

“Hmmm?”

“Do you want to stop with the scary robot packing for a second and explain to me what the hell is going on here?”

“I had a chat with Willow while you were asleep. I made a few things clear to her.”

“Such as?”

“Such as…where to start, it’s…it was a long conversation. Two conversations, actually. We covered a lot of ground.”

“What sort of ground?”

“I explained to her that if I heard another justification, or reason, excuse, obfuscation, or denial out of her mouth, I could not be held responsible for my actions. And that if I saw Travers’ smug, toady face lurking about me even one more time, I would take all of her defensive posturing and shove it up his rear with my bare hands.” He smiled sweetly. “That sort of ground.”

“Ah.”

“So she agreed that perhaps it might be best if the two of us continue our recovery elsewhere. She still wishes to monitor our progress with the bond, and work with the data she has collected. I have agreed, for Graham and Kennedy’s sake. But I refuse to allow her to keep us here. The council owns properties throughout the world, she can work just as easily out of one of those.”

“Right.”

“I suggested somewhere with a beach,” he said. “I thought you would like that.”

“Yeah. Um, Giles, you’re…you’re okay, right? I mean, this, it’s…”

“What? You’re not still defending Willow, are you? After what she allowed to happen this morning, you’re not still defending her?”

“Well, it’s…it’s Willow, you know?”

“I do know. I know that she’s a smart and powerful girl who is perhaps a bit too easily led on certain things, and that given the choice between entrusting her with power, or fighting to yield it myself, I choose the latter.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“Now, don’t look so stricken. I’ll forgive her for what she has done to you today. But for the time being, I think both she and I will benefit from a little space. It might…diffuse the intensity of things a little. Does that make sense to you?”

“Yeah. And hey, I am happy to be sprung. This place depresses me.”

He inhaled deeply as if already smelling the fresh ocean air. “We should be leaving soon. Get ready.”

She wanted to ask him about the look in his eyes, that scary fighting look. But she could already hear footfalls in the corridor, and she was beginning to suspect that Giles was not the only one who had a few things to process.

**

They slept on the plane. Buffy hadn’t thought she could still be tired after the nap she had, but the morning’s trauma had taken more out of her than she thought. She was restless, and the nerves made her feel slow and heavy. Giles, on the other hand, had an energy she had not seen in him in years, ever since…since his accident. His eyes bobbed warily about the plane’s small cabin as they settled in. But he nodded off as soon as they reached cruising altitude. She momentarily wondered if he was faking it. Something was obviously going on with him, and he seemed disinclined to share it.

Eventually though, she followed his lead and fell asleep, waking just in time to transfer to a seaplane, which took them to their final destination, a small beachfront cottage somewhere on the coast. It was twilight, and the remnants of the sun splashed teasingly on the beach as they unloaded their gear.

When Buffy had finally trudged up to the cottage with the last of it, she found Giles poking through the cupboards in their apparently well-stocked little kitchen, looking for tea.

“So this is nice,” said Buffy, taking in the simple wooden cupboards and pine table and chairs. “Homey. Rustic.”

“Willow moved fast,” he said. “There is fresh food in the fridge, and the beds are made.”

She took a look around while he fiddled with the tea. The cottage was bigger than it had appeared to be from the outside. She and Giles had adjoining rooms, done up B&B style with a bed, a desk, and a nightstand of the same rustic wooden style she had found in the dining area. A patchwork quilt was spread neatly on each freshly laundered bed, and a communal sitting area was outfitted with a faded recliner, two plush, sinking couches, a large, low table with a jigsaw puzzle half-assembled atop it, and a makeshift bookcase of bricks and planks loaded down with an almost-impressive assortment of board games and stacks of paperback novels from the 1970’s. In spite of herself, she loved it.

“Giles? Do you play Monopoly?”

He walked gingerly toward her from the kitchen, balancing two steaming mugs. “Hmmm?”

“There are games here. Scrabble, Monopoly, Pictionary…”

She held up a moisture-stained playing card with a perky wave, then frowned as she made out the text. “Huh. Didn’t know Pictionary came in demon version.”

He put down the mugs and padded over to look. “Apparently it does. But that makes it so easy!”

“Easy? You’re telling me we’re supposed to know how to draw a…” She squinted again at the printing. “A Zeruthian Power Adz?”

“Well, I should think it would be fairly obvious. There are some distinctive runic iconographs which all but give it away.”

“Riiiight. So we leave the creepy board games alone, what do you say?”

He shrugged. “I was never terribly into games.”

Buffy picked up one of the mugs and settled on the nearest plushy sofa. “So what DO you want to do tonight?”

For the first time all day, his newly sparkling eyes went flat and wary. “Do?”

“I think we have some stuff to talk about. Today just…it happened so fast, you know? And I thought we could just…”

“Hmmm. I believe I’ll turn in early. Goodnight, Buffy.”

“But Giles, I…”

He put down his mug, watching her carefully. “I will turn in early,” he said again.

She got the hint. There was something on his mind, but he was not ready to share it just yet. As usual. She deflated with disappointment. She had been so sure his mood would improve when they were sprung from council HQ. And now, here they were, alone, not even the buffer of Willow between them…and nothing had changed. Lovely beach notwithstanding, this would not be a vacation. 

**

Buffy woke up to an impossibly blue sky, sunny morning and empty cottage. She poured herself a cup of orange juice and padded outside in bare feet to go looking for him. The sand made for an easy trail. She followed his footsteps down to the silent, empty beach.

“Hey,” she said.

He was lying in a bed of sand, hands clasped behind sea-spiked hair, eyes squinted a little from the sun, but features otherwise smooth and untroubled. He smiled faintly as she settled down beside him.

“I was wondering when you’d be along.”

“Yeah. Look, Giles, about last night…”

“I love you,” he interrupted.

She flinched. “What?”

“That is perhaps not the most elegant way to make the declaration,” he continued with a chuckle. “But I’m through playing games. I had to get it out.”

She sensed a response was not required just yet.

“It scared me so much,” he continued softly. “Scared me more than what was happening to my body, and what was happening to my mental state along with it. Who would have thought, with all I’ve been through, that love would be the greater struggle?”

She gently took his hand, stilling the tremors with her firm, strong grip. “But why? Why did it scare you so much?”

“Same reason it scares you a little. Because you never get to choose. I wanted to be a grocer, you know. Or a fighter pilot, or a veterinarian. I wanted a philosophy degree and a farm full of horses. Didn’t get to choose that though, did I? Didn’t get to choose the council, or the hellmouth, or the mayor or Glory. Didn’t get to choose Jenny or Olivia, my damned sacred ‘destiny’ took care of them for me. So why should I think I would get to choose this time? I suppose, on some level, denial seemed easier. Safer. Like…if I didn’t try to claim you, you wouldn’t be taken away.”

“Giles…”

“And then, after the accident…everything got muddled, got swamped. And I was angry and bitter and hurting. So weak, so sick, so…so damaged, I was nearly flattened by the pain and disgust and self-loathing. And there YOU were, by my side through it all, so strong and magnificent and invulnerable, and I thought…somehow, I thought I had to be at least as strong…”

“Or what? You wouldn’t be worthy?” She kept her voice as soft and gentle as she could in spite of her need to be absolutely, bluntly clear about this. “You know that’s silly, right? I mean, rationally…you know?”

“And then when Willow sprung upon us that little experiment,” he continued, not even hearing her. “Something inside me just…just snapped. Buffy, I don’t want to be a patient or an invalid or a victim. Sod prophecy, sod magic, sod powers and destiny and bloody idiot councils. It’s my life! I don’t want to just let things just…just HAPPEN! If there is a chance, a small chance that I can…that I can have what I wish to have with you…”

She blinked back a tear. “There is. There definitely is.”

“Well then, I want it. If fate only gives us a day, I’ll die when that day is over, but I still want to have it.”

He closed his eyes with a sharp exhale. “There. I said it.”

“Boy howdy, did you ever. Do you have any idea how long I’ve been waiting for that?”

That brought him out of his post-sharing shell-shock a little. “What? Really?”

“Yeah. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but during your psychic therapy, I was…I was in your head a bit. And you said something. And…well, I’ve been waiting to hear it in real life ever since.”

There was longing in her voice, and he winced a little. “I’m sorry. Buffy, I’m so sorry.”

“Hey! Stop that, I see where this is going, and I want to put an end to it right now. Giles, it will not make you a bad boyfriend if you are less than perfect, do you understand?”

“This isn’t about being perfect. This is about me doing my part. I have been such a…such a burden. Such a bloody project. And the one thing you needed from me…”

“Stop now! I mean it, Giles. Yeah, you got hurt. But you got hurt saving my life! Which you did because you love me! So none of this ‘being a burden’ crap, okay?”

He fidgeted, unable to meet her eyes. “I just thought…I saw you yesterday, after what happened. And I thought, I did this. I asked you to protect me.” His voice broke a little. “I asked you to STAY with me! And I thought…if I hadn’t needed you, you wouldn’t have been there. You wouldn’t have gotten hurt…”

She reached over, squiggled closer to him, brushed a tear out of his eye with her finger. “And the whole time, you didn’t see that I needed you too? Giles, do you have any idea…any…what kind of person, what kind of man you are? I mean, okay, you sulk and you pout and you have some really unattractive moments, and honestly, if you’d been able to have this conversation a year ago, we might have both saved ourselves a lot of angst and unresolved sexual tension. But you’re really sweet too. You have a deep, genuine respect for me on a level that no man I have been with has ever had. You have such a gentle soul, but you’re strong when you need to be. You remember every single thing you ever hear, do you know how good a lover that will make you?”

The tears kept flowing in spite of his laughter. “I am an excellent lover,” he managed between sporadic hiccups. “People say so.”

She laughed too. “Look, Giles, my point is that you didn’t have to ASK me to stay. Do you understand me? You never had to ask me to stay.”

He breathed out the last of his sniffles. “That’s…good to hear.”

“It was good to say. I need you to understand that you still get to need me. Telling me you love me doesn’t change that.”

“Okay.”

“Okay you understand, okay you’ll work on it, or okay you’re just saying that to end the conversation?”

He closed his eyes again, and she caught a slight tightness in his features. “All right,” she sighed. “I’ll let that one go for now. But Giles, I need you to feel like you can still tell me the needy stuff. You have to be able to turn off the strong invincible mode, okay? You ARE still recovering from some serious medical business, and we don’t have the council doctors around to adjust things anymore. If you need to draw…”

“I am not drawing. I…I can’t rely on that forever, Buffy. I need to start weaning myself off of that.”

“Start weaning yourself tomorrow, then. But for today, I want you to draw.”

“But…”

“Stop it, and listen to me for a second. You are emotionally exhausted from that big revelation you just made, you’ve been in the hot sun for god knows how long, and you haven’t eaten yet. This is not the time to test yourself. You’re in pain, aren’t you?”

“It is tolerable.”

“Yeah. Not the time, Giles. Draw.”

“You can’t force me.”

“I shouldn’t have to, and that right there was the dead giveaway that I’m right about this, and you know it. When you don’t feel well? You act like a two-year-old. Now, stop pouting, and draw the damn powers. Then march your butt inside and drink some orange juice before you collapse from dehydration. Chop chop.”

He looked faintly wounded, but he heeded her instruction and trudged off toward the cottage. She could not hold back the tiny happy dance as she followed him in. He loved her. And together, they would face what was to come.

**

The morning saw both of their moods improving. An hour or so of slayer healing and a home-cooked breakfast saw him grow downright talkative again.

“Something else I’ve been meaning to ask you about,” he mumbled through a mouthful of sticky toast. “Travers. I’ve been getting the oddest feeling about him.”

She poured him a refill on his juice. “Oh?”

“I mean, I never did like him, the bond didn’t change things as far as THAT goes. But something did change. He makes me…twitchy a little. Doesn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“Something happened, and nobody would tell me what it was. It was part of Willow’s psychic therapy, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, Giles. But…”

“But we can’t talk about it? Buffy…”

“I was gonna say,” she interrupted. “That it was an accident. We didn’t want to send him in, and we didn’t know what he would do when he got there.”

He flashed her a mischievous grin. “And also, that Willow told you not to talk to me about it?”

“She told me not to talk to you about it because you had to work through the psychic baggage on your own. But I think you’ve done that. It’s why I told you this morning about what you said when I was in there, and it’s why I think you’re asking me now about Travers. You remember something, don’t you?”

He nodded slowly. “You understand, the psychic plane, it’s all metaphorical. I will never actually recall what happened there in any sort of literal way.”

“Yes…”

“But Willow is right about one thing, whatever happens there does leave its mark, and in time, the mind does make sense of it. Now, Travers…he said something yesterday, just before he strapped me into the chamber. He said I should fight you, Buffy.”

“What?”

“He said that when I felt you drawing the powers away from me, I should fight you. And something about the way he said it, the casual way he spoke of drawing another mind close to yours, and…tussling, to use his word….and I got the oddest feeling. Like a twinge, a sickly feeling I couldn’t quite put my finger on…and it hit me. That’s what he did to me, isn’t it? He got into my head, and he…he tussled?”

“Yeah. Yeah, Giles, he did. You had…you know how this stuff works, right? You had a gatekeeper.”

He nodded quickly.

“You had a gatekeeper, and it…well, it gatekept. Travers blundered in and couldn’t get past it. So he fought it. And he killed it.”

Giles took a minute to process that, his face growing alternately thoughtful, then pained. When he spoke, it was in a hushed, stunned whisper. “What a horrific violation.”

“More than that. It sent you into a coma bad enough to force Willow’s hand on the procedure. We almost lost you, Giles. You could have died.”

He shook off his suddenly somber mood beamed her a shy smile. “But you saved me. Just like I saved you.”

She braved a snuggle, drawing his arm around her shoulder. “Yeah. But still…”

“But still. No more secrets.”

“Yeah. Are you okay, Giles?”

“I am. I already knew, Buffy. On some level, I knew. I am glad to have it…to have it out, at least. No more secrets.”

“Yeah. So…what now?”

“Now? Why, we put it all behind us, of course, and we enjoy our little holiday.”

“Put it all behind us, like, we processed how we’re feeling and it’s all okay, or put it all behind us, like, repressing the trauma and secretly brooding on it?”

He ran his fingers through her hair with a patient sigh. “You know, you have demons too, my dear.”

“Exactly! Cause there’s a whole give and take thing, just like I was saying.”

“So if you need to talk about any of yours, you will of course feel free to do so. And if I need to talk about mine, I will surely let you know. But in the meanwhile, we are at the beach, bathed in curative ocean air…”

The rest of the day was like a fantasy. They packed a picnic basket so they wouldn’t have to leave the ocean’s side. There was fresh fruit, sandwiches, even beer. They stayed in their swimming clothes, played Frisbee, went for walks and collapsed under a flowering tree to take in the sunset, bodies slick and salty and rough with sand.

“You know, we probably should eat something a little more substantial,” sighed Buffy. She nuzzled her face into his bare chest, cuddling his arms around her. “Keep our strength up, all that.”

“Speaking of strength…” He squinted a little, regarding her with a solemn gaze. “Do you feel that?”

“What?”

“Here…” He squinted again, his head subtly nudging an invisible something toward her. “There. Do you feel that?”

She frowned, trying to focus her mind on the sensations around her. “The bond?”

He nodded. “I’ve been practicing a little. Nothing serious, don’t fret. Just trying to see if I can…refine my control a little. I’m picturing it in my mind’s eye like a thermometer. I’ve just lowered the temperature a few degrees.”

“I thought I told you not to experiment.”

“Oh, I assure you, your little pep talk was quite effective. I have no wish to suffer needlessly. I just wanted to see how low I could go before I started feeling it.”

“And?”

“And it turned out I could go a good deal lower than I had thought. I’m at a comfortable level right now. Tomorrow, I would like to start scaling it back a little.”

“Scaling it back? Would that mean you’d be in pain again?”

“Perhaps a little. But I need to heal, Buffy. I need to start letting my body adjust to its own equilibrium. I’m getting fitter, getting stronger. I will keep progressing, and I won’t need to rely on the slayer healing so much.”

“Well, okay. Just…I would hate to see you have a relapse. Don’t push it too hard. Promise me?”

He kissed the top of her head. “As if I could refuse you anything. Perhaps you are right about eating something a little more substantial. I have had nothing but grapefruit, two cans of beer and a handful of rice crackers. I would not say no to a little dinner…”

They roused themselves from their cozy little perch and headed back toward the cottage, discussing menu ideas. They found a storage shed behind the cottage, and dug out a small tabletop barbecue. Giles spent an hour doing the guy thing, happily tinkering with it. His muscle warmed to the activity. He felt strong. He felt wonderful. They cooked up fresh fish, and roasted potatoes, and tiny carrots slapped with butter and spices and bulbs of garlic.

“I could die right now,” Buffy said, biting into the last of the potatoes with a groan of pleasure.

“I should hope not. I should like to enjoy my woman a little bit longer before I have to give her up.”

“Now, don’t go getting all maudlin and depressive,” she told him, wagging her finger at him sternly. “Nobody’s going to make you give me up. Nothing is going to take me away from you, Giles.”

He shivered a little, finally feeling his surplus of uncovered skin. “I suppose…”

She pulled away from him, the mood broken. “Well, don’t sound too convinced there.”

“I’m sorry. I just have this…this feeling.”

“Oh, here we go…”

“I have this feeling. I can’t quite put my finger on what it is. It’s like the feeling I had about Travers, almost. An undertow. A twinge. A vague, unsettling sense that something…”

She frowned. “That sounds a lot like my slayer spidey sense. Is this maybe part of the bond?”

“I don’t know. Are you feeling it too?”

She closed her eyes, forced herself to block out the sensations of the surf and the spice and the sweat. She felt the tentacles of the bond, his presence, her presence. And she felt another presence too. A dark presence. Before she could draw away from it, it pulled—and she felt herself slipping under.

**

Buffy opened her eyes and was instantly assailed by stimuli. She was in what appeared to be the world’s seediest, dirtiest bachelor pad. There was a cracked leather couch littered with pizza boxes and candy wrappers, and a decades-old tape deck spewing indeterminate noise. There was one of those window-perched air conditioner boxes, but it was broken. The smell of burnt curry clung to the hot, sticky air and made her skin itch.

In a badly mismatched probably dumpster-found la-z-boy recliner, Alton Travers sat, arms folded across his chest, watching her with a look of manic, glorious triumph.

Buffy sighed. “I should have guessed.”

“Now, my dear, I wouldn’t be so flippant if I were you,” he smarmed. “Do you have any conception of the position you are currently in?”

She added up the signs, and amidst her flippant bravado, felt the beginnings of a horror that almost took her breath away. “If I had to guess,” she said, struggling to keep her voice even. “I’d say we’re in your head, Alton. You’ve muscled your way into the bond somehow, haven’t you?”

His shrug was casual, but he was clearly proud of himself. “I took an extra vial of blood when we were treating you yesterday after your little collapse. Wasn’t hard.”

She shuddered and took another look at the drab, pathetic surroundings. “And this was the best you could do for your first psychic house party? Most people pick gardens for this sort of thing, you know.”

“I’m not most people.”

“Obviously. What do you want, Alton?”

“My dear. The same thing I always wanted. To be a part of this, of course.”

It was finally dawning on her that this was not just a bluster, a one-time show of power to put her in her place. Travers was part of the bond now. He could insert himself into her head…or into Giles’ head…any time he wanted to. He could sap her strength, her power, draw it away from Giles, even. He could interrupt. He could…he could invade. Her skin crawled. This wasn’t right.

“I’d tried to do the best job I could, you know,” continued Travers, circling around her with predatory triumph. “When Mr. Giles was injured, who came to his aid? Who funded the doctors, the specialists, the nurses at the home six days a week? And all of this, while safeguarding the fate of the world from the forces of darkness! And did I get any appreciation for it? Did I get anything but complaints, and suspicion, and recrimination for my efforts?”

Most of his efforts had actually been Willow’s efforts, Buffy thought. Travers, the slimy toad, had done little but bluster and shout and get in people’s ways.

“And then THIS happened,” he continued, with a sweep of his arm indicating her. “And I tried, at every turn, I tried to participate. And at every turn, I was shut out. It was delicate, this whole magic business. It was complicated. There were factors,” he sneered. “I am so tired of that. I come from a long line of watchers, Buffy. I do my job, and I do it well. Is it my fault I have to be the bad cop sometimes? Keep the higher goal in mind? This isn’t just about you, you know.”

She was too repulsed to fight him further. “Yeah,” she muttered quietly. “I think you’ve proven that.”

“Damn right I have. Can’t shut me out NOW, can you, slayer? Can’t shove me aside like a dog, can you? Hmmm?”

Perhaps not forever, if he really had jammed himself into the bond. But Giles had access to her slayer powers for weeks now, and he was only just learning to control that access. Travers was still a newbie here. She would not be able to hold him back forever, but for now, she could. She swallowed back a clot of nausea, muttered a silent apology for the strain she was about to inflict upon Giles, and in her mind’s eye, searched for the filament of the bond that surrounded her. She reached for it in all directions, and pulled with all her might. She awoke in Giles’ arms, her body shaking with uncontrollable sobs.

**

He bundled her in a towel and practically carried her back to the house.

“I’ve got you,” he soothed, placing her gently on the bed. He climbed into it with her, wrapping her tightly in a blanket and even more tightly with his arms. “I’m here, Buffy, I’ve got you, now hush and tell me what’s happened.”

He stroked her hair and murmured sweet nothings into her ear, still a little shaky himself from her rough psychic grab. It was some moments before she was calm enough to speak.

“Travers,” she sobbed, clutching to Giles with a desperation that under other circumstances might have embarrassed her. “Oh God, Giles, I could feel him, and he was there, and he’s gonna come after us, and…”

“Whoa, Buffy, slow down. He was where?”

“He’s put himself into the bond.”

He spooned against her, clinging too. “How?”

“Stole a vial of my blood when I was knocked out from his little experiment. Giles, I feel dirty. Violated. This is like…”

She broke into fresh sobs, and he shushed her gently. “I know. Sweetheart, I know.”

“The thought that he can just invade my mind, my slayer powers…” A new thought filled her with an even stronger horror. “He can jump into your mind too, can’t he?”

“Hush now,” he soothed.

“And he pulled me into HIS mind, and I didn’t want to be there, and Giles, his mind was so…so disgusting. So dirty. So…small.”

“Symbolic levels,” Giles muttered absently, stroking her hair again. “It’s all a manifestation.”

She knew that, remembered Willow explaining it to her. Remembered the slathering hellhound beast Giles had once conjured to protect himself, remembered nearly losing him for good when it failed to, the last time Travers had pushed himself on Giles. She remembered, too, the flowers she helped him plant in his mental garden, how as they grew as he got stronger, and saner and more at ease. Manifestations, all of them. Not real, like this was, like him, with her.

“That’s right,” he soothed, watching her breathing settle a little. “I’m here, Buffy. I’m here, and he’s gone, for now, at least.”

“But he’ll be back,” she sniffled. “He’ll be back, oh god, Giles, he’ll be back.”

“Maybe not.”

She dried her eyes, looking up at him with the first stirrings of hope. “Really?”

“There might be a way to protect ourselves, to block him out somehow. I’ll need some time to get a few things together…you don’t think he’ll try again tonight, do you?”

“No. He just wanted to make his point, I think. Announce himself. Gloat a little.”

“All right. I want you to close your eyes, Buffy. See the bond inside your mind. What does it look like?”

“Like a big, round, glowy ball with all these little blue threads coming out of it. Some of them are loose. Some of them are tied onto a little ring.”

“That would be the manifestation of my presence, I suppose. Untie them, Buffy.”

“What?”

“Will them to be untied, then draw them away from the ring.”

“Will it hurt you?”

“Probably. But you will need your strength to fend him off until I get some protections in place for us. Draw in the loose threads. Wrap them around the giant glowy ball, and hold them there.”

She concentrated, ignoring the stiff little grunt from Giles as his now non-fortified muscles settled in his still aching body. In the centre of the glowy ball, a hand came up and clutched the threads.

She was still afraid, but she couldn’t help smiling a little. “Well, look at that. I really can draw back at will.”

“I never doubted that you could. Now, sit tight, Buffy. Keep an eye on things. If anyone tugs at those threads and tries to take them away from you, can you fend them off?

“I…I think so.”

“Let’s try. It’s easy now, because I’m not fighting you. But here, I’ll resist…”

She watched the floating ring drift closer. It too had a hand in its centre, and in one swift, harsh motion, the hand reached. Two golden fingers snared on one of her blue threads, and pulled them away. In a blind panic, she groped for the connection, flailed until she hit the point of tension, and tugged. The next thing she knew, Giles was on the bed beside her, holding her as she gasped and shuddered with fresh tears.

“And that was only me,” he told her grimly. “He’ll come at you harder. I wish we had more time to practice.”

“Just keep him away. Find whatever spell you need to find, and keep him away. Giles, what it felt like, being in his head like that, feeling what he had done…I don’t want to feel like that again. He attacked me, Giles. He…he violated me. And he’ll do it again. He’ll do it again…”

“Not if I can help it.” He disentangled himself and rose, cracking his fingers, going into business mode. “You just sit tight for a few minutes. I’ll take care of this.” 

**

When Buffy came to, it was light again, and she was alone. She had a headache that was migraine-caliber, and her skin was sticky with ocean that had not been showered off. Yet she had apparently gotten enough rest to be reasonably steady on her feet when she rose from the bed. She peeked in on Giles on her way to the bathroom. His bed had not been slept in.

She padded into the kitchen and found him still clad in his rumpled swimming clothes, bare-chested, goosebumps prickling his arms and a look of intense concentration wrinkling his beautiful eyes.

“You should have slept,” she said. “You aren’t at full strength yet.”

“Hmmm. How are you feeling?”

“Like dog meat.”

“Did you sleep okay?”

“Must have. I don’t remember.”

“No dreams? Visitations? Anything like that?”

“Don’t remember. I feel like crap, though.”

“It worked, then. He must have given you quite a battering, trying to break through, but if you slept, then my shield held.”

“Your shield?” She suddenly noticed a small golden charm, attached to her wrist via a hair elastic. “Did you…”

“Enchanted an amulet. I cast a spell on you, Buffy.”

“But…”

“The bad news first. I spoke to Willow, filled her in on Travers’ little mutiny. She says he’s gone. No trace of him at council HQ, and a locator spell did not find him. He’s hiding, and well.”

“Great.”

“The good news is, we might be able to fend him off until she finds him. That amulet only works while you’re sleeping, though. Now that you’re awake…”

Her chest suddenly tightened, and she nearly collapsed. “He’s trying again. Giles, help me! I feel him, and I can’t keep him back…”

“You can. I’m here.” He gripped her hand at once, and began to loudly chant. “Hold tight,” he commanded. “Hold tight, hold tight, hold tight…”

She winced, her skin prickling, sensing the competing magics swirling around her. She felt Giles try to draw her powers off of her. She let him. His chanting grew louder, and his grip on her hand tightened. But she could see him weakening, see the slight tremble creeping into his fingers, see a familiar crease of pain roll into his eyes. Not again. She would not let him suffer again at the hands of Travers.

In her mind’s eye, she reached toward the ring that represented Giles’ presence in the bond. Gently, she pulled it nearer and helped his grasping hand catch the last few tendrils of her slayer powers. Then she retreated inside her mind, deep in the haze of that giant, glowing ball.

Travers was waiting for her. He was standing in the foggy mist, looking around at the haze with frank curiosity.

“I always wondered what I’d find inside your head,” he said.

“Screw you.”

“Now, my dear…”

“You call me that again and I’ll kick you in the nuts, Travers.”

“If you can find me. I’m good at hiding, you know.”

“So I hear. Look, let’s make this quick, Alton. What do you want, exactly?”

“What do I want? Why, I want to know, Buffy. I want to see. I want to experience slayer strength, and run with slayer stamina. I want to explore how the bond works so I can find out how to make it, how to break it, how to…to use it. And I’ll do it, Buffy. If I have to crawl through every inch of your mind and his, I will decode just how this magic works.”

“I won’t let you inside his head. You’ve done enough damage there.”

“You think you can stop me, little girl?”

She was nearly overcome with a fury so strong it was almost physical. It wouldn’t do to throw up inside her own head, she told herself. Before she could help it, she had cast a protective glance Giles’ way, as his invisible hand clutched madly at the threads of her power, drawing on them for the strength to keep Travers at bay, not realizing she had already let him in. Travers peered curiously over her shoulder.

“Is that him? He can’t protect you, you know. He can’t even protect himself!”

Can’t he? She suddenly wondered. She had been in his head again just before the experiment Willow had done, and he had been making fortifications. He had more than one gatekeeper now. What had he said? Dog…Dog had puppies. Vicious, pointy-toothed little hellhound puppies. Were they…was Giles…strong enough now for a fight?

She watched Travers admire the manifestation of her proud, fighting watcher with a smirk of satisfaction, and at once, she had enough. No more games, as Giles had said. It was time to take a stand, and she suddenly had an idea of just how to do it. She would not try to keep Travers out of Giles’ mind. She would invite him in.

“All right,” she said, motioning to Travers with one hand. “You really want to see inside his head? Come on, then.”

“Just like that?”

“I’m tired of fighting. I want this done. Come see what you want to see, then leave us the hell alone, you sociopathic little cretin.”

It was just the right button to push. “I make the rules here!” he screamed. “Have you forgotten what I have done? You can’t keep me out, slayer. You can never keep me out!”

“I’m not trying to,” she said. I…invite you in.”

She snapped her fingers, and the mist cleared. They were in her garden now, the little gazebo retreat she had brought Giles to for their long-ago mental picnic. She led him down the little path until they came to a large, stone door.

“We just go through here,” she told him. “He’ll be on the other side.”

Travers was too eager. He pushed open the door and stepped into another garden, equally lush, verdant and watered and the picture of health. Giles had obviously been continuing his mental fortifications since her last visit here. The dead patches in the grass had healed, and the air around her glowed with energy.

She let Travers blunder forward, and followed him at a distance. As he was about to round the corner and head toward the pond, she gave a sharp whistle.

An animalistic howl echoed in the distance. Travers stopped. “What was that?”

But it was too late for questions. She heard the far-away clash of splintering wood as the hellhound puppies broke the gate to their little pen, and she felt the vibrations of a dozen pairs of paws as they thundered toward them. Travers barely had time to blink in surprise before he was lost in a maelstrom of sharp talons and snapping jaws. The hellhound puppies were all grown up. One of them broke free from the feeding frenzy and trotted over to Buffy, wagging his tail, his bloodied tongue lolling benignly in greeting. 

**

Again, she slept without knowing it. But this time, she woke up with Giles beside her. His respiration was deep and even, and his face was untroubled by lines.

Cautiously, she cast her mind inward. The blue ball was growing brightly, its tendrils fanning out like a glorious supernatural spider. The ring hovered touching-distance, and some of the tendrils grazed it as it floated beside her. But the desperate, grasping hand had withdrawn inside the protective circle of the ring again.

And in the real world, beside her, Giles was stirring.

“Buffy,” he murmured happily, still not quite awake.

“Hey you.”

“I have some news,” he said. “As soon as I am awake again, I have some news.”

“Take your time. I kind of like this, you know, this you and me thing, with the snuggling.”

“You have the most adorable bed-head,” he said.

“Hey! Here I was, being all romantic with the snuggling, and that’s what you give me?”

“Well, we’re in a relationship now. Didn’t you tell me that being in a relationship means you don’t have to always be perfect?”

“Touche. All right, you clever thing, you. No more snuggling. Tell me your news.”

He sat up, tousled his hair a little. “In the kitchen.”

She tensed, feeling suddenly anxious. “Is everything…”

“Kitchen. Come along, it’s all right…”

She padded after him, still in a nightshirt and bare feet. Willow was sitting at their kitchen table, drinking a cup of coffee and poring over a stack of file folders.

“Buffy. Giles.”

“Willow.” She turned to Giles. “Is she…”

“It’s all right,” he said again. But he did not quite look Willow in the eye. “Tell her the news, Willow. About Travers.”

“We found him last night,” Willow said. “In a hotel, about five miles from here. He had…officially, they are saying heart attack. But he had the oddest scratch marks all over his body, and he looked terrified.”

Buffy nodded. “You know what he did.”

“Yeah. Buffy, I’m sorry.”

“Me too. I won’t lie, Will. It wasn’t fun.”

“Yeah. It won’t happen again, Buffy. To anyone. I found a way to break the bond.”

Buffy reached unconsciously for her watcher’s hand. “What? How?”

“Well, I did say we would be monitoring. And I guess…you found a way, didn’t you? To control the flow of the powers?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, it gave me the data I needed. I can break it now, Buffy. I have already done it. Graham and Kennedy are recovering at council HQ as we speak.”

“Oh. Um, good for them.”

“It’s why I came in person. I wanted to know…I mean, about you and Giles…”

Buffy and Giles traded glances, the answer unspoken, but agreed between them.

“We’ll let this one run its course the natural way,” Giles said after a moment. “We’ve had enough council interference in our lives for the time being.”

“Run its course…but Giles, you realize that might mean you would stay bonded to Buffy forever, don’t you?”

He regarded her implacably. “Yes. And?”

“Buffy?”

“We can control it now, Will. What’s the big?”

Willow shook her head. “Well, all right. If you do change your minds, I can always run the spell later.”

“Thanks. Was that it?”

“No, that’s not it. Look, I just wanted to make sure…I love you guys. You know that, right? And this whole thing, it just got so…”

“For all of us,” Buffy agreed.

“So are we…I just don’t want to leave it like this, and I was hoping…”

Giles reached for her hand across the table. “A wise person once told me that being in a relationship means you don’t always have to be perfect. You are dear to us, Willow. You will remain so.”

“But?”

“But nothing. We all are imperfect. We learn to be better. I have a ways to go yet before I am fully recovered. You have a ways to go too, I think.”

“Yeah. I guess I do. Will you help me, Giles?”

“Help you? How so?”

“Well, with Travers gone, we have a vacancy on the council now. You can be a watcher again.” She smiled hopefully. “Head watcher, even.”

“Willow?” He rose, and stretched, his gaze already drifting out the window, where a strong surf was beating up against the sand. “There is more to life than watching.”

**

Epilogue

They had wintered in the Northland, but some days ago, they started moving up the coast, toward the beach. It rained here in winter, rained a bleak, heavy curtain of water that gushed a dozen times a day in fits and starts from the grey, cloudy heavens. It poured off the fabulous mountains of the coast, and they nested.

The week before, they had lit a fire in their rented cottage, curled up under a quilt on a borrowed futon, and snuggled, enjoying the beat of the water on the windows.

“You’re ready to move on again, aren’t you?” he asked her.

She bit her lip, watching his eyes, gauging his reaction to what he had sensed from her. “Yeah, I think so. I kinda am.”

He smiled. “My little wanderer. Well, have you decided where?”

She pulled out the ‘Lonely Planet: New Zealand’ book from under the futon and thumbed through the well-tabbed sections. “I figured we’d take a week or two, head up the coast through the Waikato, find ourselves a beach…it’ll be summer soon. I could lifeguard.”

“You don’t have to work, Buffy.”

“I know. But I want to, a little. Something to do, you know?”

He did know. Much as he had enjoyed their frenetic, haphazard jaunt across the various islands of the Pacific Ocean, he was pleased to see signs of her wanting to settle again, to make a home together, somewhere.

“And it IS really nice to have some money for a change,” she added. “But I don’t want to burn through it TOO fast…”

This too, he understood. They still got a stipend from the Council, and in a place like this, with the life they led, it went just far enough. But they had come into an inheritance from the late Hank Summers some months ago, which had been a surprise both in its quantity and sentiment. And of course, there was the sale of the house. Neither of them had particularly cared to go back to Wales, to the memories of his convalescence. So they had money, both of them, for the first time in their lives. And they had run with it---to Fiji, then to Australia where Dawn was finishing her master’s degree, then to a plush but dull resort in Raratonga, and finally, to here, to a wild, barren countryside full of cliffs and mountains and surf and ceaseless, frigid rain.

“I do miss the sunshine,” he admitted, cuddling her head up against him. “To the beach, then?”

So they had packed up their van with the futon and with the quilt and with the books and bits and clothes they had brought here with them, and they cut a wild swath through the North Island, hiking the river walk in Hamilton, enjoying the rose gardens at Te Awamutu and the glow-worm caves in Waitomo. There was a geothermal park in Rotorua called Hell’s Gate, which was full of boiling pits of mud and shooting geysers of sulphurous steam. They visited that more from a sense of morbid responsibility than actual interest (“I suppose we should double check that the name isn’t literal,” Buffy had said) and found it a bit of a letdown, in light of their experience with the real, actual thing. They stayed in bed and breakfasts, ate greasy take-out from fish and chip shops (this was sadly not a nation of restaurateurs) and did the obligatory tourist bits---the marae visit, the zorb ride and the casino. They stopped at every beach from Raglan to Waihi, then finally set up base in the town of Mount Maunganui, because it had hot springs too, and that was always a bonus.

Now, they had been here nearly a week, and summer had finally come. It was the first clear day they had in months, and Buffy came home from her early-morning jog and newspaper run with a parcel for him.

“It’s a hammock,” she said, watching the slow smile spread on his face as he unwrapped it. “It’s been so cold and wet. Now that it’s nice again, I thought we could go outside.”

He submitted to the hammock cuddling, but she could sense that his mood was off a little. As they settled in with a bottle of feijoa juice and a plate of kumara chips, she scooted, giving him as much space as she could within the confines of the hammock. He needed space sometimes. She saw him tense a little as he sensed her intent to pry, but she nonetheless pasted on a big smile, then sprung her opening gambit.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“But will you anyway?”

“Yes. I had a phone call.”

“The council?”

“That’s your domain.”

“Willow?”

“Indirectly. It was Dawn, Buffy. She called this morning while you were out.”

Buffy frowned. “Is there a problem with the house?”

“No, that’s fine. The new owners don’t take possession until Monday, and they’re letting her stay until then. She and her friends are enjoying their little graduation present backpacker trip, and they like having a home base with laundry facilities.”

“When does she get back to Australia?”

“Tuesday. She already has a flat lined up near Xander’s place, in Adelaide. He’s helping her move in.”

“He mentioned. And?”

“And she has four job offers. One of them from Willow.”

“Ah.”

“She asked me what she should do about it. She told me she met with Willow and Cordelia. Did you know Cordelia is back with the council again?”

“Doesn’t surprise me. She always did like belonging, and she does owe Willow her life. Well, unlife. You know.”

“Yes. The offer was very generous, Buffy. More generous than the one we got.”

“We only give them one weekend a month, Giles.”

It was the only time they ever spent apart. She would make the drive to Auckland to the council office there, and run training maneuvers for three days with the slayers and souled vamps who made up the council contingent in this region. He would fly to Wellington and endure three days of therapy, physical and otherwise, with a healer who was half Ojibwa, half New Zealand Maori, and trained by the coven in Devon. They were always difficult days for him, and he did not speak about them even with Buffy.

“That’s what has her indecisive,” Giles said. “That, even after everything that’s happened, you still give them that weekend. You still think that their cause is important.”

“I may not always agree with how they handle things, but the cause itself…it IS important. I’d be a fool to say it wasn’t. There’s still a lot of evil out there, Giles.”

“Yes. And there are still a lot of causes. That’s what I told her, Buffy. There are other causes.”

“Yeah.” She cuddled in again. “Yeah, there are.”

“So, you’re okay with that? With me telling her so?”

“Oh Giles, of course I am! The council will carry on, whether they have her or whether they don’t. Plenty of evil, but plenty of soldiers too these days. And yeah, plenty of causes. She has to find her own way.”

They basked in the mutual agreement, enjoying the brisk, warming air. But he was still a little restless, and just after lunch, she found an excuse to run some errands and leave him to get the fretting out of his system. She came home to find a note on the table that he’d gone for a walk---and Willow, sitting on her futon.

“Hey! This is a surprise!”

“Hey Buffy.”

“How did you…”

“The door was open, and your house computer wasn’t on, so I just…”

“Yeah. We don’t have a house computer. They don’t really do that here.”

“Oh. Look, Buffy, I just…I talked to Dawn, and she told me she and Giles…”

“Yeah. He’s fine, Will.”

“Good, that’s good. I’m glad that Dawn…that he’s there for her, you know? That you guys are…are good…?”

“We are, Will. We really are.”

“And his health, is he…”

“He’s good. Well, for the most part. Has bad days from time to time, sometimes draws a little. He has to keep up with his exercises, or things get bad real fast. But he’s good.”

The awkwardness hung between them for a second. Willow stood, moved like she was leaving, then found her bravery and sat back down again.

“Buffy, I miss you. I didn’t just come to ask about Dawn. I miss you.”

Buffy took a deep breath and moved to join her on the futon. “Yeah,” she admitted. “I miss you too.”

“And I just hate that it’s been this way, all formal and businessy and like we have to have a reason for every time we talk, you know? I hate that Giles pretends it’s all okay but tenses up every time he hears my name. I did that to him, I know I did. I did that to YOU. And I’m sorry. Buffy, I’m really sorry. I want it not to be this way.”

“I can’t decide that for him.”

“Yeah. Well, for what it’s worth, I did leave the council…”

“Willow!”

“Not totally. I mean, I’ll consult, like you do. I sort of feel like if I don’t keep an eye on things and it all goes bad, I’ll feel too responsible. But I resigned from the executive. Giles is right, there are other causes.”

“Will, if this is just about proving to Giles how sorry you are…”

“It’s not, it’s really not. I’ve been thinking about this for awhile, you know. I guess we’re all hitting new phases in life, aren’t we? Dawn, with the graduation, you and Giles with the vagabond simple life beach bum thing…and me, with…I don’t know, exactly. I mean, what I did for the council was important, IS important, but it’s also…I’m ready for a little peace too, you know?”

“Where will you go?”

“Well, I thought I might stay here for a few weeks, if that’s okay. As soon as the last of the winter rain dries up, they open up the camp by Tongariro. There are some nice trails up there. Nothing like a little nature to clear the head.”

Buffy smiled. “That sounds nice.”

“Then I might stay with Xander after that. He’ll be finished helping Dawn set up her flat by then, and he said there might be a place for me. He’s thinking of branching out into real estate. I mean, he already builds houses, why not sell them too? I think…I think that might be a good gig for me, you know? Helping people find their way home?”

“Yeah. Yeah, that sounds nice, Will. That sounds really nice.”

“So, is Giles…can I…”

“He isn’t here,” said Buffy. “But I know where he’ll be…”

Willow followed her outside, to the little footpath, onto the lush, deep sand. They walked along the shoreline down to Mount Maunganui itself, a squat, round hill that was plunked on the beachfront like a giant earthen cherry. It was a short, easy hike to the peak, and they found him there, lying on his stomach, staring over the edge of the Mount at the sky-tinged view.

“Hey,” said Buffy.

He looked up at her and smiled. “Hey.” Then he noticed Willow and acknowledged her with a terse hello.

“Willow has some news,” Buffy said. She motioned to her friend to sit, and Willow obediently plopped down beside Giles. “She’s making some changes, Giles.”

There was something in her tone that reached him, and he looked at Willow again, squinting a little, his muscles untensing and his body relaxing as he saw something within her, a change, a calmness, a familiarity. A sincerity.

“I miss you, Giles,” Willow said.

“I miss you too,” he admitted softly.

“And I was hoping we could…we could try again? I’m leaving the council, Giles. Making a new life somewhere. I want you in that life.”

He did not answer, but she sensed his last knots of tension smoothing. She lay down beside him, matching his posture, and they looked out at the coastline as it grazed the ocean and stretched between the mountains.

“It’s so beautiful here,” Willow said.

He nodded, his fingers reaching unconsciously for Buffy’s hand, but his eyes staying on Willow. “It is,” he answered. He squinted a little as the sun shifted. “I think the rain is finally over.”

“Yeah. Looks like.”

He sighed contentedly, letting the sun wash over them. “It’s been grey for so long,” he said. “We deserve to see the sky.”

The end