| Guilty Soul by UncagedMuse |
| Chapter #6 - He Who Knows Best |
 A/N Sorry this took so long but my betas had RL things to deal with and I wasn’t about to rush perfection. Thanks to all my reviewers who have stuck with me even though I seem to have dropped to more of a twice a month update instead of every week. As always I bow to the power of my fantabulous betas, Spikeslovebite and Megan! *kisses and tightly squeezes you both* He Who Knows Best Excerpts from the journal of Buffy Summers 12/18/02 Yeah, I know I’ve been lazy Buffy lately when it comes to writing, but I have plenty of good excuses. First there was Spike being all crazy in the school basement and almost having to kill Anya. Then more Spike killing with the crazy and a trigger implanted by The First. Now I have Giles showing up at my door yesterday with a bunch of slayer wanna-be’s. But none of that fits in here. It all goes in my other journal about slayer type stuff. As I said before; this one is for me, to help me confront everything instead of hiding from it. I guess I’ll start with Giles, since he’s on my mind right now, anyway. We got off to a rocky start; my Watcher and I; what with me being in denial of my destiny and him being big with the Council etiquette. Eventually, things smoothed out between us and I came to think of him as the father that my own couldn’t seem to be. At first, things were great. Giles not only trained me but talked to me and listened to me, even when it had nothing to do with the Chosen One crap. He was always there for me, but as the years passed, he did things that cut as deep-- and in some cases deeper-- than anything my friends did. I let a lot of things slide, because I knew he felt he was doing it for my own good. That is where one of my biggest flaws lay. I allow others to dictate my life and I fear that if I don’t smile and be who they want me to be they’ll leave and I can’t stand it when they do. He never really trusted my instincts. Yeah, I needed guidance and stuff, but I also needed confidence; something that he undermined every time he didn’t think I was making the right decision. After Angel went all Angelus on us, he demanded I do my duty and just go out and stake him. I was just a teenager for cripes sake. How could he expect me to be able to do that right away? It would have been better for Ms. Calendar and Willow’s fish, but I couldn’t give myself to the man…um…vampire I loved one day, and then dust him the next. I needed time, and Giles shoving my duty in my face didn’t help me one bit. It only made me more upset and determined to find a way to save Angel. That’s why I ran off after sending Angel to hell; there was no one I thought I could trust. Not my mother, not my friends, and certainly not Giles. The only person I’d even come close to trusting was an evil bloodsucker with an insane ho of a girlfriend, but at least I knew what his motivations were. Then came Angel’s miraculous return. When Giles found out I was hiding him, he looked at me with so much disappointment in his eyes. Why couldn’t he understand the anguish I’d felt having to send my newly re-ensoulled boyfriend into that gaping vortex to hell? Why couldn’t he see that I needed his support and not his anger? I needed him to help me help Angel. I needed the smothering guilt I had lived with for so long to be lessened, not compounded. If there’s anything being the Slayer has taught me, it’s that there is always a reason behind everything that happens. Him being plopped back into this world with his soul meant there was something he was supposed to do. I thought the others had figured that out, especially Giles with his staunch attitude on duty, rituals, and ‘all things have meaning’ drills that he tried to hammer into my head for so long. None of those things ever made me feel like I meant less to him, though. That didn’t happen until my eighteenth birthday. The Cruciamentum. Let’s strip me of all my slayery skills and then tell me I’m just sick or that you’ll find what’s causing it. I’m just a little bitter, really. It made me feel like the Council of Wankers, to quote Spike, was more important than my life. I was his slayer and he’d talked like I was all important to him for so long and then threw me to that pack of wolves. Well, it was just a little more than this girl could take. I think for a long time, I believed my life meant nothing to anyone after that. It took me a while to get past it even though I tried not to show how badly it really affected me. I never really got over it. He may have been fired for showing a ‘father’s love’, but all I could see from this betrayal was that I was only needed as long as I was killing things. What about the teenager who was just as much a part of me as the slayer was? After graduation and the big snake that wasn’t the Mayor’s ascension, Angel left. I’m not going there tonight. That event in my life deserves an entry all on its own. Giles was pretty pleased about it, though. That fall, I enrolled in college. I felt completely out of place and was desperate to fit in. When I tried to confide in him, he thought I was just being Bitchy-Buffy about the demon I shared a dorm room with. I was struggling with this new part of my life and all he could think about was his own midlife crisis and how he felt unneeded. We made it through that year, despite the big yearly apocalypse came in the form of Adam. We were all split so far apart and un-trusty that Spike was able to make us think the worst of each other for a short period of time. That should have been a clue. I should’ve started trying then to work on myself and my relationships with others, but like always I buried my head in the sand like…well…like something that buries it’s head in the sand. With the next year came a mystical little sister, a hell god, and my mother getting sick. I was breaking under the pressure, but Giles seemed oblivious. He kept right on pushing and pushing as I struggled to do my job and take care of my sister and mom. On top of everything else, I had a clingy boyfriend who felt I should spend every waking moment telling him how great he was and how much I needed him. For some reason he couldn’t see past his own nose and let me be myself, so of course that ended badly. Then the worst happened. Just when I thought everything was okay with her, she was taken. She was my strength; the reason I kept fighting. I never really got a chance to mourn her. I was supposed to raise Dawn, kill a hell god, and still keep everything together with a smile. Mom was barely in her grave when the hell god stepped up her efforts to find her ‘key’. Dawn. Giles found out that it was Dawn’s blood that would open the portal for Glory, and it was her blood that would close it. I was stunned when Giles coolly informed me that in order to save the world, I would have to kill my baby sister. He fully expected me to kill Dawnie. Someone I loved dearly. The only family I had left. I had just buried my mother; did he really think I could survive doing something like that? How could someone who supposedly knew me and knew how much pain I’d already endured, ask me to kill my flesh and blood? And she was my flesh and blood, made from me. For a long time after the monk told me how Dawn came into being, I wondered if that meant she was really my daughter and not my mother’s. It wasn’t like she was some unfeeling, inanimate object. She wasn’t a pet rock. She was a little girl who lived, breathed, and loved. Even though all the memories were implanted, I knew she loved me. She loved all of us, even Giles, the man who would have seen her dead without batting an eye. The only person who seemed to be as worried about Dawn besides me, was Spike. He promised to protect her ‘til the end of the world, even if that’s tonight’- and he did. She didn’t die that night. I did. I jumped off that tower because her blood was my blood and that meant I could take her place. I was tired and ready for it to end. I don’t think anyone around me realized how ready I was, except maybe Spike. It gave me the easy out. Everyone would see it as dying for my calling, doing my duty to save the world. Making the ultimate sacrifice. I was done. But of course they couldn’t leave well enough alone. A few months later, I was pulled out of paradise and thrust back into a world that was too loud, too bright, and too harsh after the soft peace I’d floated in for what seemed like an eternity to me. I clawed my way through a coffin and six feet of damp earth just to be able to breath in air that stung worse than not being able to get any oxygen at all. It was more than anyone, even a supernatural slayer, should be expected to handle. Everyone around me wanted happy, smiling Buffy. They wanted thanks and praise for what they’d done. How was I, the one who’d protected them from their worst nightmares, supposed to tell them they’d ripped me from heaven? The only one I told was Spike, because he didn’t seem to want anything from me at all. I found out that Giles had run off to England right after I was buried, leaving my teenage sister- who I’d died to protect- with my friends. All who were too busy to really take care of her themselves, and Spike. He, at least, made sure she was taken care of and grieved with her. The others shut down, thinking the more they ignored her the more they didn’t have to think about my sacrifice. Giles had always said I was the most important person in his life, but how am I supposed to believe that when he left the person who was most important to me, the child I gave my life to protect, to fend for herself? Of course he came back when he found out I was resurrected, and yes, he was majorly pissed at Willow for what they had done, but his concern didn’t last very long. He refused to see that I was falling apart, that I couldn’t cope with it all. I mean really; I don’t know anyone who could have managed to survive what I have. I’m almost positive anyone else in my situation would have probably slit their wrists trying to stop the anguish. God knows; I almost did. Several times. Instead, I was told that I needed to jump back on the wagon and go on as if nothing happened. I was supposed to find a job with no college education that would take care of me and Dawn and still make time to patrol and be the good little Slayer they all wanted me to be; bouncy, happy, and smiling all the time. Giles watched as I sank deeper and deeper into despair, but he decided his best course of action was to leave. To go back to England so I would grow up and become more responsible. I wasn’t responsible enough already? I wasn’t doing what they all wanted? Was it too much for any of them, especially him, to see that they were slowly killing me by forcing me to take care of everything on my own after just being brought back to life? He left. He left me to do it alone. He left because he couldn’t stand watching the train wreck that my life had become. No matter what he said, he left because he couldn’t deal, period. Now he’s back with a smile, trying to pretend he didn’t run away like a coward. That he didn’t leave the person he was supposed to support and protect to deal on her own. He’s the one who has his head buried in the sand this time. I have to find it in myself to forgive him. Seriously, I love the man more than he will ever know, so I’m sure it’ll come, in time. @~@~@~ Angel sighed heavily. His one regret was not trying hard enough to convince her of how important her calling was. Maybe if he had, she would have been responsible and obedient to Giles’ advice. After all it was his job to put her safety and that of the world above all others. Rupert was to blame also, for being too lenient and treating her as a daughter instead of the supernatural being she was. Catering to the whims of an immature teenager wasn’t the way to go. He’d once hoped his example of allowing her to fight alone would’ve improved her watcher’s teaching methods. He should have been more firm with her instead of allowing her to make her own decisions. Decisions that put the lives of her friends and watcher in danger. She was born for a higher purpose and should never have been taught to rely on others. If she would’ve had the solitary life the council had instilled in other slayers, she wouldn’t have had a reason for this journal. Angel decided it might be a good idea to make plans for a trip to Rome in a couple of weeks. He could use bringing her the journal as an excuse to intervene and help her see the error of her ways. TBC with journal entry on Angel coming up next. |