Rupert Giles dropped a beaten Buffy Summers off at her door and made certain she got into her mother safely. As he turned the ignition and drove away, he decided not to go home – for awhile he just needed to keep driving.
***
Like riding a bloody bicycle! Except I’m the only one who knows just how bloody. Heroin, cigarettes, alcohol: there’s no high to compare it too. And like any addiction once it’s in you, you’ll be tempted forever.
Hell! It had been years since he’d felt the easy power, the warm release. How simple it had been to walk into a room and walk out with his arm around the most attractive person there. Know that he didn’t even need to walk out -- that if he’d ordered a partner to please him publicly, they would have done it without thinking. And that’s all sex is, said part of him.
Sanity prevailed for the moment. Remembering the first time he’d bedded a friend and found love. Remembering that moment of not quite telepathy when he’d looked into soft eyes and seen a soul shining through. The changes had been building in him for a while, but that was the precise moment when violence had been banished. Never to return, he thought. How foolish he was to forget the struggles every day for those first years, the little choices that made him sweat. And when his first relationship had ended badly after beginning so well, the fight against the urge to destroy.
But now, the temptations were back. His mind might help Buffy, but some ur-male part of him thought it was weak to let her strength protect the world. Dealing with Ethan had been the quiet drop of a little pebble that heralds an avalanche. As he got more protective of Buffy and Jenni and Willow and Cordelia and even Xander, the urges became greater. When Angel walked into his library, his hackles rose. Knowing that Buffy loved this ancient evil, was all that had kept him from killing Angel without a second thought.
The scariest moment had been after Angel had killed his lover. With the police he’d been a badly shaken librarian, but, as soon as he’d left them he was once again a killer. How to explain to Buffy that he hadn’t been courting his own death that night. That his attack hadn’t been just pain and grief and hatred -- it had been rage, the sweetest ecstasy. When Buffy had hit him, he’d mourned. Until that moment, he’d just wanted to bring down the walls of the temple like Sampson.
As a librarian his fight or flight had been hardwired to flight, camouflage, "find a way around it" to destroy the evils. Now fight was back and taking over. The drugged candy had been the worst. His resistances had been much weaker after shagging Joyce. Nothing like sex and violence to rewire your brain.
Yesterday Cordelia had bumped against him in the library. It had been all he could do not to drag her to his office and take her; play the old mind games until she believed it was her idea. Turn himself into her addiction and get off on the power of it.
He hated understanding Angelus. The rage had kept him from giving in under torture [maybe that was its beneficence in the midst of all its evil], but it had created the ultimate intimacy between the two. Maybe it was time he learned to hate and fight for his territory again.
So the Council thought it was wrong to care for his Slayer. He’d turn his rage against the dying of that light, the light he saw in Buffy and her friends, the light in himself. It would be the last time.
***
The Citroen Goddess turned into a motel parking lot. A very determined man walked into a room and fought for his Slayer. Ripper smiled.
End