A Word with You All
by: Gileswench
Rated PG-13
Date: 8/5/02
Spoilers: Through Hell's Belles
Summary: Giles has a word with the women in his life...which doesn't turn out as satisfactoraly as he'd hoped
Rating: PG-13 for a couple bad words, a few home truths
Pairing: Buffy/Giles
Category: Challengefic
Distribution: If you've had my permission in the past, you have it now. All others, ask and ye shall receive.
Feedback: Constructive criticism always welcome. Praise abjectly sought.
Disclaimer: It all belongs to Joss, Mutant Enemy, etc., etc., etc. I just let them have all the fun Joss won't. I own nothing except my twisted mind which you really don't want. Please don't sue.
Notes: This comes to you courtesy of Joanna's birthday challenge whis reads as follows: I want a fic where Giles basically swoops in and gives the gang their comeuppance for the terrible mess they've made of things. The twist is that this is a woman-only fic---of Willow, Tara, Buffy, Dawn, Anya etc. you may involve whomever you wish, from whatever point or points in the season you wish (i.e. Tara doesn't have to be dead yet). You can deal with the Xander and Spike situations if you want to, but the men cannot actually appear in the fic. It's Giles and the girls. You can have as many serious conversation scenes as you want to, but there has to be at least one angry-shouting scene where he really rips into someone because they are a huge stupidhead.
Bonus points for including as many of the following as you can:
- Giles arriving in Sunnydale in Ripper-ish clothing (the corrupting influence of life in Bath!)
- Giles quoting Shakespeare
- Rocky Horror reference
- Anya making an inappropriate literary allusion
- Reference by the characters to the musical episode
- Reference to or appearance by a form of 'justice demon' we haven't seen yet
- Excessive consumption of alcohol, cause that's always fun - If you can figure out a way to involve Cordelia, Fred, Faith, Kate or any other AtS character, bonus.
In honour of my turning 25, I will give you five further provisos:
- If you talk about Wesley, I want Giles defending him. Wesley really did mean well and do his best in all this, even if he did make a mess of things, and I want Giles to understand, and make cleat to Cordelia, that it is not that he loved Caesar less, but that he loved Rome more. Not going into it
- If you set the story in LA, I want one scene, however brief, where Giles meets Fred. This will be a comic scene to break the angsty rehashing and cathartic yelling at people that Giles will be doing. Not set there
- Giles gets to take his glasses off. AND wear that fabulous coat. You can explicity make it a Ripper thing, or simply imply it, your call, but when I read it, I want the nod that he's invoking his inner "you all suck and I am much, much better than you all."done
- If you deal with the Xanya fiasco, Anya gets ALL the sympathy. Xander is a weak wimpy pig who jilted her. Giles can be angry that she went demon again, concerned that she went demon again etc and you can deal with that sincerely, but at the end of the day, she gets the tea and sympathy in a poignant and possibly shippy 'die, Xander, die' sort of way. Not going there
- If you choose to deal with the Willow/Tara plot, you set it while Tara is still alive. And if you deal with this plot, you also must involve Miss Kitty Fantastico. done
- You may involve one of the following female guest characters, dead or alive, in dreams, spells, ghosts, however, and for whatever effect you require: Lilah, Jenny, Glory, Harmony, Joyce.
* * * * * * *
Giles stood in the lobby of Sunnydale Airport, blinking slightly. He wasn't entirely sure how he'd gotten there. One moment he'd been sitting in his local in Bath having his fifth pint in a row, the next he was on a plane touching down in the place the he least wanted to see again in his life.
All he'd done was tell his drinking companion he wished he could give a few women in his life a piece of his mind.
Bloody Sunnydale.
He looked around himself, wondering where he was going and how precisely he was meant to get there. As he craned his neck, he saw a familiar figure approaching.
"Cordelia? What are you doing here?"
"Giles? Is that you? Damn! You look way better than I remember. Why didn't you ever wear jeans before?"
"I hardly think my wardrobe is the most important question at hand."
Cordelia's eyes raked over Giles' form. Tight jeans, long, black duster, blue shirt unbuttoned far enough to display a bit of tawny chest hair, black boots and a gold hoop earring. His hair was slightly tousled and where were his glasses? Her question was answered when he pulled a pair from his pocket. The lightweight frames were more flattering than anything she'd ever seen him wear before.
"I think the new look is a keeper. If you'd dressed like this all along, maybe somebody might have listened to you once in a while."
Giles glared at Cordelia. It had as much effect as ever...which is to say none.
"What are you doing here, Cordelia?"
"Still can't take a compliment, can you?"
"Still can't answer a simple question, can you?" Giles returned, acid dripping from his every tone.
"Just a thought, Giles, but you might want to get more fiber in your diet. Then you won't be so cranky. And I don't know what I'm doing here. There I was, just having a chat with Fred, when suddenly I had to grab Angel's keys and start driving. I didn't even know where I was going until I got here. And do you have money?"
"Money? what are you talking about?"
"For the parking. So we can get the car. I didn't bring my wallet."
Giles rummaged in his pockets. He had his wallet, but the little money in it wasn't American.
"Nothing I can spend here. I suppose we'll have to walk wherever it is we're going."
"Where's that?"
"I've not the slightest idea."
*****
An hour of walking with Cordelia did not improve Giles' mood in the least. She was wearing impractical shoes for a such long trek and had never been one to suffer in silence.
That was one thing he really hadn't missed about her.
Giles watched the ground since he seemed to have virtually no control over his feet. On reflection, he decided that was the story of his entire, miserable existence. No choice. No control. Drifting on the whim of others, never getting to do as he pleased, and never a word of thanks to show for it.
He was roused from his reverie by an exclamation from Cordelia.
"Huh! I should have guessed."
"Guessed what?" Giles asked morosely, staring at his boots.
"Take a look at the street sign. We're on Revello Drive, home of Buffy. Wonder if she had Willow mumbo jumbo us here."
Giles rolled his eyes.
"Wonderful. Just bloody wonderful."
"What were you doing elsewhere, anyway, Giles?"
"Something quite futile, obviously. Come on, then. Let's go and get this over with."
Giles trudged forward, hands in his pockets, head down, his mouth pulled into a grim line. Cordelia limped after him.
"Wait up!" she called. "I can't walk that fast."
"Perhaps you could if you wore something practical on your feet for once," Giles snapped.
"No need to ask which one of the seven dwarves you are," Cordelia mumbled back.
Giles opened his mouth to answer, but just then, they reached Buffy's door. Dawn stood on the porch as if waiting for them. She turned and headed inside, leaving the door open behind her. As she flounced inside, she could be hear yelling: "Buffy! Giles and the bitchmonster are here!"
Giles and Cordelia took this as their cue to enter the house.
Inside, Buffy, Willow, Tara, and Anya sat at various points around the living room. Dawn stood hunched in a corner, arms crossed over her chest, glaring at the new arrivals. Miss Kitty Fantastico perched nervously in Tara's lap.
Giles noted that Willow and Tara sat on opposite ends of the room. Tara looked slightly uncomfortable while Willow stared at her with an odd combination of longing and resentment. Anya frankly gawked at the newcomers, but Buffy refused to meet her Watcher's eyes.
Again, Giles felt himself bubbling inside with resentment. No matter where he turned, there sat or stood a woman who had made his life miserable at some point in the past five years. He'd been ignored, mocked, belittled, or actually, physically hurt by everyone in the room.
Even Miss Kitty had a tendency to run when he tried to pet her. For some reason, he felt an urge to yell at the cat about that habit.
"Well?" he began. "What are you all doing here? Haven't any of you got places to be?"
"President's Day," Dawn explained. "National holiday. No school."
"That goes for us, too," Tara said quietly. "No classes today."
Willow nodded in agreement.
"And as for me, workers in the fast food industry don't get holidays, but I worked double shifts all weekend. My reward is that I get today off," Buffy said in a subdued tone Giles had never heard from her before. "Miss Kitty doesn't work or go to school, so...y'know..."
Giles looked at Cordelia. She put her hands up and snorted.
"Hey, I already told you. Weird compulsion thingie. Not my idea in any way, shape or form."
"Of course not," Giles snapped before he could stop himself. "It never is your fault, is it? It's never your responsibility, it's never anything to do with you, is it? Except for the endless fact that the world revolves entirely around you and what you want. Well, I'm sorry, Cordelia, but you're simply not that bloody important."
The women all sat stunned by Giles' outburst.
"Giles...?" Willow began. She was silenced when he turned next on her.
"Don't you dare say a word, Willow. Everybody thinks you're so selfless, don't they? Isn't Willow so sensitive and giving? Well, I've seen your true colors time and again. If you don't like what fate hands you, you do a spell to change it. You don't want to go through the heartache of losing your first lover? Well, a spell will fix that, won't it? You didn't want your friend to be dead? Presto! She's alive again and you step right up to accept your due applause."
"G-Giles," Tara began, "I don't...I think..."
"Don't you try to defend her, Tara," Giles said in a dangerously low tone. "You know what she did to you. Twice she erased your memory purely for her own convenience. The second time, she put us all in danger by doing so. Perhaps if you had been less overawed by Willow' powers, you might have helped her learn to be responsible with them instead of allowing her to lead you by the nose. You helped with the resurrection spell. You knew Willow was meddling with dangerous dark majicks, and yet you helped her!"
"I - I didn't know everything. If I had..."
"That is no excuse," Giles retorted. "You're meant to be a responsible person. You've always been the more level-headed one when it came to majicks, and yet you went ahead with a spell without knowing the full details? A resurrection spell, no less! You know how dangerous they are. What's more, you deliberately hid it from Dawn and from me. Did you think we had no rights in the matter? Did you think we had no feelings?"
Giles tried desperately to stop yelling. He didn't want to hurt any of these girls, but by this time, Cordelia's eyes flashed fire, Willow had set her mouth in a stubborn, resentful line, Tara was in tears and Buffy stared at him in helpless shock. Still, he couldn't stop himself from turning on Anya.
"As for you," he growled, "what in blazes did you think you were playing at? You're eleven hundred sodding years old! You've seen the consequences of these spells before. And if the danger wasn't enough to stop you, did you never think of me, your business partner? No, of course not. You couldn't wait to be rid of me so you could have the whole bloody shop to yourself and close it down every time Xander got a coffee break and a stiffy. You rubbed your sex life in my face constantly, knowing both how it embarrassed me and that I wasn't getting any. In eleven hundred years, did you never learn one ounce of sensitivity?!"
Anya didn't reply, but made a helpless gurgling sound as her eyes went wide and her lip trembled. Giles hated himself for causing it, but still he couldn't stop. He turned his wrath on Dawn next.
"Speaking of my business," he intoned dangerously, "is this how you pay me back for all I've done for you? For all everyone in this room has done for you?" He fished the letter of apology Buffy had made Dawn write when she discovered Dawn's cache of stolen treasures. "Anya informs me that the value of the things you stole from us comes to over two hundred dollars. And that's wholesale. You say you did it because you were angry that nobody seemed to love you. Do you have any idea what we all went through to save your nonexistant skin last year? I can show you the scar I got when I was lanced trying to save you from both Glory and the Knights of Byzantium. I nearly died. Your sister was prepared to let the world go quite literally to Hell for your sake, and you say you aren't loved? Tara lost her mind - for you. We all made sacrifices for you."
"Except me," Cordelia volunteered. "I didn't know about all this stuff until Buffy died."
"And so we come to Buffy. Always Buffy." Giles made one more valiant effort to curb his tongue, but he found himself compelled to pour out every bit of resentment he'd ever felt at her behavior. "I gave up everything for you. I gave up my hopes, my dreams, my freedom, my homeland, my career, two lovers and every shred of my masculine pride all for you. There was a time when I even gave it all gladly. A time when you and I were partners in the truest sense. Was that really just one year ago? I even began to hope - but it was no use. For years, you've lied to me, used me, belittled me, and, worst of all, ignored me. You've treated my sacrifices and pain as insignificant all the while bewailing that no man will stand at your side and refuse to desert you. Well, you finally managed it, didn't you? You finally made me leave like all the others. And do you want to know why I left? Do you? It was when Xander called that bloody musical comedy demon. I found myself singing my guts out to you while you ignored me. That was bad enough, but I was used to it. What I couldn't bear was that as I threw those knives, I truly wanted one to hit you. I wanted you to feel something, even if it was pain. Even if I inflicted it. If I had stayed, I would have hurt you. I might even have killed you. You would have gone back to your precious Heaven, while I would have sacrificed all hope of redemption; of eternal rest and peace. I would have exchanged that for eternal damnation and torment. For you, Buffy. All for you."
When he finished his tirade, the room was silent except for a few sniffles from the women. Buffy faced, face white with rage, body in battle stance.
"So you were willing to do anything for me, Giles? Anything and everything? But you couldn't just tell me what the hell was going on in your head?"
"You never fucking listened!" Giles shouted back.
"Well, maybe you never made yourself clear!" she yelled back angrily. "I'm not a mind reader! And even when I could read minds, I couldn't hear you most of the time."
"Yes, well, that's rather the story of our lives, isn't it?" Giles snapped back.
"Oh, like an autobiography?" Anya offered brightly. "Like The Secret Diaries of Adrian Mole, Aged Thirteen and Three Quarters?"
She was met by twin withering glares by both combatants. She shrank back into a corner with Tara. When they looked at one another again, Buffy was on the attack.
"And what about all the stuff people in this room have done for you over your practically dead body, Giles? Okay, maybe I'm crap, but that doesn't give you the right to say all that stuff about Willow and Tara and Anya and Dawn."
"And me," Cordelia added. "Don't forget about me."
"As if anyone could," Buffy said. "Plus Cordy's right. She's done stuff for you, too. Maybe we've all screwed up like you said, maybe we took you for granted and forgot to ever say thanks for all you did for us. But every one of them has done some pretty incredibly great stuff for you, too. How many times did Will's spells save all our butts? And her hacking skills solved lots of puzzles before the body count got too high. Tara has a way of seeing stuff the rest of us don't catch. If it wasn't for her, I might still be in Faith's body. Most of us get a little blind about the people we love. I guess if none of the rest of us figured out Will was developing a problem, she's not the only one to blame it got so out of hand. Anya may not be Miss Sensitivity
2002, but do you remember the wreck you were the first day the Magic Box was open? She pulled your bacon out of the fire that day in a big way. She came up with some really good ideas to help save Dawn and fight Glory. I guess we can cut her a little slack for not being so smooth with the humanity thing yet. Cordy isn't even the same person she used to be. Okay, so, still pretty Anya-like with the tact thing, once in a while, but she fights the good fight. Angel has nothing but good stuff to say about her when we talk. I think that counts for something. As for Dawn...well...if I was any good at being a mom, she wouldn't have done what she did. She's fifteen, Giles. And she lost her mother, and she lost her sister, and her sister came back all screwed up. She's only human. Now. At least she isn't sleeping with vampires or eating the school mascot or dating a destructo demon over the internet. So yell at me if you're so mad. I probably deserve it. Everyone else...just put a sock on it, will you? 'Cause they're all doing the best they know how. You haven't been Mr. Perfecto, either, y'know. But I don't think anyone in this room stopped loving you because of that. I know I didn't. That's why it hurt so much when you left. I don't know what I did to make you stop caring about me, but it must have been pretty terrible, 'cause nothing I did ever made you hate me before. Not Angel or Maggie Walsh or my aerobics music or anything. Could you please tell me what I did? I didn't mean to hurt you, Giles, I really didn't."
Buffy broke down in tears. In an instant, Dawn rushed to her side and took her sister in her arms. She glared at Giles. He stood awkwardly, all his anger dissipated almost as soon as he was finished with his tirade.
"Don't cry, Buffy, please," Dawn begged as she rocked her sister. "He didn't mean it. Tell her you didn't mean it, Giles."
Giles stared numbly at the scene before him. How could he have done this to the people who loved him? He did the one thing he could: he fled out the back door and sat on the back steps, his heart pounding with adrenaline and overwhelmed with guilt.
*****
When Giles left the room, the women clustered around Buffy to soothe her.
"He didn't mean any of it, Buffy," Dawn told her. "He couldn't."
"I think he did," Anya piped up helpfully, "but you know he'll apologize and say he didn't. Everything will be fine again. Like it was before he scorned you."
Buffy's sobs grew more intense.
"Way to go, Tact Girl," Cordelia admonished Anya. "look, Buffy, it'll be okay. Nobody can be wound up as tight as Giles without exploding at some point, but he'll calm down and he'll say he's sorry, and it'll all be okay."
"I think that's pretty much what Anya said," Willow whispered to Cordelia.
"Well, yeah, but I said it the nice way."
Tara put an arm around Buffy's shoulders.
"Come upstairs, sweetie," she said, "and lie down. I'll make you some tea. You'll feel better."
She herded the miserable Slayer up the stairs. Willow, Cordelia, Anya and Dawn watched them go, then sat down to hold a meeting.
"Okay, we all know that wasn't really Giles just now," Cordelia started.
"Sure looked like him," Willow grumbled.
"It's Giles, yeah," Dawn agreed, "but he wouldn't talk like that to us. There's something wrong with him. He'd never say that stuff to Buffy if he was normal."
"So what do we do to figure it out?" Willow asked. "It's not like I can cast a spell to see if there's been a spell cast on him. Not now I've given it up. And he could have asked before he yelled at me for doing spells when I'm not doing them anymore."
Tara halted on her way down the stairs.
"It's not like anyone told him how much things have changed since he left, is it?" she asked. "I mean, I know I haven't called him, and Buffy hasn't. Have any of you talked to him?"
She finished her descent and joined the others.
"Only to tell him how the business is doing," Anya admitted. "He scorned us. He doesn't deserve to know how we're doing."
"Y - you mean...nobody has talked to him at all?" Willow squeaked. "I didn't think he'd want to talk to me after...y'know...everything, but I was pretty sure somebody..."
"Hey, I was in LA," Cordelia defended herself. "I wasn't talking to him long before you guys weren't talking to him."
"So what do we do?" Dawn asked. "We have to fix this. I don't want Giles to yell at us anymore. I get scared when Giles yells. And all those mean things he said to Buffy...Tara, are you sure it's okay to leave her alone?"
"I'll go sit with her," Anya volunteered. Bfore anyone could make another suggestion, she was off up the stairs.
"I don't think Giles should be alone right now, either," Cordelia said. "If I know anything about him, he's taking a guilt trip around the world that would make Angel look like a total amateur."
*****
Giles groaned and dropped his head into his hands. If he wasn't sitting on the back steps too worn and depressed after his behavior to stand up and do it, he'd be kicking his own sorry bum about now.
He felt an odd bumping at his side and barely mustered the interest to see what it was.
"Oh, so you like me now, do you?" he asked Miss Kitty with a grim smile. Miss Kitty purred loudly and offered her chin to be scratched. "I shall never understand cats."
"You're not doing so hot with women right now, either," Cordelia observed.
"I suppose all my bridges to Sunnydale are well and truly burnt?"
"You really don't get cats or women, do you, Giles?" She came and sat next to him on the step. "See, the thing cats and women have in common is that you have to find a way to get our attention or we just sorta see you as...part of the furniture. Believe me, you now have our attention."
"Miss Kitty has certainly changed her opinion of me, but I thought you all liked me before this...outburst."
"Oh we liked you," Cordelia assured him, "the way we like an old song we've heard a million times. You've always been predictable; in the comfort zone. We don't really need to look anymore because we know 'Giles' equals tweed, tea, dusty old books and authority."
"And yet you'll note that I'm not wearing a scrap of tweed."
"No, you're really not," Cordelia agreed. "But we still see it. It's like...Wesley hardly ever wears a suit anymore. He's even stopped using that stinky stuff to make his hair all flat and slicked back, but he came into the office a couple weeks ago and all I could think was 'wow, who's the hottie' and then I remembered that it was Wes and, well...it was sorta strange."
"So I should just resign myself to being - what was it Buffy used to call me? - Tweedman?"
"See, you're really not getting it, Giles. It's not that you stop changing; it's that you make sure we see it."
"If it involves being hateful to the people I care about, I rather think I'd prefer to be ignored," he said sadly.
"I knew the Giles we knew was still in there," Cordelia teased. "Look, burying all the bad stuff until you turn Buffy's living room into Pompeii is a really crap idea, too. You change, I change, we change. Buffy sure as hell changed. I couldn't believe how long it took her to yell back at you. One thing hasn't changed, though. You're mad at all of us and you resent everything we've ever said or done bad to you, but she's the one you'll really miss if you don't fix things. Am I right, or am I right?"
"I would miss you, Cordelia."
"I know. About the way you miss some of the stuff you had to get rid of when you left England. You might think about it once in a while and wonder what became of it after you left and you might even want to see it again someday, but just to know if it's still in one piece. Willow might be like one of the books you couldn't save when the library blew up. You'd actually miss her and how useful she was, and you'd think of her more often. But books can be replaced. Even a lot of the books you read. Leaving Buffy...that'd be like chopping off your left hand, and you're the biggest southpaw I ever met. I don't know what happened, but I know if you don't fix it soon there's a good chance you won't be able to. Do yourself a favor: fix it. I may look hot in black, but I don't want to come to another Buffy funeral."
"Y - you think...?"
"You're not the only one who changed. See, you're still thinking Buffy is that disgustingly plucky sixteen year old with the big crush on the broody vamp. That Buffy was really into beating the odds. I don't think this one is."
"I'm aware of that. Why do you think I left?"
"Because you were being selfish," Cordelia told him bluntly. "She was messed up and miserable and she looks like she's eaten like a breath mint in the last two years. You don't just abandon someone who doesn't want to live anymore. You dangle a carrot in front of her nose. Or in Buffy's case, it might be a good idea to make it a hot fudge sundae. How do you think I get Mr. Mountains O' Guilt going on the days when he's all thinking of taking a walk in the sun because he's hurt - okay, killed - so many people? I'll give you a clue; it doesn't involve throwing knives at them."
"I've tried so much already. I've tried giving her time, helping her with money and advice, telling her to take responsibility, trying to coax her back into a regular training schedule...I don't know what else to do. And this today certainly didn't help."
He looked toward the house helplessly.
"She's okay. She's being looked after. Anyway, I think they all know you couldn't help yourself. You'd never talk that way to any of us if you didn't have a weird compulsion thingie going on, like mine. I didn't even want to be here."
"I did and I didn't," Giles said in that slightly abstracted manner he took on when he was onto an idea he hadn't fully worked out yet. "I remember sitting in the pub talking to some chap about women and the next thing I knew, I was landing at Sunnydale Airport."
"What were you saying? To the guy at the bar?"
"He kept on and on about how frustrating women were and how there were several he'd been treated pretty shabbily by. Then I said I knew how it felt...blast!"
Giles stood suddenly. Miss Kitty scampered away nervously.
"What?"
"Idiot!" Giles cursed through clenched teeth. "Idiot!" he repeated for good measure.
"Hello, Giles," Cordelia said. "Maybe time to let someone else know what you just figured out."
"I don't think he was a man at all."
"What are you saying?"
"I think I made a wish to a vengeance demon."
*****
Buffy didn't hear the tap on her door. She was too busy sobbing into her pillow. Anya knocked again. Still no answer. At last, Anya sighed and just opened the door.
"Buffy? Can you stop crying? I can't talk to you when you cry."
Despite the harshness of her words, Anya's concern for her friend was obvious in her tone of voice. Buffy did her best to calm herself, but continued to gulp oddly and sniffle.
"I'll try," she managed at last. "It's just...it hurts...so much."
"It does. And what right does Giles have to say those things? He's the one who ran away."
Buffy shook her head.
"It's not like that, Anya. He was trying to do his best for me."
"Please! He was doing his best for him. He just didn't want to watch you be unhappy anymore. Not that I blame him, because it isn't fun to watch, but that's his job. He's not supposed to go away."
"It's not like he's the first one to leave."
"You get scorned a lot, don't you?"
"Anya!"
"Well, you do. Angel dumped you right before the Prom, Riley flew off in his helicopter while your mother was still in the hospital, and then Giles leaves almost as soon as he found out you'd been in Heaven all that time. They all leave you, and they all do it just when it'll hurt the most. And then they all make it your fault."
"It's not that simple," Buffy argued weakly as she hugged a pillow to her chest.
"No? Why not?"
"Because...because they had other reasons. Good reasons. Angel couldn't stay with me."
"Did he have to scorn you right before the big dance? And after you bought your dress. If he was staying that long, he should have waited, or at least given you some warning."
"And Riley...he had a lot of issues that I never saw because I was so blind."
"Right. Because you were suppose to know by some magical something or other that he was seeing vampire whores behind your back while you were trying to deal with your mother being sick and your sister not being your sister and keeping up with college and being the Slayer. Of course you were." Anya was silent for a beat. "Oh, I was being sarcastic in case you couldn't tell. I learned about sarcasm from Giles."
"I could have let Riley in more. I could have told him about Dawn."
"Because that would have worked so well. Buffy, if you had told Riley first, he would have wanted to do something macho and silly, like, I don't know...blow up a building or something. He wasn't stable. I don't think he was ever as stable as you thought he was. Stable people don't go to suck houses. Anyway, he had to know."
"Know what?"
"That you didn't love him."
Buffy gaped at her friend's calm assessment.
"How can you even say that?" she asked. She rose from the bed and began pacing the room. "I gave him everything I had, everything I was."
"No you didn't. I've been around over eleven hundred years. I know love when I see it. I didn't see it. Not in either of you. Both of you were trying to make the other something they couldn't be. Riley wanted you to be a weak girly girl who needed him to solve her problems. You wanted Riley to be solid and normal and ordinary. He needed to be needed and you wanted him to be there when you wanted sex and somebody cute to dance with while you took care of the big things yourself because that's how you have to do things when you're the Slayer. That's why Giles is the only one you told about Dawn in the first place. You knew he wouldn't try to solve it."
"So I go to Giles because I don't need answers? Is that what you're saying?"
"Almost. You go to Giles because he gives you what you need and offers what he can, but he doesn't take it over. He lets you be the Slayer. Only now he's scorned you, too. He wanted the old Buffy back, but you were a new Buffy who was no fun to be around and who didn't want to deal with anything."
Buffy sat with a thump and buried her face in her pillows.
"Great," came her muffled voice, "so now I'm the sissy girl who needs it all, Riley's married and Giles can't cope. How pathetic am I?"
Anya shrugged.
"Less pathetic than you were a couple months ago. More ready to stand alone, like Slayers always do. More ready to exact punishment for what's been done to you."
Buffy lifted her face slightly from the pillows.
"Punishment?"
*****
"So you have to talk to her, right? Tell her it was this demon guy who made you say all that stuff?"
Giles shook his head.
"I never would have said all that if it wasn't for that blasted wish, but it's not as if I can simply take it all back. I have to admit...there's a fair part of me that does feel that way."
"Well, duh!"
Giles looked startled at his companion. Cordelia rolled her eyes and continued.
"You couldn't have said that stuff if you didn't mean it at least a little. Hey, I'm crazy about Angel, but that doesn't mean some things about him don't get to me. He broods and he gets all goofy out of nowhere, and don't even get me started on his singing voice! Just remember, if he ever offers a concert, say thanks but no thanks. Even my roommate, Dennis, has been known to drive me up the wall more than once."
"And the point to this confession would be...?"
"Y'know, for such a smart person, you really are dumb sometimes." She stood and offered Giles a hand up. "The point is, you feel lots of other stuff, too. If you want to get this straightened out with Buffy, you have to go tell her that. If she'll listen. That might take some work."
"I doubt she'll want to listen."
"Want to listen? If this was the old Buffy, you'd be lucky she didn't throw heavy, pointy things at you. This one will probably stop short of actual violence, I think."
Cordelia started to move away, but found she couldn't because Giles still had hold of her hand.
"Cordelia, what I said to you earlier..."
"I know. I always got on your nerves, didn't I?"
Giles blushed and ducked his head in embarrassment. When he looked up, he smiled at her.
"Yes, you did, as a matter of fact. I thought you were a vain, selfish, self-centered, rather stupid girl."
"And I thought you were stuffy and grumpy and probably not even from this planet. And can we forget the tweed?"
"You've changed, too, Cordelia."
"I have? So I'm not selfish and vain anymore?"
"You are. But a bit less so than when we first knew one another. And I will never again mistake you for stupid or shallow."
"And you may still be stuffy and repressed, but you're definitely human. Plus, loving the new wardrobe. You look about ten thousand years younger like this."
Giles gave a lightning quick grin, and raised Cordelia's hand for a small kiss.
"Thank you," he said, "for giving me a piece of your mind."
Cordelia sighed.
"That was...wow...European or something. Y'know, if it wasn't for Buffy, I might make a play for you myself."
"Y - you would...?"
"Oh, I'm not going to," she hastened to assure him. "I've changed in some ways, but I still never settle for second place."
She pulled her hand back gently and smiled at him again.
"Go on, Giles. You won't be happy until you do, and neither will she."
He nodded and headed back into the house.
******
"Anya, I don't want to punish Giles. Much."
"But you do a little, right? Because he scorned you."
Buffy sat up. She drew her brows together in contemplation. Anya watched her work it through. At last Buffy shook her head.
"I couldn't."
"Why not? He left, Buffy. He went away and left you alone when he was supposed to stay with you."
"I don't want him to stay because he's supposed to. I don't want anyone to be stuck with me. If he was as miserable as he said, then maybe it's better he goes and has a chance to be happy."
"Why should he be happy?" Anya scoffed. "He deserted you."
"Maybe there's just something wrong with me that nobody will ever stay. Maybe the First Slayer was right. Maybe I'm supposed to be alone."
"Well, that's just silly," Anya told her as she sat next to Buffy. "Slayers who are alone die much faster and much more permanently than you did. It's Giles' job to stay with you and keep you alive. He's not doing his job. What would happen if you told Doublemeat Palace you didn't want to do your job because you don't like it?"
"They'd fire me."
"Yes. You'd be punished. They wouldn't give you money and you wouldn't be able to pay your bills."
"I can't pay them now," Buffy shrugged. "I cannot believe how useless I am."
"No, no, no!" Anya insisted. "Stop it! You're supposed to be getting mad at Giles for deserting you, not becoming all depressed and suicidal about how ineffectual you are!"
"See?" Buffy moaned as she flopped onto her back. "I can't do anything right!"
"Sure you can," Anya urged her.
"What? I can't even die right."
Anya sighed and tried a new tactic.
"When you were a child, did you ever wish on a star?"
"A couple times."
"Did it ever come true?"
"Once. I wished I would have a little sister. It only took fifteen years, but it came true. How's that for pathetic?"
"You're right. That is pathetic. So, nothing will happen if you wish, right?"
"I guess not. It never did before."
"So...if you could have anything you want happen to Giles right now, what would you wish?"
Buffy stood and crossed to her desk. She traced the forms of her friends in a photograph.
"It's silly to wish for stuff that'll never happen," she said at last.
"If it won't happen, why not wish it?"
"Because it doesn't make any difference. There's no point in doing it."
Anya blew out a frustrated breath and moved to Buffy's side.
"There's always a point in wishing," she urged.
"Come on," Buffy snorted, "it's not like there's some good fairy here to make it come true."
"Don't you just wish he'd...go bald or...or only be able to speak in rhymes or something?"
"Who?"
"Giles."
Buffy stared at her companion.
"Are you okay, Anya? Of course I don't wish anything like that."
"Something bigger? Do you wish he'd have a terrible wasting disease? No, wait, don't wish that. That wouldn't be nice. But you could wish he would fall in love with a penguin at the zoo. That would be a good wish."
"Eeeiww. A penguin? That would be really...okay, funny, but not a good idea even if it could happen which it won't. Besides, I don't want to wish something like that on Giles, even if there's no way it would happen. Look, I don't want to talk about this, Anya. I want to make things better with Giles."
"You've been sitting here saying you can't make it better."
"Well, I don't know if I can, but at least I don't think I can make it worse."
At that moment, there came a quiet knock on the door.
"Buffy?" Giles' soft voice came. "May I come in?"
"Umm...just a minute!" Buffy called back. She turned back to her mirror, swiping tears away. "Oh no, my makeup's a mess. And what did I do to my hair?"
"You buried your head in pillows," Anya told her. "That always messes up your hair."
"Great. No time to get pretty." She quickly ran a comb through her hair anyway. "Anya, could you leave us alone?"
"What? So he can scorn you again in private?"
"So we can talk without worrying about other people hearing."
Anya shrugged.
"Suit yourself," she said. "But after what he said in public, I wouldn't let him talk to me in private."
Anya turned to the door and opened it. She glared briefly at Giles.
"Don't be mean to her again," she warned.
"I don't plan to be. And for what it's worth, I apologize for what I said to you downstairs. I was completely out of line."
"Yes, you were," Anya agreed. Her eyes narrowed. "Don't say any more mean things to Buffy. You already made her cry."
With a final glare in Giles' direction, Anya swept down the stairs. Giles continued to stand nervously in the doorway with his hands in his pockets, a sheepish expression gracing his face. The silence stretched uncomfortably. At last Buffy looked down at the floor and made a gesture Giles interpreted as meaning he was welcome to enter the room.
"Buffy," he began, "about what I said..."
The girl stopped him with another gesture.
"No, I really don't need to hear it again, Giles. I know I screwed up your life. God, you must really hate me after everything I've done!"
"No, Buffy. Never."
She looked at him, startled.
"But...all that stuff you said...I thought you meant it."
Giles hesitated for a moment before he spoke again.
"I did, actually."
Buffy sat on the edge of her bed with a thump.
"Oh," she said in a tiny voice.
Giles moved gingerly to sit beside her.
"Please, let me explain. I did mean it. Every word has been sitting somewhere inside me waiting like a...a time bomb. And thanks to my own stupidity, it went off today. I could try to deny that I feel the things I said to you all, but that would be rather pointless and pretty cowardly of me."
"I'm sorry," Buffy said quietly. "I didn't mean to ruin your whole life."
"You didn't," he returned just as quietly, but with great intensity.
"But...you said...what about all the stuff you gave up and the people you lost and everything?"
"One must make sacrifices in life. Every decision comes with consequences, every choice made removes another possible one from us. Buffy, I made choices that led to becoming your Watcher. Being your Watcher made other choices inevitable. I don't regret being your Watcher or the time I spent with you."
"How can you say that when I've treated you so horribly?" Buffy sniffled.
Giles reached into his pocket and pulled out his handkerchief. He handed it to Buffy who made a soggy sound of thanks. He passed an arm around her shoulder to comfort her.
"You haven't treated me so horribly. And I have absolutely no doubt you could come up with a list every bit as damning of my shortcomings. I also know you...well...you like me, at any rate, no matter how little I've done to deserve it."
"No, Giles, you've done so much for me."
"And yet, there have been times when you've wanted - indeed threatened - to do violence on me. You've scolded me, upbraided me for my blindness to all things American and teenage, twitted my taste in clothing, music, food, and goodness alone knows what else, and let me know in no uncertain terms that you find my idea of a pleasant evening boring in the extreme."
"Okay, okay, I get it. I know I treated you bad," Buffy sniffed. "You don't have to rub it in."
"If that's what you think I'm saying, you really don't get it at all." Giles took another deep breath and rubbed the back of his neck. "I wish I was better at this sort of thing. I'm afraid Watchers are trained to - to mistrust and ignore emotion as much as possible. It makes me awkward where feelings are involved. And emotion is terribly...messy. One bleeds into another as it were. They get muddled. do you understand what I'm trying to say now?"
Buffy shook her head. Giles sighed and stood. He began to pace the room.
"I meant what I said downstairs, Buffy, but that isn't everything I feel about you, or any of the others. It's perhaps twenty-five percent of what I feel. You've all done and said things that have frustrated and angered me over time. But, as you pointed out, you've all done wonderful things as well. Kind things, brave things, surprisingly sensitive things...and that makes up the other seventy-five percent of what I feel when I think of each of you." He moved to Buffy's side again and sat. "Consider the intensity of the twenty-five percent directed at you, and just imagine what the other seventy-five percent is like."
*****