Masters and Minions 9: The Watcher's Tale

Author: Medea

DEDICATION: To Anthony Stewart Head, for breathing life into our much beloved Watcher.

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1. The Unexpected

Expect the unexpected.

It's practically the Watchers' Creed. We're trained to deal with the supernatural. Some are experts in demon lore, others in the interpretation of prophecy, still others in the intricacies of magic. And then there is the one among us, the privileged one, to whom the highest honor is given.

The one who, for a few brief years -- longer, if he is very, very lucky -- serves as advisor, guide, and confidant to the Slayer.

For sixteen years, the honor...the blessing...was mine.

The experiences were wonderful beyond belief. Terrifying. Grueling. Astonishing. And yes, unexpected. In her short, brilliant lifetime, Buffy Summers achieved the impossible more times than I could count. Indeed, I lost track, which brought me no small measure of grief from the Council when they found that my records were somewhat sketchy for a few years.

Of course, the Council couldn't be bothered with frivolous explanations along the lines of "Well, you see, I hadn't the time to keep up with my journal entries when I was helping with the battle against a hell god...and against a demonically transformed civil servant...and against a psychotic vampire who murdered the woman I loved..."

Which brings us to one of the chief sources of the unexpected aspects of my career. Certainly, I'd expected to be involved in my Slayer's battles, but as a supporting player. It was my training, you see. A good Watcher nurtures and guides, but never gets emotionally attached to his charge, and *never* forgets the cardinal rule: it is the Slayer's fight, and hers alone.

At least, that used to be the cardinal rule.

Then came Buffy, bless her soul. Never have I met anyone so unconcerned with rules and proper procedure, and yet, never have I met anyone who inspired such fierce loyalty and devotion. That is why I could never leave the fight to her alone.

And it is also why, unlike her predecessors, Buffy benefited from a close-knit, caring group of friends who charged into the fray right behind her. No matter that they were painfully naïve at the outset, or that they had a deplorable lack of discipline at times, or that none of them possessed any special talents or superior strength that might even remotely qualify them. All that concerned them was helping their friend in her lonely, dangerous, and all-too-often heart-breaking quest to make a difference in the world.

But you see, this is where things took an extreme turn for the unexpected.

I went to Sunnydale expecting to shepherd Buffy through her duties as the Slayer.

I never expected that it would lead me to take an entire band of American teenagers under my wing.

Nor could I possibly have imagined that one of them would suffer a dreadful twist of fate that, eventually, overturned everything I thought I knew about vampires, humans, Slayers, the Council...everything.

2. Interlude

"Willow, calm down," Angel urged, gripping her upper arms to halt her increasingly frantic pacing.

"He's dying, Angel!" Willow snapped tearfully. She struggled to free herself, but was outmatched when her other Mate wrapped his arms around her from behind and held her firmly.

"Easy, luv, this isn't helping any," Spike murmured, seconding Angel's efforts to soothe her.

Trapped between her two Mates, Willow stilled momentarily but it was clear that she was fuming. She raised desperate eyes to Angel's and bit out tightly, "Wesley. Says. Giles. Is. Fading." She paused, struggling to control her emotions, but was unable to prevent her voice from trembling. "He says Giles has slipped into a coma, and he might not last the night. I have to leave right away! Where *are* they?!?"

A familiar voice answered from the entryway, "Here."

Willow let out a sigh of relief as she turned to see Cyrene, Hannah, and Tara walking toward her. Calm flowed into her through the renewed bond with her coven. Angel and Spike sensed the change and released her. Tara reached her first and enveloped her in a sympathetic embrace.

"We came as fast as we could," Tara apologized softly. "Willow, I'm so sorry about Giles."

Willow sniffled against Tara's shoulder, "I know. But he's not dead yet."

Tara gently pulled away and fixed Willow with a tender yet stern gaze. "Willow, you know you can't interfere. That isn't the way."

Willow's expression darkened. "I know, I know...it's just...He's *family*, Tara," She broke off in frustration, closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them and continued, "If I can just see him once more before..."

Cyrene drew near and placed a comforting hand on Willow's shoulder. "We'll do everything we can. You know this will be tricky, though. We don't have anyone closer to London to anchor you."

Willow's dismay was plainly visible across her face. "Nobody? But what about--?"

"We tried everyone," Hannah assured her sadly. "But on such short notice, we couldn't reach any of our contacts."

"Which means I could end up anywhere within a 200-mile radius of London," Willow murmured, her brow knit tightly in concentration. Tears moistened the rims of her eyelids. In a low, quivering voice, as if speaking to herself, she said, "This can't be happening. There has to be a way..."

Through the anguish that encased her like a shell, a soft, persistent voice made itself heard in her mind. The voice reached out to her with a single word.

Willow.

At the distant echo of her own name, Willow went completely still, her eyes wide. Recognizing her caller, Willow whispered in awe, "Sahu?"

3. The Fatal Weekend

There was no warning.

There never is.

We all had plans that weekend, as we normally did, even if they were rather unremarkable plans. Our lives had settled into a bizarre, albeit comfortable, routine, which wasn't surprising. We'd defeated a hell god. After that, everything else paled in comparison. There were still foes to be fought, but increasingly the work of fighting evil came to fit neatly into our schedules, alongside mundane chores like taking inventory at the magic shop. Xander and Anya were busy with their wedding plans at the time, as I recall. Buffy was fretting over her studies, while Willow...

...Willow was off at a conference that one of her professors had encouraged her to attend.

One well-meaning suggestion from a professor who saw great potential in a student; that's all it took to alter our lives forever.

It is astonishing how slowly devastation can creep up on you. The word suggests a sudden onslaught, an intense, overpowering whirlwind, and believe me, we felt all that and more, afterward. But at first, all we heard was the barest whisper that something was amiss.

Willow didn't come home.

A phone call from Angel suggested that all was well...yet something wasn't quite right. When the weekend stretched into the following week, Xander and Tara drove to Los Angeles.

And still Willow didn't come home.

Xander and Tara, however, did.

They brought with them terrible, unthinkable news.

Our Willow, our sweet, steadfast Willow, was dead. Worse yet, she'd risen.

For days, we were mere shadows of ourselves. Xander most of all. Nothing would console him. She had been his only surviving childhood friend, and although they each had deeply committed relationships with others, in their own, private way, they genuinely loved each other.

Buffy was just as heartbroken, but where Xander withdrew into himself for a long while, she vented all her grief and rage on the local demon population. Her rampage was so fearsome that Willy closed his bar and took an extended holiday due to lack of clientele. Even after his patrons cautiously resurfaced, the Slayer's massacre was discussed in hushed whispers, and threats to human life were few and far between.

Sunnydale's human population attributed the greater sense of safety to increased police vigilance.

And poor Tara...

There is a field of sunflowers not far from the UC-Sunnydale campus. Once, it had been simply a grassy patch where Tara and Willow had met for a picnic. I found Tara there, not long after Willow's death, crying into the ground. It took me close to an hour to coax her back home. A cluster of sunflowers sprang up shortly thereafter, and have stubbornly defied all attempts by city park officials and would-be developers to weed them out. Plans for parking lots and playgrounds were abandoned, and day after day, the sunflowers followed the sun in its path across the sky, keeping an eternal vigil.

As one who, since childhood, had worn poppies on the eleventh of November each year, I appreciated the form that Tara had given to her grief, and her remembrance.

Meanwhile, I labored under the suffocating weight of maturity. For the sake of my Slayer and our small, close-knit band, I mourned silently.

Dear God, I wanted to scream.

But I couldn't. The nightmare was real. And as so often happens in nightmares, the power to scream had fled.

And so, in keeping with my training, I watched.

I watched over those who needed me to be their strength, their anchor. Buffy. Xander. Tara. Throughout their grief, I steadied them and gave what comfort I could.

All the while longing for the luxury of youthful rage.

When the chance finally came, however, I slipped quietly away. And once again, I watched.

It was one of Willow's first nights out since...

...since...

Angel knew where she and Spike had gone. He took me, and stood by as I watched her from the shadows.

And the silence broke.

I knew why she was there. Without Angel needing to make excuses or explanations, I knew, as I watched her stroll with Spike a few paces behind an unsuspecting couple.

And I wept.

Rage, seething inside me ever since Xander had broken the news, pounded at my chest with every sob.

Angel made no move to deflect my fist; merely stood there with a mournful look in his eyes as I struck out at him, as if he'd expected it. For an eternity, it seemed, I spent my fury, raining blows upon him, crying for an innocent child who had been one of my most precious hopes for the future.

Now, a killer.

With resigned empathy, Angel offered no resistance as I battered him until his face was bloody, one eye nearly swollen shut.

Later, I realized that he'd done for me exactly what I'd done for Buffy, Xander, and Tara. At the time, however, I felt only pain. It was the pain speaking when I gave him a warning.

Willow hadn't been a monster. Her soul had been purer than mine, far purer than his. If he let her become a monster, if he permitted her demon's thirst for blood to defile everything she'd been in life, if he let it come to the point that someone – God forbid, Buffy – had to stake her, then I would stake him.

I never forgot his reply.

Without anger, and with an ancient calm, Angel assured me that it would never come to that. That I would have nothing to stake, since he would give himself to the sun after staking Willow himself.

Neither of us ever spoke of the incident again. So far as I know, Willow never learned of it.

I returned to Sunnydale and, slowly, we went on with our lives.

Our amputated lives.

4. Interlude

At the sound of Sahu's voice resonating softly in her mind, Willow paused. It had been many months since the ancient vampire had spoken to her through the astral plane, and Willow had a dreadful suspicion that it was no coincidence that Sahu was contacting her at the very moment that Giles's life hung in the balance.

During her stay with Anubis and Sahu in Algiers, Willow had learned that they had a fascination with death that went beyond what was usual for most vampires. They had said little about the reason for this fascination, other than that they had roamed the earth for a very long time, and in that time they had discovered horizons beyond mortal dreaming.

Willow tried to relax her mind so she could better communicate with Sahu, but she was unable to keep her thoughts from flashing to Giles.

Have no fear, Willow, came Sahu's voice in her mind. He will not pass across without you. Your presence is awaited.

"Awaited? By whom?" Willow wondered out loud.

Her Mates, who had stepped aside at the arrival of her coven sisters, now approached cautiously, frowning in concern.

"Willow?" Angel murmured as he placed a hand on her arm.

"You all right, luv?" Spike asked.

Willow nodded absently, sparing them a quick glance but holding up her hand to stave off their questions as she concentrated on hearing Sahu's words.

A path to your friend will be opened, but the path is for you alone.

Willow's eyes widened as she understood Sahu's message. Turning first to Angel and Spike, then to Cyrene, Hannah, and Tara, she warned, "Stand back. Some pretty powerful magic is on its way."

As if confirming her warning, the air in the Hyperion's lobby suddenly cooled and a slight breeze stirred. Sensing the build-up of mystical energy, Tara, Cyrene, and Hannah followed Willow's advice and moved away. On the other hand, Angel and Spike tensed and pressed closer to Willow, instinctively shielding her from a potential threat. Earnestly, Willow caressed their faces and assured them, "I'll be all right. Trust me, please."

With wary reluctance, Angel backed away, drawing a resistant Spike with him. The younger vampire scowled and strained to return to Willow's side, but relented at Angel's sympathetic but firm glance. Turning uneasy eyes toward Willow, Spike murmured with heartfelt urgency, "Be careful."

Willow smiled and nodded.

At her Mates' withdrawal, a dark vortex appeared. The darkness pooled into an oval portal six feet high. Light seemed to bend toward it, streaming inward as if an invisible current were drawing all radiance into the portal's depths.

Bracing herself, Willow stepped forward.

5. Hope

I knew that Willow, like the others, had crept into every part of my life. How could it have been otherwise, after all the trials we'd withstood together? And yet, it was still jarring for me to notice the unexpected corners where her absence made itself felt.

The magic shop bustled with customers as it always had, but there was a stillness to the air, a quiet emptiness that I'd never felt before. People came and went, money was exchanged for merchandise, yet ironically the store seemed to have lost its magic.

I took to dusting and straightening the shelves after hours, rather than during business hours. It was either that, or run the risk of greeting my customers with red-rimmed eyes and the sort of dour countenance that isn't very conducive to making a sale. Willow was everywhere and nowhere. I could pick up a tome and recall when she'd used it last...and wonder if a trace of her lingered on the pages, some warm imprint her hands might have left behind.

Research sessions were more subdued, the camaraderie less lively. Oh, the work got done. We survived; we even laughed, occasionally. But the ache inside never quite healed. Not for a long, long time.

She was gone from our world, and now walked in another.

Even something as simple as sitting in front of a computer could summon up feelings, although I could hardly avoid using one.

Yet if the computer had the power to summon up old ghosts, it also provided us with our first glimmer of hope.

Tara began to convey news of Willow. That Willow was writing to her at all was unusual for a vampire. My training as a Watcher had led me to assume that the only contact vampires bothered to have with companions from their previous lives was to slaughter them, or sometimes turn them. It made me wonder if, perhaps, there was indeed something about the unorthodox circumstances of Willow's existence that might give us reason to hope. I started researching the intricacies of vampire social hierarchies in earnest.

Which made it all the worse when we received news that Willow had been party to a vampire ritual combat. I'd come across references to a variety of these organized challenges of strength, most of which involved unrestrained violence and the total annihilation of opponents. That Angel had condoned Willow's participation in one, had even joined in himself, did not bode well.

I had half a mind to let Buffy make good on her threats to drive to L.A. and throttle Angel and Spike both. Believe me, the phrase "go kick their bloody asses" was poised on the tip of my tongue.

The other half of my mind would have gladly administered a sound thrashing myself.

In the end, neither of us did. However, not long afterward, Buffy grew restless. I knew what was bothering her.

A Watcher knows his Slayer, you see. And Buffy had long since become more than a Slayer to me. Not a daughter, so much as a kindred spirit. Two survivors bound by a commitment to what all too often seemed like an endless crusade. As such, we read each other as no one else could.

I knew what doubts had crept into her mind and realized that, soon, she would want to see with her own eyes what I had already seen.

I also knew that she would be furious with me when she returned.

I'd kept Willow's killing a secret at Angel's request and out of a hope that he could indeed wean her of the need to take human life once she was strong enough. It went against every principle I had. After the Cruciamentem, I'd sworn never to deceive Buffy again. And I was a Watcher, for Heaven's sake. It weighed on my conscience, on my very soul, that for the sake of a fledgling vampire who wore the face of a dead friend, I was turning a blind eye to the murder of innocents.

How far I'd fallen!

Or so I thought. But, then, at the time, I also thought I knew about vampires.

When Buffy returned from her first encounter with Willow since The Weekend, my re-education began. That is, once Buffy had finished giving me a royal tongue-lashing. But she also brought extraordinary news: Willow had offered to forego killing. She was still weak, still a minion, but for the sake of a Slayer's approval, she was willing to make the effort. It defied every bit of wisdom and expertise I'd accumulated.

However, it was entirely in keeping with Willow's friendship for Buffy.

There it was again, that glimmer of hope. Perhaps there was more of our old Willow in there after all.

I won't belabor the point. It's really Willow's story, and though I've filled more journals than I care to count, I still don't know the whole of it. But it was a turning point for me. Everything I thought I knew would be called into question. Ready or not, I was on my way to becoming...

Well, what I am now.

A legend among Watchers.

Dear God, that sounds unbelievably arrogant, but it's all I've heard from anyone for the past few years. All because I am one of the few Watchers in history who has had nearly unrestricted access to vampire society.

It had been so easy before, when I could dismiss vampires as no more than demons: diabolically clever, some of them; undisciplined street thugs, the rest. That had been the limit of my experience, with the possible exception of Angel, whom I'd neatly compartmentalized as an aberration because of his soul. Not surprising, really, given that the presence of a Slayer tends to cut down on the development of stable vampire communities in an area.

Quite a good thing, actually. Don't misunderstand, while I may have acquired a new fascination with vampire ways and customs through my association with Willow, I've not forgotten that they are predators first and foremost, nor have I forgotten my own place on the food chain.

But as I began archiving Tara's correspondence with Willow, then, over the years, my own, an intriguingly complex picture emerged.

I saw a shadow world filled with as much turmoil and contradiction as our own. There were vampires who clung tenaciously to ancient customs, like the Master who had nearly robbed me of my Slayer before she'd even begun. Then there were those who just as readily violated any and all codes of conduct. The whole clan system, from what I could gather from Los Angeles, was incredibly volatile.

And then there was Willow herself. The anomaly.

Her efforts to survive without killing were...well, rather amusing, in one sense. Also a bloody nuisance, considering the added vigilance it demanded of Buffy, especially in the months following her "cinematic debut", as Xander so waggishly put it. It was exasperating! Sunnydale's entire adolescent population was swept up in the ensuing vampire mania and Buffy found herself prying sixteen year-old girls off of their would-be killers, rather than vice versa. Appalling business, all of it. And Dawn, of all people, paraded around in one of those ridiculous, slogan tee shirts that made obscene reference to fangs and sexual prowess.

I read her the Riot Act. Which paled in comparison to Buffy’s reaction.

Not long after that, though, I had my first face-to-face encounter with Willow. I suppose it would make a better story if I could say it was dramatic, say, for example, if it involved a rescue or an overly stylized meeting in a misty, Gothic cemetery. It wasn't. It was as mundane as opening a door and seeing her standing on the other side.

Just like that, Willow was back in my life, and in some ways it was as if she'd never left. Once more, our research table was pleasantly crowded. I wasn't the only one affected; for the first time in quite a while, Xander's humor was fueled by a receptive, familiar listener. Poor Anya never really managed to distinguish that fine line between humor and seriousness.

Of course, there was the awkward fact that Spike was practically joined with Willow at the hip and took great pleasure in taunting Buffy over it. He was yet another mystery. Aside from a failed attack in her dorm room, I'd never really known Spike to have any particular interest in Willow as a human. So to see the way he doted on her – he, a master vampire, treating a minion with such regard – well, it further confounded my understanding of vampires.

He gave weight to her opinion, as if he genuinely wanted her approval. Not typical behavior for a master vampire one hundred and thirty years her senior. Not at all. Yet for Willow's sake, he curbed his impulses. Well, perhaps a little less successfully when it came to baiting Buffy and Xander.

Willow managed to help us knit the Hellmouth back together – she and her coven. With that task, it was almost as if the group had been knit back together as well. Something healed. Not perfectly, mind you. Willow was still a vampire; she was never quite our old Willow again. But, then, deep wounds always leave scars.

We started seeing more of Willow – and Spike, to Buffy's dismay. Sometimes it was strictly business, lending a hand in defeating a particular demon, averting the odd apocalypse here and there. Certainly, their assistance was invaluable, although it was a little jarring for Buffy to see Willow fight, and fight she did. According to Buffy, Willow once eviscerated an Ufkaansh't with her bare hands. Rather nasty work, considering that their innards are filled with parasitic worms.

Buffy confessed that it reminded her of fighting alongside Faith, in the early days. Willow didn't quite have a Slayer's strength yet, but she had the same zeal for battle as that misguided girl. And then there was the...er...post-combat mood. I'll never forget the conversation I had with Buffy about vampire sexuality after she caught a glimpse of Willow and Spike feeding from each other after a particularly brutal battle. First of all, telling my Slayer that her brief experience with Angel had in no way introduced her to the realities of vampire sexual appetites had never figured on my list of things to do. Hardly!

And then there was the fact that all I could tell her was of questionable reliability, at best.

Few Watchers have ever had any accurate basis for compiling accounts of the intimate lives of vampires, for obvious reasons. The scant details that have been recorded are thus treated with a healthy dose of skepticism. Most information on the subject has been consigned to volumes that are often regarded as little better than sordid fictions, more revealing of the author's own twisted fantasies than actual vampire practices.

Of course, every Watcher has these volumes in his or her collection.

They also tend to be the most worn with use in the Council's training center, much like copies of Lady Chatterly's Lover in public libraries. It's the first thing novices go for. A guilty indulgence in private; an object of ridicule in public. One or two references are given some slight credence. For example, the passages recorded in the early nineteenth century by Pedro Velasquez seem to have some solid grounding in fact, although his writings have been heavily censored over the years. His Slayer allegedly became romantically entangled with a vampire. Diaz, I think it was. At any rate, such accounts are rarities.

After all, since its inception the Watchers Council has been in the business of destroying vampires. Of what practical use could it be to know about their carnal habits? Or the possibility that they might be capable of love? Even less useful. That would only make them seem more sympathetic.

More human.

Dear God, what the Council’s obstinate, narrow-mindedness cost me, cost us all!

But I digress.

Through Willow, we each had our moment of truth about assumptions that had long ruled our lives. Xander's I could only guess at, but it seemed so profound, so powerful, that I was both desperate to ask him about it, yet reluctant to pry into something so personal.

It was the night before his wedding. Xander spent several hours with Willow, I think because he was hoping to reach out to his oldest friend before embarking on a life transition. Perhaps he needed to discover that his friend was still there. I wasn't privy to what transpired between them, but when I saw him the following evening, about an hour before the ceremony, he seemed subdued and more thoughtful than I'd ever seen him before. When I alerted him to slight traces of blood on his collar, his reaction surprised me.

Xander didn't seem alarmed, didn't try to wash it off. He merely closed his eyes and asked if I thought she could forgive him.

Naturally, I had no idea what he was talking about, and it showed. At my blank confusion, he confessed to having had an epiphany of sorts. He wouldn't say much, only that it involved Willow. Ever since she'd agreed to try to feed without killing, Xander had debated the possibility of offering a vein, much as Tara and Willow's coven sisters did. Apparently, he'd finally gone through with it. Hence, the blood on his collar, which covered a bite that hadn't fully healed yet.

I'd thought this was the source of his guilt: the bite, the intimacy of it. Xander admitted that it had indeed been intimate, more than he'd ever dreamed possible, but that wasn't the problem. Rather, it made him realize something about himself and how he'd viewed demons ever since he'd learned of their existence.

He was more ready than ever to marry Anya. What he regretted were all the times he'd unthinkingly disparaged demons – demonkind, writ large – in her presence, as if their nature alone warranted their condemnation. Xander was beside himself with worry that Anya might never forgive him for that.

It made me fiendishly curious about the bite Willow had given him. But my upbringing prevented me from asking, and Xander volunteered little.

In the end, his fears were assuaged. Anya was quite the enthusiastic bride, although far from blushing. Come to think of it, I can't recall anything that ever succeeded in making her blush. She was genuinely delighted when Xander revealed the bite. She seemed to take it as a sign of good luck. Later, I learned from Spike that Willow's bite had involved a kind of marking and that the gesture could be interpreted as a blessing on the union. Granted, it was so rare for vampires to offer their benediction to a mortal couple as to be almost unheard of. Spike certainly didn't bother to hide his disdain, although from then on he almost bordered on civil in his interactions with Xander, as if in deference to Willow's judgment.

It was one of the more curious episodes I recorded in my journals.

Buffy's moment of truth was delivered not by Willow, but at the hands of the Council's leadership.

Not that her relationship with the Council had ever been particularly rosy, mind you. But at least they'd left her alone, most of the time, especially after Glory. Even the Council had to admit that there was little they could do to intimidate a Slayer who'd faced down a hell god. For all his faults, Quentin Travers was a shrewd pragmatist who knew when it was in his best interest to concede.

However, Buffy's continued association with Willow eventually served as the justification for Travers' removal from his seat on the Council.

The coup, for that is what it was, ushered in one of the darkest periods of my life. No matter that it was preceded by some of the most precious experiences I've known. They were merely the calm before the storm.

Willow and Buffy slowly re-established their friendship, although it hardly involved the flushed discussion of boys or carefree dancing at the Bronze that dominated their youth. Willow was eager to hear how Buffy was faring at college, and Buffy was happy to share her growing interest in psychology. Thankfully, her experiences with that insufferable Professor Walsh hadn't extinguished her zeal for the subject, and Buffy was well on her way to completing the major. Willow seemed almost envious, and Buffy later told me that it felt strange to be the one thriving academically while her friend looked on from the outside, unable to participate because of her nocturnal existence. Buffy had expected their situations to be exactly the reverse.

It was also odd, at first, to reassign Willow to the category of Buffy’s occasional sparring partner. In my mind’s eye, I had grown used to associating Willow with books and Internet research. Perhaps it was my nostalgia for simpler, earlier days. Simpler? Well, relatively speaking, when my understanding of a Watcher’s responsibilities and a Slayer’s duty were more clear-cut. Somehow, this sense of normalcy was embodied in the image of a young, optimistic girl whose open, inquisitive eyes could identify an obscure passage in an ancient prophecy and at the same time manage to find good even in a vampire with a murderous past.

Buffy and Willow were amazing to behold when they sparred. Their moves were so evenly matched, so balanced that they almost seemed choreographed. I learned that it was a side-effect of Willow’s peculiar sensitivity to Slayers. Certainly, I knew that Buffy could sense the presence of vampires, and that the reverse was also true. But the finer points of how this worked were nowhere addressed in any of the literature available to me. The idea that there could be individual variation from vampire to vampire intrigued me, and I fear that I pestered Angel with some rather indelicate questions. Not that I realized they would be so unseemly, mind you. After all, Willow’s sensitivity to the Slayer took an innocent enough form, and Spike had no qualms about describing the ache in his jaw that served as his early warning. At Angel’s awkward reluctance to discuss his own situation, I should have left well enough alone.

Such is the wisdom of hindsight.

Instead, I persisted, and unfortunately raised the subject when Spike was within earshot. To Angel’s grave discomfort, Spike cheerfully (and quite crudely) revealed that Angel’s reaction to a Slayer involved the...ah, stimulation of certain parts...

Well, let’s just say that it’s hard to say which of us, Angel or I, wanted to stake him more, and leave it at that.

Angel visited less often than Willow did, for the same reason he’d originally left. It was simply too painful for him, for Buffy, and the normal course of human life wasn’t helping at all. It wasn’t too long after Xander and Anya were married that their son Jesse was born. For Buffy, though she was genuinely happy for her friends, it was nonetheless a painful reminder of the sacrifices her calling demanded of her. Not to mention the fact that her heart wanted no man other than one who could never give her children.

I began to understand how truly isolated a Slayer’s existence was. It was there in Buffy’s eyes when she watched Xander and Willow play with Jesse.

Willow doted on Jesse shamelessly when she visited Sunnydale. When he was a toddler, she and Xander would lay side-by-side on the floor and take turns setting him astride their chests. How he squealed with delight at the fact that Willow could remain perfectly still while his father’s chest rose and fell with the normal rhythm of breathing.

Honestly, the things children find amusing...

Certainly, I was encouraged; it was yet another sign that, miraculously, some trace of the old Willow had survived and was even emerging as the dominant force within her. At the same time, I felt the quiet sorrow of my Slayer. Willow was a vampire, yet she abandoned herself to the vicarious happiness she enjoyed through Xander and Jesse precisely because she had accepted that she was a creature apart and would never have a human family of her own. Buffy, though a Slayer was still mortal. She was in between, human yet not an ordinary human, and some part of her refused to let go of the fantasy of a normal life.

No, the one thing Buffy clung to most stubbornly of all was hope. Always hope.

Even when a band of cowards on the Council did their utmost to crush her.

6. Interlude

The instant Willow crossed into the portal, it hit her.

Brutal, unforgiving force pressed down on her from all directions. It felt like her entire body was being flattened thinner than a leaf. So powerful was the weight that squeezed her that Willow couldn't even panic. Her mind was overwhelmed with the sensory alarms from cells and tissues crushed beyond all bearable limits.

She couldn't even fill her lungs to scream.

And yet, every fiber in her body was screaming, groaning against the punishing weight that would not yield.

As suddenly as the terrible pressure had come, it stopped. Willow's stomach lurched and her entire frame shook as her feet collided with solid ground. Weakly, she collapsed to the floor.

Willow remained prostrate and trembling for several moments. Eventually, she realized that the darkness of the vortex had lightened to a reddish-gray. When she wondered why she still couldn't see anything, it dawned on her that her entire body was tensed and her eyes pressed firmly shut.

Cautiously, she opened them and sat up.

She was on a spotless linoleum floor. A neat, institutional-looking mattress was level with her gaze. Willow raised her eyes and saw that she was in a hospital room. Instantly, her gaze snapped toward the occupant of the bed.

Giles lay there, pale and immobile, tethered to a complex life-support system by a network of tubes and wires.

Willow rose up and neared his bedside. Her heart, dead though it was, clenched painfully at the sight of him. How could one heart attack leave him so transformed? He looked so...frail. So small.

Tentatively, Willow brushed her hand against Giles's arm, then entwined her fingers with his.

"Giles?" came her plaintive whisper.

"Not with your voice can you reach him."

Startled, Willow turned toward the unseen speaker. It hadn't occurred to her that she wasn't alone.

A familiar figure, cloaked in midnight blue, was seated in the corner. Gnarled, purple hands rested lightly on either armrest of a plain, utilitarian hospital chair.

Willow gaped in recognition at a demon she'd not seen since the culmination of her quest for a means to secure Angel's soul.

"Hypnoi?"

7. Betrayal

Buffy was proving more successful than any Slayer in recent memory. She’d beaten the odds merely by surviving to her mid-twenties, and her friendship with Willow had only made her stronger. You see, Buffy discovered in this altered, resurrected Willow someone who understood her, who knew what it was like to crave a connection with others, yet feel alienated from them by the violence of her own existence. Simply having someone to talk to, someone who shared the same past but hadn’t embarked (indeed, couldn’t) on the sort of “normal” life denied to her, sustained Buffy and kept her heart in her calling.

That, and with such formidable allies as Willow, Spike, and Angel, Buffy effectively made Sunnydale unattractive to diabolical masterminds. This, despite the presence of a Hellmouth. Oh, demons of all varieties still chose to make Sunnydale their home, but there was no talk of world domination.

Then came the first communiqué from the Council, reprimanding Buffy for her association with the very creatures she’d been called to destroy. A communiqué signed ‘Henry Lloyd’, not ‘Quentin Travers’. Buffy was ordered to sever her ties to the vampire element at once.

What utter rubbish!

Buffy treated it as such, and ignored the order. Meanwhile, I vented my most scathing epithets on the Council’s ignorance and backward thinking. The more I thought about it, the greater it irked me. Why should Buffy be denied her friends, her support, if they were helping her to be a more effective Slayer?

I began to view the whole history of the Council’s relations with Slayers in a new light, and I didn’t like what I saw.

On the one hand, the Council had always insisted on cutting the Slayer off from her family and friends: she was to face the challenges of her calling alone.

Yet the Council’s power came from connections. None of the smug hypocrites who sought to lord their authority over Buffy would have dreamed of foregoing the advantages of a network whose members spanned the entire globe. The knowledge, the resources that gave them their position were the accumulation of several centuries of collective effort.

Yet they dared scold Buffy for wanting what any human being wants.

Companionship.

Confidants.

I considered it poetic justice that Buffy managed to attract some of the most loyal friends a person could ever have.

At one point, Willow offered to make herself scarce for a while, not wanting Buffy to be at odds with the Council on her account. Buffy would hear none of it. As she saw it, Willow had done more for her than the Council ever had.

Imagine how humbled I felt, how moved I was, when Buffy’s fiercest expression of loyalty came on my behalf.

Relations between Buffy and the Council grew progressively strained. Eventually, I recognized my continued communications with the Council for the hollow sham that it was, and simply stopped sending reports. They were so quick to send my replacement that I could almost hear the cackles of glee clear across the Atlantic. The fools undoubtedly believed they’d equipped him well enough to bring her back into line.

Buffy’s new Watcher arrived with a complete reprogramming kit: drugs to render her mind open to suggestion; ingredients for binding spells that would compel her to submit to his authority; even a set of restraints forged to withstand a Slayer’s strength.

Albeit not the combined strength of a Slayer and two gravely annoyed vampires.

Oh, yes, and then there was the finishing touch: an extraction team to remove me from the picture.

It was a little unnerving to hear Willow discuss possible methods for dealing with the Council. For all that she’d been able to preserve of her former humanity, she was a vampire. Formidably so, on this occasion. True, she demonstrated the same level-headed ability to analyze a situation she’d had in life. She recognized their effort to pick a fight, and had the wisdom to propose that we disarm them by refusing to escalate the violence.

But violence was in her nature, and she had a chilling, connoisseur’s appreciation for its subtleties. When she argued against killing the extraction team, I was reminded that Willow was a demon at the core. She spared their lives not because such justice should be left to human authorities, or as a matter of conscience, or even because she knew that to take vengeance would make her as bad as they were. No, she was quite willing to be every bit as cold-blooded and murderous as they – more so, even.

She simply wasn’t sure how far the Council’s resources extended, and thus couldn’t gauge whether or not we could bleed the entire organization to death before they crushed us. For Willow, it was a question of not getting into a fight unless she knew the odds.

A predator’s perspective.

At any rate, her strategy worked. The non-confrontational approach puzzled them enough that they abandoned us to ourselves for a few years. I availed myself of the opportunity afforded by our exile, if you will, to focus even more closely on my study of vampire society.

Willow proved to be a tremendous resource. In many ways, she was a fellow exile, cut off from her own kind (save for Angel and Spike) because of her peculiar nature. However, she had an outsider’s keen eye for observation. The accounts she gave of vampire society in Los Angeles hardly fit the experiences to which I’d been privy in Sunnydale. Granted, there were plenty of impulsive hotheads who sought to demonstrate their prowess through displays of violence. But she also described successful entrepreneurs who managed to conceal their nature and continued their existence much as it had been when they were alive.

These, Willow deemed the survivors.

She shared with me one of the conclusions she’d drawn after even just a few years as a vampire. In her opinion, the vampires that alienated themselves too greatly from human society – the cocky fledglings who enjoyed terrorizing humans just a little too publicly, or the megalomaniacs like the Master – were soon weeded out. True longevity required an affinity for one’s prey. Oh, she realized how disturbing that must sound to me, but she figured that I would prefer honesty to euphemisms.

Oddly enough, I did.

Of course, I wasn’t immediately ready to see vampires as little different from human beings in the way that Willow did. But her frequent use of the term “apex predator” did give me pause for thought. Not a terribly comfortable pause: I certainly wasn’t about to think of myself as nothing more than part of a food chain. Rather, it made me wonder about the Slayer.

If vampires could be said to have carved out their own ecological niche with respect to the human population, if they were indeed predators who maintained a close balance with their prey, then what was the purpose of a Slayer?

It was a question I grappled with more and more, since I could sense that Buffy was struggling with it as well.

She was a valiant warrior. She had averted world destruction time and time again. But as many demons and vampires as she had destroyed, they amounted to a mere fraction of the supernatural threats to human beings around the world. Buffy patrolled the Hellmouth nightly; vampires roamed the entire globe. Yet humanity survived.

Life went on without her.

Buffy never lost faith in her role in the greater scheme of things, nothing like that. But in the quieter moments, I think her doubts weighed more heavily on her than when she was battling a formidable adversary.

You see, the demon she never managed to defeat was her own fear of abandonment. First her father, then Angel, then Riley. And while she held the Council in utmost contempt, in a certain respect they symbolized her reason for existence.

And they had abandoned her. No matter that Buffy had been the one to cut all ties; their withdrawal of support and approval was nothing less than emotional blackmail, a threat that she *would* be abandoned if she refused to march to their tune.

There is nothing lonelier than feeling unneeded.

That, I believe, is how it started.

How we...

Goodness. Listen to me. After years of silence, I still can’t bring myself to say it. No one knew, although I suspect Angel might have guessed.

You’re the first I’ll ever have told. I suppose a man is willing to say anything when he’s facing Death.

Buffy and I grew very close.

Xander and Anya were moving on with their lives; Willow had made a home for herself in Los Angeles with Angel and Spike; Tara eventually followed, drawn by newly formed ties to a coven; and Dawn would soon be leaving for college.

I stayed.

And I gave her comfort.

She'd been out patrolling one night. Dawn was away visiting a friend. It had been a rather unremarkable week.

In a painfully ironic twist, it was the very normalcy that Buffy craved which proved to be more than she could bear. She went home to a still, silent house; the refrigerator was empty; it was too late to order take-out. Simple, mundane disappointments. Her week crept on like this in its petty pace until, on a Thursday, I think it was, she had a run-in with an Ukhthoi demon. Beastly, serpentine creatures -- they thrash about like an out-of-control fire hose. Buffy had quite a few aches and pains to show for her troubles, and she decided she'd had enough of returning to an empty house.

So she ended up on my doorstep.

I made her some tea, nothing terribly special. Yet she cradled the mug in her hands like it was the most wonderful thing to happen to her all week. Her smile was so very tired.

Then she asked if she could stay. Her request surprised me, but I ascribed it to fatigue and excused myself to fetch some sheets so I could make up the futon for myself.

She stopped me before I'd even taken three steps.

Giles, can I stay with *you*?

Six simple, monosyllabic words; the very same ones she'd said just a moment ago. Yet the inflection made all the difference in the world.

If my life were a tawdry, paperback romance, I suppose we would have indulged ourselves in all sorts of wild, carnal abandon. The floor would have been involved, and a roaring fire. Quite ridiculous -- as if the floor were at all comfortable or conducive to a good tryst.

But it wasn't anything like that. I was a middle-aged Watcher, her surrogate father-figure. Hardly a recipe for inspiring passion.

We held each other, that was all.

Buffy needed contact, a reminder that she wasn't alone.

And I gave it. Of course I gave it.

I'd fought the forces of hell with her. Holding her was simple by comparison.

No, that's not true. It wasn't simple or insignificant. It meant the world to me, as did she.

We went on like that for a few years. Neither of us made too much of it. Buffy continued to fulfill her duty as Slayer, I assisted in whatever capacity I could and ran the shop during the daytime. Willow and Spike dropped by every now and again, Angel a little less frequently. They were good years; we all flourished in our own way, enjoying what quiet happiness life had granted us.

And then the assassin came and took it all away.

8. Interlude

"Greetings, Willow," Hypnoi announced in welcome.

For a moment, Willow merely stared in shock. When she found her voice, she stammered, "Why...? What are you doing here? I didn't think you ever left the desert."

Hypnoi let out a deep, baritone chuckle. "The desert is where those who wish to find me may seek. However, my wanderings are far and wide."

Still clutching Giles's hand, Willow asked, "What brings you here?"

The ancient, hooded demon nodded toward Giles, who looked disturbingly like a sacrifice upon an altar, so neatly was he encased in crisp, starched sheets. "That which has also brought you. The Watcher must move on."

Willow's throat tightened. She glanced away from Hypnoi to observe the labored rise and fall of Giles's chest. Her acute hearing perceived his feeble heartbeat. Without looking at Hypnoi, Willow murmured, "He's dying. What does that have to do with you?" Recalling Sahu's words, she added, "I was told he wouldn't pass without me...that I was awaited..."

"It is as Sahu told you," Hypnoi agreed. At Willow's startled expression, he explained, "It is she who spoke for me, because her voice is known to you."

Although she remained wary, Willow's lips curved wryly. "I should have guessed you'd know her. She and Anubis have been around long enough."

"Long have we shared the same path. In this and many other things, we are alike," Hypnoi observed softly, the subtle timbre of his voice hinting at veiled meaning. However, Willow was in no mood for mind games. All her concern was focused on Giles.

Looking up, she asked, "If you've been waiting for me, is there a chance...could Giles still live?"

With the solemn shake of his head, Hypnoi extinguished Willow's brief glimmer of hope.

"His passage is certain. To where, it has not yet been decided."

"He's led a good life!" she insisted, panic sharpening the edge of her voice. Giles was one of her oldest, dearest friends. She owed him so much! But how could she protect him from death, or worse yet, from whatever unknown fate might be in store?

"He has. He speaks of it to me now," came Hypnoi's throaty assurance.

Willow knit her brow, the wheels turning in her brain as she looked incredulously at Giles's prostrate form. Briefly, she wondered if Hypnoi was in telepathic communication with him. Before she could ask, Hypnoi responded to her unvoiced question.

"Though you are immortal by the standards of this plane, you are still limited by it. There are other planes. The Watcher has passed to one of them where he waits and speaks to me even as I speak to you here."

The furrow in Willow's brow deepened. Slowly, she deduced, "You exist simultaneously in multiple dimensions."

Hypnoi nodded. "I do."

Willow leaned against the bed in silent contemplation for several moments. Despite the steady background noise of various machines that monitored and stabilized Giles's body, despite the stark, sterile walls and the pervasive odor of disinfectant, it was the desert all over again. She might as well be seated on a sand dune beneath the shelter of the night sky. Willow had the eerie feeling that this conversation would prove just as pivotal as her first exchange with the cryptic demon.

"Who are you?" she whispered at last.

In the dim recesses of his heavy cowl, Hypnoi's mouth curved in a slow grin. "You asked me this once before."

"I asked your name," Willow clarified. "At the time, I thought I knew who...or what you were."

"Many think thus. The Watcher thinks I am Death."

"You sure dress the part," Willow blurted out, then cringed at the thought that she might have offended a very powerful entity. To her relief, Hypnoi's grin merely broadened.

"Death is a transition. I am merely a guide. One among many, although most pass without a guide. We are called only for a few whose passage is uncertain."

"But...why for Giles?" Willow persisted.

Hypnoi inclined his head to the side and looked almost bemused, although Willow could only see the lower part of his face. "Surely you have already divined the reason, you who have traveled with him in life as a longtime companion. Tell me of his life, and you will know."

"Great," Willow groaned. "More of your riddles."

9. Vengeance

He taunted me about it constantly.

We may make a vampire of you yet, he said at one point.

Angelus knew exactly the potential for violence that was simmering within me, and I've no doubt he amused himself with schemes for unleashing it permanently. His fascination with the human mind and just what will break it was infamous; witness Drusilla. But as evil as he was, Angelus was refined and subtle in his interests. This much was recorded in The Watchers Chronicles, and I'd seen it first-hand in the cruelest possible manner.

He'd provoked me to the point of a mad, suicidal assault on a lair of vampires with rose petals, a little opera, and the body of my estranged, beloved Jenny strewn across the bed.

The artist in him must have loved the sharp contrast, like vivid, dramatic lines in a painting. He drew on the feelings of love I harbored toward another and crafted them through pain and loss into hate.

And he knew.

Angelus knew it was there to draw out again, there to be channeled into another mad, suicidal assault, this time on the Watchers Council.

He knew exactly how much Buffy meant to me, and what I could be persuaded to do to avenge her murder.

The worst of it is that he was frighteningly accurate. I hated him. For me, he had always represented the embodiment of pure evil. Yet I found myself all too willing to think just like him. Evil had a new face. Or rather, eight new faces: the seven murderers on the Council who cut Buffy's life short...

...and mine.

Despite all my shortcomings in life, I've tried never to be a hypocrite. When I stared Thomas Lytle in the face and forced paper down his throat until he choked to death, I knew it was murder. I accepted that darkness with open arms, took it in willingly. Willow had no choice when she was turned, no power to stop the demon from taking up residence in her body.

Which of us is more evil, then?

For ten days, I lived among vampires. I hunted with them, killed with them, took pleasure in the torture of human beings. About the only thing I didn't do was drink blood.

I did it all with my soul intact; all for the sake of a precious, fearless life that had been commended into my care, only to be cut short by a poisoned needle.

It struck me as ironic that I, a Watcher by training, was part of a lair – if only temporarily. Indeed, I was perhaps the only human ever to be so intimately integrated into a vampire community. That is, without being food.

Some of what I experienced coincided with what I’d read in various chronicles. Angelus, as the dominant master vampire, did insist on absolute submission to his authority and he maintained the hierarchy through violence. It was everything I would have expected, given what I knew about the Order of Aurelius.

But some moments were completely unexpected.

Despite the deadline imposed on us by the Powers That Be, we nonetheless spent a fair amount of time waiting. Vampires can be quite patient, and while fledglings might be content to throw themselves at the first available neck, the Old Ones make hunting an art form. They have a studied eye for human behavioral patterns and are willing to wait for just the right opportunity.

That doesn’t mean they waste time.

Angelus spent several hours on the phone with various financial agents in London while we were waiting for Henry Lloyd and his associates to crack. I learned that Angelus had, and Angel still has, quite an impressive portfolio, although Angel is reluctant to touch it. Among other things, he acquired considerable stock in the Suez Canal Company even before Disraeli’s buyout in 1874. I’m not sure how he managed that, but the gleam in Angelus’s eyes was dark enough when he alluded to certain ‘obligations’ the Rothschild banking family owed him that I decided I didn’t want to know.

As it was, I learned many things I would have been quite content never to know.

Did you know there’s a sort of vampire equivalent to Truth or Dare? Spike called it something like Good Turn, Bad Turn. The rules were simple. Macabre, but simple, as I discovered one evening when they accompanied me to a local pub. I’d merely wanted a quiet supper, but Angelus saw an opportunity to torment me.

Spike and Angelus agreed on a target for the evening. The winner would get to kill that unfortunate person. They proceeded to outdo each other with challenges to perform small acts of kindness for their intended victim – to do the person a good turn, as it were. Apparently compelling each other to do acts of kindness was so loathsome as to be the vampire equivalent of daring someone to drink an entire bottle of vinegar or lick the floor by the urinals in the men’s lavatory. It would continue until one of them suggested something so nice that the other couldn’t bear to do it and forfeited the game.

The winner got to eat the target.

I don’t remember what they challenged each other; I tried to distance myself from the whole, obscene affair as much as possible. Spike seemed reluctant to play. He glanced at me guiltily from time to time, and I couldn’t really hear the tasks he set for Angelus. On the other hand, Angelus made certain I heard his comments as the game proceeded.

Soon, I lost my appetite. The food was dry, tasteless, and caught in my throat. How could I eat, knowing that even if I warned her, the girl they’d chosen would die later that night? Of that, I had little doubt. Short of staking Angelus, I had little hope of stopping him, and I couldn’t stake him. We shared a mission.

That was the key to the slow, silent torture of my soul, and Angelus reveled in it. The game, the entire display, was his reminder to me that I had a price and for ten days, he’d bought me.

My ethics in exchange for revenge.

I left my meal unfinished, paid, and walked back to the flat, knowing full well that I had left an innocent to be killed later that night by my companions.

I don’t think I would have survived if it hadn’t been for Willow.

He taunted her as much as he taunted me, although she was better equipped than I to withstand it. And through it all, she was my anchor.

Are you all right, Giles? She would ask when he wasn’t around.

Even if he was, after some of our bloodier acts of revenge she would quietly check in with me.

How are you holding up?

After we torched the Council’s Library...after I’d murdered a colleague in cold blood, I felt so odd...empty, weary, restless, raging. Outwardly, I imagine it must have seemed that I'd shut down. I couldn't really perceive my surroundings. I was lost in myself.

We left the place in flames and drove back to our temporary base. Angelus made some sort of remark about having worked up an appetite. I was too numb to respond to his goading. I couldn't even look at him, but I imagined him leering behind my back as I made my way from the car up the steps to our flat. I remember hoping that he would just take Spike and go. That was the state I was in: so desperate for solitude that I gave no thought to the people Angelus was likely to kill if he stayed out. If only he would just leave.

For better or worse, I got my wish. Angelus and Spike went out to prowl London's streets for a few hours. Willow stayed behind.

She didn't hover, thank goodness. She left me to myself. Oh, I knew she was there, keeping watch over me, but her presence never intruded, not even at the periphery of my consciousness. It's frightening how stealthy vampires can be. I've known about it for years, it's one of the standard facts listed in all the literature on them -- but there's a vast difference between knowing and experiencing. Even when she put some music on -- Beethoven, I think it was one of his later string quartets -- it was as if the music was simply there. I'd neither heard, seen, nor felt her fiddling with the stereo.

I sat in the drawing room for God knows how long, just...staring...at nothing. The room around me was a grey blur; all I saw was Lytle’s face, the look of horror in his eyes as he choked around the pages I’d forced down his throat.

As he watched me kill him.

It chilled me.

Yes, the Powers That Be had sanctioned these...executions.

It didn’t make me feel any better about being a killer.

There was nothing I wanted more than to forget everything, to close my eyes and imagine that none of it had happened. That Buffy hadn’t died.

I think I must have sighed, either that or given some other signal, because Willow was instantly at my side. Like the music; I never heard her approach, she was just there.

I don't know what made me ask her. It was a question I'd thought of asking her hundreds of times before, but there hadn't ever been a moment when it didn't seem awkward. Until then. That night, I just needed to know.

Does it bother you to kill? I asked her.

Do you feel anything?

No, she said.

She actually said no, and for a split second my world shattered.

However, what she said in the very next instant was the very balm that my soul needed. Willow acknowledged that, as a vampire, she wasn't bothered by killing in exactly the same way I was. She reminded me that what I was feeling -- remorse, hollow anguish, bitterness -- all of it was proof that I was still human.

Furthermore, she pointed out, if I weren't human, if I didn't still possess a sense of justice and compassion, I'd be out celebrating our very artful slaughter with Angelus.

A vampire might be the last person you'd ever expect to give a benediction, yet this is what it was. Willow hadn't denied that what we'd done had been horrible, she hadn't pretended that there wasn't very good cause for me to be questioning myself. Nonetheless, she'd expressed faith in me.

What a strange turn life had taken, indeed, when a vampire could voice greater faith in my character than I myself felt.

I remember crying then. I just sat there, shaking, my face buried in my hands as Willow comforted me, resting her hand on my back and offering me what amounted to a confession of sorts.

Willow told me how she'd felt, or rather, how little she'd felt in her early days as a vampire. She described how disorienting it had been. Her mind remembered the details of her human life, yet emotionally she was detached from all but the strongest drives of the demon: lust, hunger, self-preservation. Oh, she understood the concept of love well enough, but in the way that someone might understand it after reading a dictionary definition.

She said it had taken a fair amount of effort to re-train herself to feel anything like compassion or kindness.

You can probably guess the question that was at the forefront of my mind: why would she have bothered to make the effort at all?

Willow had asked herself the same thing many times and knew that a great deal of the credit went to Angel and his influence. But she confessed that she'd also wanted me to be proud of her.

Quite curious, isn't it? A fledgling vampire with a self-admitted inability to feel human emotions, and she was concerned about the approval of a human mentor from her previous life.

There were the obvious explanations. Willow ascribed it in part to her weak demon, which allowed her former, human sense of self to assert itself, and that sense of self had been closely tied to her network of friends. She also suspected that her Wiccan ties to the natural magic rendered her more capable of compassion for the living world than she'd initially realized.

However, I was completely unprepared for her other theory: that it had something to do with vampire nature itself.

Vampires are creatures of power and hierarchy. Willow told me that this was one of the earliest revelations she'd had about her kind. They readily seek status through conquest, but also have a deep-seated, abiding desire for recognition, both from the minions who serve them as well as from their sires.

Without a sire, Willow's craving for recognition was directed at the dominant vampire in her existence -- Angel -- but also toward those she'd cared for in life. Her friends.

Me.

In earnest, Willow assured me that as empty as I might be feeling at that moment, as disconnected as I might believe I was from anything good or human after what I'd done to Lytle, she'd been even further beyond the pale. I had a soul; she hadn't, at least when she'd first been turned.

I was still absorbing this when she administered the most powerful balm of all. Giles, she said, it was partly because of you that I found my way back from complete soullessness, that I can feel or care anything at all about humans. I won't let you lose yourself in this vengeance. I owe you that.

With just a few, sincere words, Willow made me feel human again.

Not because she'd reminded me of my potential for goodness, but because she made me see how limited my outlook had been. The image of Willow stalking human prey had haunted me since the night I'd watched her from the alley. I'd been tortured by the thought of how far she'd fallen from the Willow who had been so dear to me in life.

In some part of my mind, I had reduced Willow to that act which was a part of her nature, but for me was evil, pure and simple.

But I had a troubling insight as Willow sat with me in that London flat trying to reassure me that I was a force for good in the world, that although I might be in the midst of committing terrible acts of vengeance, the balance of my life had been spent serving the greater good. I had judged Willow by human standards, as if humanity and humankind's interests were the measure for the entire universe. Not until my own hands reeked of blood and death had I truly appreciated how difficult and lonely it must be for a vampire to go against everything in her nature and govern her impulses out of concern for the welfare of human beings.

To the demon, humans are its natural food supply. What a supreme effort it must have taken at first, before Willow had fully developed this sense of connection that she calls her soul. All for the sake of people who had mattered to her when she was human.

Willow sat with me for a while longer, although we both knew that the crisis had passed. As I calmed down, a tremendous fatigue overtook me. I was asleep before Angelus and Spike returned.

After that night, my nerve didn't fail me until the very end of our mission, despite the ghastly brutality of what we did to people who had once been my colleagues. Indeed, my talk with Willow had given me pause to think of the vast array of choices available to each individual. Willow had not been so limited by her circumstances that she'd blindly followed the most obvious path. And neither was I.

I'd shed enough of the blood of others in the name of vengeance.

I couldn't do it any more. But my own blood could still call Henry Lloyd to account for his actions.

Odd thoughts run through your mind when you've been stabbed in the back.

Most immediately, you think of the pain.

And then you think of the pain.

Eventually, a few insights creep in amid the excruciating agony, but above all, there is the pain.

I had quite a bit of time to think as I lay bleeding on the floor of St. Paul's. I knew what it felt like to be dealt a mortal wound. The sensation was forever seared into my memory. And the things we'd done to those Watchers...the things I saw Angelus and Spike do in the cathedral...dear God, my knife wound was merciful.

Never again would I be able to take a life without feeling it right down to my core.

I ached in my very soul from the weight of our revenge, and yet I watched to the bitter end. I wouldn't let myself look away when Spike set Henry Lloyd aflame, and for a split second, I pitied the man who had orchestrated my Slayer's death.

I was numb...empty...and so alienated from everything I'd ever believed in that for the first time in my life, I couldn't think of a reason to go on, other than existing for the sake of existence.

Oh, Willow managed to bully a little reluctant optimism into me, and I'm sure you can appreciate the irony of a vampire earnestly striving to restore a human's faith in the value of life. Dear Willow. Ever the determined one.

But even she couldn't assuage my self-doubts. For all Willow's faith in me, her efforts alone weren't enough to persuade me that I still had something to contribute to the world. No, that came rather unexpectedly from a well-intentioned, if often naïve, colleague of mine who came with his youthful idealism to rebuild from the ashes.

10. Interlude

Silence reigned as Willow stood at Giles's bedside and grappled with what she could possibly say about his life that would do it justice. There was much she didn't know, and what if she said the wrong thing?

But, then...how could she say anything about Giles that Hypnoi didn't already know? She suspected that the elusive, wandering demon saw quite a bit of what went on in the world.

A worrying thought occurred to Willow: what if this was about that "experimental" period Giles went through in his twenties when he'd summoned Eyghon?

"This is not a judgment," Hypnoi stated, obviously following her thoughts. "Think not of his life, which has attained its measure and now lays bare. Think of yourself."

Willow chuckled inwardly and wondered which self she was supposed to consider. She'd had two lives so far, in a manner of speaking, and Giles had been important in both of them.

A long-forgotten image popped into her head: a floppy hat she'd worn in high school, bedecked with a huge, artificial flower. It had been the object of some of Cordelia's crueler remarks. Willow remembered one day in particular, when Cordelia had made an especially mean comment about Willow's "Sesame Street fashion sense". Suffering the painful sting of peer ridicule, Willow had taken refuge in the library. Giles hadn't seemed to notice her mood and merely welcomed her help with research on a demon that had eluded Buffy during one of her patrols. When Willow had found a crucial piece of information that he'd overlooked, Giles had not only thanked her for her "invaluable assistance", but he'd actually smiled at the sight of her girly, flowered hat and observed that her cleverness was surpassed only by her ability to bring cheer even to the most tedious research.

Willow had grinned uncontrollably for the rest of the day. Just when she'd felt like a geeky, unwanted outcast, Giles had made her feel special because of what she could do.

She never felt self-conscious about that hat again, no matter how much Cordelia mocked her.

As the warmth of her memory faded, Willow frowned. She couldn't sum up all that Giles had done for her in something so trivial as a hat.

Her gaze flicked to Hypnoi.

Was that a grin on his face?

She let out a soft growl of irritation, then closed her eyes and let a montage of images wash through her mind. These were clearer, more vivid, and enhanced by occasional scents, sounds, and preternatural impressions: her experiences as a vampire. The hospital room faded, and suddenly she was in an ethereal dream world, moving slowly toward the Magic Box, conscious of Spike beside her.

The remembered ache in her heart told her exactly which moment from her past she was revisiting.

She and Spike were inside the shop now, glaring in shock at Megan's Watcher, Smythe, while Giles stood to the side, his expression strained with remorse. An unintelligible chorus of whispers rose in her mind and muffled the heated exchange, but Willow remembered all that had been said, word for word. She was conscious of pleading with Giles and growing angry when he would not be swayed. She saw Spike gesture contemptuously at Smythe and remembered how fiercely he had claimed credit for Megan's progress as a fighter. A cold lump rose in her throat as memory-Spike shifted to gameface and lunged at Smythe, only to be restrained by Giles. Finally, and worst of all, she felt the rage stiffen her spine as she and Spike cast a final, betrayed glance at Giles and stormed out into the night.

With jarring suddenness, the cacophony of whispers stopped and Willow found herself in the familiar surroundings of Giles's apartment. He sat at his desk with his back to her, head bowed and shoulders hunched. This was no memory of hers. Instantly, Willow's guard went up.

"He sat long in doubt that night."

Hypnoi's gravely voice floated beside Willow's left ear as he circled around her and approached Giles, who sat as if frozen to his seat.

"What the hell is happening?" Willow demanded softly, following Hypnoi as if drawn. She came to stand before Giles and looked closer. His head rested against his palms, which covered his eyes. A tremor, so slight she almost missed it, ran through his frame and a thin, damp trail glistened on one cheek.

"The memory is not yours, although you have determined the moment," Hypnoi answered. "This is a fragment of what he has spoken to us. You are not compelled to answer; advocacy must be freely given. He doubted his choice; should he have chosen differently?"

11. Consequences

We returned home not in triumphant glory, but in grief.

Angelus, thankfully, was gone, although Angel could barely bring himself to look any of us in the eye. Willow and I were equally somber. Not one of us spoke of what happened in London, despite the inevitable questions from Xander, Anya, and Dawn. Even Spike was uncharacteristically subdued, although not out of any regret for what we'd done. Surprisingly, I suspected it was a measure of his concern for the rest of us.

I vaguely remember him removing my shoes, although I've never quite trusted that memory. More likely it was conjured up by my fatigued mind.

Still, he wasn't quite his usual, swaggering, arrogant self. It roused my curiosity enough that I began observing his behavior more closely. Not only his, but Angel's and Willow's as well.

It was like awakening to an entirely different world, but one that had been there all along.

I realized that I was witnessing the kind of familial interaction that vampires rarely reveal -- certainly not under the circumstances in which I'd normally encountered them. Even more astonishing, however, was the moment I understood why I'd managed to glimpse behavior not normally demonstrated before outsiders.

I wasn't an outsider.

What I'd originally perceived as a temporary alliance, a short-term membership in the lair for the purpose of vengeance, had evolved into something more long-lasting.

It would seem I was part of the family.

It's difficult to pinpoint exactly when or how the realization came to me. Most of what I noticed were subtle gestures. Angel, Willow, and Spike tended to stand closer to me than they would to other humans, with the possible exception of Willow's coven. An insignificant detail, perhaps, yet everything about their body language marked me as a member of the pack.

Actually, now that I recall, there was one rather significant clue that things had changed.

The evening after our return, before the others awakened, I'd gone to the butcher for pig's blood. I hadn't even thought of it as a courtesy; it just seemed the thing to do. Angel was the first to help himself to the provisions. He was grateful and not in the least self-conscious about drinking it in front of me. He did make a rather awkward attempt to apologize for every sadistic taunt I'd had to endure from Angelus, but when I waved him off and assured him that his apologies were unnecessary, Angel didn't retreat to his customary, civil distance.

He looked at me so intently it was unnerving. His scrutiny was almost...intimate. Then, more gently than he'd ever spoken to me before, he explained that while his soul had been suspended with Buffy's, she'd asked him to give me a message.

Without any further warning, Angel hugged me.

You've no idea how mortified I was.

Try to understand: I'd known Angel only distantly, primarily through Buffy, and what little I'd seen of him did not involve warmth and affection. Certainly not between the two of us! Angel is a warrior, and has always had a warrior's aloofness. When we'd interacted at all, we'd usually treated each other as walking encyclopedias, each referring to the other for arcane knowledge about a prophecy or ritual or some such thing.

The closest we'd ever had to an emotional exchange was the bludgeoning I'd given him in the alley when he'd shown me Willow out on a hunt.

Bear hugs, no matter how manly or comradely, did not factor into our relations at all.

Needless to say, it was clear that Angel no longer suspected how close Buffy and I had been before her death. He most certainly knew. Yet I sensed no resentment or reproach. Quite the contrary, it felt above all else like an embrace of solidarity, of kinship.

It was still bloody unsettling.

But as I said, afterward, I was more attentive to the behavior of my vampire companions. The novelty of having been, well, adopted, so to speak, was flattering for a while. However, it occurred to me that I also must have changed profoundly. Good lord, if a vampire had expressed a sense of kinship for me when I'd first arrived in Sunnydale, I'd have been horrified. That, or laughed myself silly.

Upon further self-examination, I realized exactly how much I had changed.

Xander and I took up patrolling Buffy's old graveyard circuit a few weeks after her funeral. It was something to do, something to give my life purpose. We'd no idea when or even if the next Slayer would be sent to guard the Hellmouth and reasoned that if we didn't do it, nobody would. It wasn't as if a vast supply of qualified volunteers were leaping to the task.

Very quickly, I discovered that I was far more qualified than I'd ever imagined. Certainly, Xander and I both had acquired some formidable fighting skills in the many battles we'd fought alongside Buffy. More than the ordinary suburbanite, although I have seen some exceedingly barbaric combat over parking spaces at shopping malls. Nonetheless, I'd always had a modest sense of my own abilities. I'd felt that my skill lay in deducing which freshly dug grave to watch or otherwise advising from the sidelines.

Then Xander, with his customary flair for annoying nicknames, began referring to me as his 'vamp-dar'. Naturally, I protested his latest neologism, but I was surprised at how earnestly he insisted that it was appropriate. What I considered mere common sense, Xander perceived as an uncanny ability to anticipate the whereabouts and actions of vampires.

It stunned me to realize that Xander was right.

In scarcely more than a week of cohabiting with Angelus, Willow, and Spike, of working beside them, strategizing with them, I'd gained tremendous insight into their existence. I'd learned preferred times for hunting, and that it was as much the simple act of following human timetables as it was fear of the approaching dawn that led most vampires to do the bulk of their hunting before 3:00 a.m. Most of us retire by that early morning hour, you see, so there's less reward for their effort. Like all predators -- lions, cheetahs, and the like -- they can be profoundly lazy.

Although they don't much care to sun themselves while in repose.

Beyond learning to read the rhythms of nocturnal hunting times, I'd learned to listen to its silences, rather than its sounds, as a clue to the presence of the undead.

I'd learned that fledglings were astoundingly predictable and that they could be lured out by something as simple as human sweat. Xander and I took to wearing unwashed clothes from our laundry baskets when we went out on patrol. The newly risen ones fell for it every time.

All of this, I'd picked up from chance remarks made by Angelus, Spike, and once or twice by Willow, or even just by observing them when we'd walked through heavily populated areas of London. A slight flare of the nostrils might be followed by an offhand remark about the qualities they'd detected. Healthy blokes into their bodies, Spike would announce. Or Angelus would frown in distaste at the heavy scent of medications and mutter something about geriatric blood.

It's hard to explain it all, but it amounted to an awareness of how vampires perceive us. This accumulation of bits and pieces enabled me to anticipate their movements to such a degree that, as Xander astutely observed it was almost as if I had radar.

Or Slayer sense.

To my amusement, I learned that there were some in the local demon population that had arrived at precisely that conclusion. I'd gone to Willy's one evening for some information, I can't remember what, but I met with a chillier reception than normal, even for Willy. He couldn't hurry me out the door fast enough and as he shut the door behind me, he mentioned something about not wanting me to scare off his clientele, who thought that Buffy's abilities had somehow managed to rub off on me.

Ridiculous, of course. As if a Slayer's essence could be communicated like germs. I'd merely paid attention, as any Watcher should.

Although...I wasn't a Watcher any more.

Nothing brought this home more clearly than the arrival of Cecil Smythe. When the Council finally sent him to serve as Megan's Watcher it was like seeing myself nearly twenty years earlier. Worse than that, actually. Smythe was even more nervous than I'd been when I first established myself in the Sunnydale high school library. By now, even the newest recruit knew about our massacre. Undoubtedly, the man had his misgivings about walking straight into the lion's den, but come he did.

He looked petrified when Willow and Spike arrived shortly on Megan's heels, although he had sense enough not to try to come between them at first. Perhaps it was out of fear or deference to the fact that Megan's self-appointed vampire guardians had kept her out of harm's way. Whatever it was, it soon developed into guarded admiration once he saw Spike train with the girl. It wasn't quite as impressive as what I remembered from Buffy's sparring sessions with Willow, but Buffy had been a seasoned Slayer in her prime. Still, there was an efficiency to Megan's responses, an edge that I suspect came from early training with vampires. Spike was certainly a strict taskmaster; he didn't shrink from hurting her. Indeed, compared to the way he bullied her, I'd practically coddled Buffy.

Yet for some reason, Megan thrived on his gruff treatment, enough so that Smythe approved of their pairing. At least, for a while.

But Megan soon started talking like Spike. Oh, did she ever! Some of the curses that fell from that child's mouth would have made a sailor blush! Smythe did far more than blush.

As I became aware of his growing unease at the nature of Spike's influence on Megan, I understood the source of his concern. It was one I'd had myself, and not just about Megan, but about myself. This young Slayer had adopted many of Spike's mannerisms and was learning to fight like a vampire. How long before she started to think like a vampire? And where could one draw the line between thinking like a vampire and acting like one?

On which side of that line was I?

Smythe took to excusing himself when the sparring got particularly rough, quietly asking me to make sure that things didn't go too far. It piqued my curiosity enough that, finally, I followed him and discovered his secret.

I found him in the bathroom, two pills in one hand and a glass of water in the other.

Blood pressure medication.

At first I was indignant. I'd half a mind to call the Council and ask them what they meant by sending someone with a fragile constitution to undertake one of the most stressful jobs in the world. Smythe pleaded with me to remain silent. Poor fellow.

You see, the Council's change of heart wasn't quite as complete as we'd thought. True, it was now dominated by those who condemned what Lloyd and his associates had done, but most were still profoundly uneasy at the thought of any sort of partnership with vampires.

Smythe, for all his inexperience and delicate health, had been the only one willing to act as Megan's Watcher.

A sizeable contingent of "moderates" on the Council had wanted to do nothing -- nothing! As Smythe explained it, they thought it might be better to let events take their course.

In other words, they would have waited for Megan to die and the next Slayer to be called.

Smythe earned my respect then. If he had his failings, at least he had principles.

So I kept his secret. And when, at last, he did broach the subject of distancing Megan from her vampire mentors, I understood the Council's politics well enough to know what was at stake. Hard as it was for me to do, I supported him. Mind you, I had serious doubts about my judgment. I felt I was betraying not only Megan, but Willow and Spike as well. Imagine! I had a stronger sense of loyalty to two vampires than I did to the Watchers Council.

Yet I'd learned from Smythe as well as my own, discreet inquiries, exactly how tenuous the Council's new, "reformed" outlook was. If we hoped to prevent the resurgence of a hard-line stance, concessions would have to be made.

If Smythe had worried that Megan's training sessions with Spike were a tad too fierce, he got a veritable baptism by fire in the reasons that one does not lightly antagonize a vampire when he suggested that Willow and Spike distance themselves from the girl. Truthfully, I was afraid the man would have a heart attack. Rather amusing, isn't it, considering my situation?

On that particular occasion, I knew on which side of the line I stood. Although I understood the wisdom of Smythe's proposal and had assured him of my support, I made it clear that my loyalties lay with Megan and the others. I closed ranks with my vampire allies as readily as if I were a newly made minion. Nonetheless, when the time came, I backed Smythe and helped him stand firm against the inevitable rage from Willow and Spike.

That, and I prevented Spike from tearing him to pieces.

Sadly, my surrogate family disintegrated shortly afterward. Willow called from Los Angeles to say that she was setting off on some travels. Later I learned that Spike had gone with her. Just like that, I was alone again.

I kept busy enough by helping Smythe with Megan's training, but just as I had after London, I felt oddly empty.

However, if I was slightly melancholy, Angel was devastated. Not that he revealed his emotions to any great degree. He implied that *he* was the reason that Willow had chosen to leave but said little beyond that. Yet as weeks became months, as months stretched into years, his stoic veneer crumbled. Angel's confessions were few and far between, brought on only when the strain of loneliness had become unbearable, but they were poignant moments that made me appreciate the truly profound depths of connection in my odd little family.

I'd never had much of a chance to see Willow and Angel together. Spike had usually been the one to accompany her to Sunnydale. But what I glimpsed from his solitary demeanor spoke volumes. He could be sitting completely still and radiate restlessness. In conversation, he seemed only to half-listen. Oh, it wasn't obvious enough to put anyone off; he never missed important details. Nevertheless, I recognized Angel's behavior: it was what I'd seen Angelus, Spike, and Willow do on a number of occasions in London when they were anticipating each other's arrival. They were opening their senses to each other, if you will.

I imagine you're familiar with the nature of preternatural senses, but it took me a while to understand that vampires occupy more space than just what is taken up by their physical bodies. It was only when I thought of the analogy to spiders that I really appreciated how tangible blood ties were for them, whether between sire and childe or simply among those who exchanged blood regularly. The webs that spiders spin are not merely traps; they extend the spider's sensory network. Each delicate filament can signal its maker about the precise location, size, and strength of prey. In a sense, web and spider are one.

Though vampires are not linked by silk, they have their own sort of web through which they can watch and listen. Angel's senses were always open for Willow. No matter how attentive he was to friends and co-workers who might be right in front of him, there was a part of him that hovered at the furthest periphery of his web.

Angel was wishfully alert for Willow's return.

It was strange seeing him pine for Willow with the same intensity he'd once directed at Buffy. I alluded to his attachment to Willow once, while I was visiting Los Angeles to consult with Wesley about our ongoing efforts to establish a dialogue with the Council. Angel seemed somewhat more relaxed around me, perhaps because he knew I'd seen him at his worst and wouldn't be perturbed by any vampiric mannerisms should he let down his guard. We went for a walk in the early evening and said little for the better part of our promenade. Somehow, our steps led us to the very same alley from which I'd first seen Willow out on the hunt.

We stopped. Angel merely rested his palm on the brick and stared wistfully at the wall as if he might see her there. I remembered that night when I'd lashed out at Angel in utter despair and reflected on how far Willow had come, how far I'd come since then. I guessed that Angel might be having similar thoughts and offered him what I hoped were a few words of consolation about the tremendous effect he'd had on Willow.

For a long, silent moment, he was absolutely inscrutable. Then his expression softened to a thoughtful sadness and he made a cryptic remark about alleys. I can't quite remember it -- something about alleys having given him that which he held closest to his heart. Before I could puzzle too long over that, Angel confessed that Willow's effect on him had been just as profound as anything he might have done to shape her.

That was all he said, but I understood. He'd loved Buffy completely, of that I had no doubt, but Kalderash secrecy and obsession with vengeance set them on a collision course with disaster which, as dearly as they might have wished to, Buffy and Angel never quite overcame. On the other hand, when I'd seen him with Willow, he'd always seemed more himself.

That perception was more accurate than I realized when it first struck me.

When Megan was still very new to her calling, scarcely more than a little girl, a sizeable company of vampires invaded Sunnydale. Smythe and I both feared it was a bid to take over the Hellmouth while the Slayer was vulnerable and Angel was good enough to come to our assistance. Very quickly, however, he discerned that the threat was not to us.

According to Angel, the group was a retrieval party, something he said he'd used on Spike when his childe strayed too far without his permission. Sure enough, within a week the interlopers were gone. Indirectly, they'd even done us a favor. Angel had done some scouting and learned that the wayward childe in question had been in the process of setting up a lair and building a circle of minions. Apparently, his sire hadn't approved of his bid for independence.

Naturally, the Watcher in me was curious about the practice of retrieving childer who'd flown the nest, so to speak. Something more to add to my journals, after all. Angel offered a guess as to what had happened in this case based on how he'd gone about it in the past. He speculated that the retrieval party had most likely staked all the minions and that the childe would spend anywhere from several weeks to several months in chains. He didn't say so explicitly, but the look in his eyes suggested that torture would be involved. When I asked him how old childer typically were when their sires finally lost interest in chasing them down, he merely blinked at me as though I'd asked him when vampires stop needing blood.

His expression took on the faraway look I'd come to associate with his ever-vigilant efforts to sense Willow and it occurred to me that I'd touched a nerve. Just as I was about to apologize for my obtuseness, he began to reflect on what it was that bound him to her as tightly as if she were his own blood.

Willow was special, he said. Though not a true childe, she had chosen *him*. The instinct to sire had taken hold of him when he'd come into his own as a master vampire, but all his efforts had misfired. Penn had been a fanatic, Drusilla insane, and Spike...Angel paused, his weary expression softening for a moment, then confessed that Spike had been the most promising, but they'd barely had two decades before the curse.

Willow had reawakened long-dormant impulses and given him the opportunity to express a side of his vampire nature that could never have been part of his relationship with Buffy. Not that he would have kept it from her out of shame or deceit; it was simply too greatly at odds with her calling as the Slayer. He never could have shared that aspect of himself with her as he could with Willow.

Angel described it as a profound sense of completion.

In that quiet moment, when I was privy to one of the very rare times that Angel revealed his heart, I suddenly had an overwhelming suspicion as to the real reason that Willow had felt compelled to leave.

Yes, vampires could love. Just as painfully as humans, it seemed.

I wanted to set that down in print and discredit all the sordid fictions and fantasies that perpetuated themselves once and for all. For the sake of my friends, I didn't. Out of respect for their right to privacy, I remained silent on the more intimate details of their existence, despite the fact that I could have easily corrected a host of erroneous assumptions harbored by my peers.

And if the fact that Angel had a soul left me with any doubts about a vampire's capacity to love, there was always Spike.

I honestly don't know where to begin.

Perhaps I shall just say that before Spike and Megan began their involvement, I'd never expected to hear the phrase: You're a hundred and forty-six years old, why can't you act like it?

When Smythe called me at four in the morning to meet him at Megan's dormitory, a number of dreadful scenarios ran through my mind. Demon attack? Another fraternity performing dark rites to a reptilian patron? Rift in dimensions? From the damage I saw in the lounge on Megan's floor, it looked like all three. I was just thankful that in modern construction, interior walls generally aren't weight-bearing.

Angel was there, looking very much the beleaguered parent. He explained that no, it wasn't a supernatural threat, it was just Spike.

Spike, who apparently believed that heaving chairs out the window was the way to demonstrate his affection. I could easily imagine Megan's reaction. All I had to do was look at the lounge coffee table, flipped over, missing two of its wooden legs. Out of habit, I scanned the floor for dust. Angel caught my glance and informed me that Spike was chained up in the trunk of his convertible.

Yet as tempestuous as their early courtship was, Spike was just as fiercely devoted to Megan as the relationship matured. Every year on the same day he gave her a band-aid. I never did learn the meaning of their private joke, although Megan blushed to her roots when I asked once and brandished her stake in Spike's face in silent threat should he reveal anything. It wasn't her birthday, though. That, he remembered with displays of simple tenderness that would have warmed even the most cynical heart. Her room strewn with roses and candles one year. A moonlit drive along the coast another year. And those were only the details she was willing to divulge in mixed company. Discretion prevents me from speculating on anything else.

It didn't surprise me, then, that her death hit him very hard.

For all the grief he'd given Megan's Watcher, at her funeral I saw Spike do something I suspect even you may never have seen.

Poor Smythe, he mourned her as deeply as I'd mourned Buffy. All the others had gone, save Smythe, Angel, Spike, and myself. As Smythe stood over Megan's grave, looking drawn and tired beyond his years, Spike approached him, bit his own wrist, offered it to Smythe and promised to eradicate the entire line of vampires responsible for Megan's death.

Angel had told me about blood oaths once, not long after Willow had removed Spike's chip, but I'd never thought I'd witness one, let alone one between a vampire and a human. It was certainly a night for surprises, because Smythe showed none of his customary squeamishness. He brought Spike's bleeding wrist right up to his mouth and drank.

Spike kept his promise.

Perhaps it was some, small consolation for Smythe. I don't really know. He returned to London not long afterward; he did maintain sporadic contact with me, although he seldom spoke of Megan. Instead, he sent news of the Council.

It wasn't good.

Apparently, the Council was once again having difficulty locating the next Slayer. It was a source of considerable consternation. All of the Council's usual mechanisms for pinpointing the whereabouts of the Chosen One were failing. It was more than an embarrassment; it called into question the very future of the Council. Supernatural forces brought forth the Slayer; all that kept the Council going was discipline and an established system that had proven effective for several centuries. There would continue to be Slayers without the Council, albeit disadvantaged without the accumulated wisdom that the company of Watchers had to offer.

What would become of the Council if they could no longer assist the Slayer by fault of being unable to find her?

I made a few inquiries with Angel, but unfortunately Cordelia had received no visions this time, although none of us could understand why the Powers were silent.

So, when Smythe called me again to ask if I would be willing to lend my expertise on vampire behavior to help with the search, in the hopes that we could discover the Slayer's location indirectly by studying activity in vampire communities, I agreed. Mind you, I warned them of my limitations. I'd learned a great deal through my association with Willow, Angel, and Spike, but they certainly weren't typical vampires. Nonetheless, I was willing to share whatever knowledge might prove useful in guaranteeing the Slayer's welfare.

I never expected to become the Head of the Council.

12. Interlude

"Advocacy? What?" Willow bit out in exasperation. Her temper mounted but instead of launching into a tirade at Hypnoi's aggravatingly cryptic remarks, she grimaced in sympathy for her friend. "Can't you see how hard this was on him? He looks so sad." Willow's demeanor softened as she paused and regarded Giles. "He only did what he thought was right; and it was. Megan needed space to find her own way. She couldn't have done that with Spike and me hovering over her."

Inclining his head in agreement, Hypnoi observed, "It is not easy to oppose those one holds most dear."

"But that was Giles!" Willow exploded in earnest, resting her hands on the desk and peering wistfully at his immobile face. "He tried to do what was best, even when it was hard for him, even when it hurt. Every Slayer should be so lucky to have a Watcher like Giles!"

Even as the echo of her voice rang in the air, Willow understood Hypnoi's purpose with a sudden jolt of clarity. She blinked and slowly turned toward him.

"Oh. My. God."

13. Insight

Everything about the Council was as I remembered it, yet it seemed so foreign, so strange. Aside from the library that Angelus, Willow, Spike, and I had destroyed, the buildings were in the same, stately, immaculate condition that had so impressed me as a novice.

Yet to me, what was this quintessence of dust?

And yes, by the way, I did receive a few scowls from some of the librarians who knew of my role in destroying their prized collections.

Working closely with other Watchers after so many years was a jarring, almost surreal experience. Had I really been that rule-bound myself? The senior Watchers were all highly knowledgeable, of course. Still, when they spoke, their ideas strained under the weight of footnotes and authorities. Every discussion seemed like an interminable exercise in analyzing ancient texts. I developed an intense empathy for Xander, feeling that at last, I understood him. After half a lifetime of brainstorming sessions with "amateurs" who survived on wits and improvisation, my tolerance for bookish debates had dwindled. Whenever Council meetings got bogged down in pedantic arguments over the correct interpretation of a particular passage, I had an irrepressible urge to flee the room.

I took comfort in the fact that Wesley, who had accompanied me to London, shared my sense of frustration. It wasn't that either of us failed to appreciate the importance of correctly interpreting prophecies; did we ever! Perhaps it was just that we'd been out in the field so long, we'd gotten used to co-existing with the supernatural rather than just studying it.

My colleagues seemed completely baffled when I set aside the many analyses of worldwide vampire activity and projections of the Slayer's likely whereabouts and instead asked for a list of any vampires who had been made in the past decade and had committed particularly heinous deeds within the last year or two. Honestly, I couldn't have done otherwise; their reports were all rubbish. One memo noted a sudden increase in human fatalities in Berlin and speculated that local vampires were quietly swelling their ranks for some unknown but nefarious purpose. Surely, the Powers That Be would have arranged for the Slayer to be called there, close to the threat?

Nonsense.

The senior Watchers wouldn't believe me when I surmised that it was the fallout from a clan war and would resolve itself in time, Slayer or no Slayer. They weren't quite ready to think in terms of an ecological balance between humans and vampires. Not that I faulted them for their resistance. The idea had been appalling to me when Willow had first explained it.

So I made a show of listening to their tiresome theories and examining their reports, all the while conducting my own, quiet inquiries about mature minions or childer who had recently stepped up their exploits in order to make a name for themselves. After all, Willow had told me how driven vampires were by the thirst for notoriety. More importantly, I'd never forgotten her account of how she and Spike had almost been too late when they'd found Megan, how an ambitious minion had almost gotten to her first. I figured that history might very likely repeat itself.

True, it was quite a gamble, but thankfully it worked.

In poring over the Council's statistics on human fatalities attributed to vampires or other demons, I came across a seven year-old minion in Milan whose dossier had grown rather thick after a sudden jump in his killings. Sure enough, his activities in Milan came to an abrupt halt, and word in the Italian demon communities was that he'd left town and was traveling to Sarajevo.

I told Wesley about my hunch, whereupon he and I followed him straight to the Slayer, a fifteen year-old Albanian girl who thought vampires were nothing compared to Serb military forces.

The Council was grateful that I'd tracked her down, yet they did not raise a collective sigh of relief. If anything, the level of consternation increased. None of their projections had placed the Slayer in Sarajevo. Although they had their champion for the moment, it seemed they were still very much in the dark.

After some deliberation, the senior Watchers asked me to stay.

Thus, by a strange twist of fate, I found myself at the head of an organization from which I'd long been estranged, and which I'd once besieged. I was at an utter loss as to what to do next, but Wesley reminded me that we were in an ideal position to implement some of the reforms we'd so long awaited. He was right of course. He really has come a long way, Wesley has.

We were careful not to make sweeping changes overnight. That would undoubtedly have sown the seeds of future revolt. But little by little we introduced a new idea here and there. Most of our colleagues were lamentably slow to warm to the idea that humans, vampires, and even other demons exist in a sort of ecological balance. To them, vampires were merely an evil plague to be eradicated; they really didn't want to hear that even the plague itself had never been fully destroyed, but persisted through endemic infection of various animal populations where, yes, it had established equilibrium with its hosts.

The really irksome side of my current predicament is that I'll never know whether the other Watchers come to accept the idea that things might be better if they relax their control a bit.

Oh, I can't complain. I've had rather an extraordinary life. Indeed, in one of my more perverse moments, I entertained the notion that my epitaph should read: Rupert Giles, Watcher and Member of the Order of Aurelius. No, really. You see, scarcely a few weeks ago, I was presented with an opportunity to work with some of the vampire clans in London to combat a particularly loathsome black market in -- oh, you've heard of it.

Well, naturally the prospect appealed to me. Beyond the possibility of saving human lives from a very *human* evil, I thought it might further my efforts to reform the Council's outlook on vampires.

I did enjoy a hearty laugh when my contact from the London clans explained why they'd approached me. You see, Watchers weren't the only ones who remembered my role in the massacre of Henry Lloyd and his co-conspirators. Enough vampires had seen me in the company of Angelus and Spike (who still command a formidable reputation in these parts) that although they couldn't understand why I'd never been turned, they nonetheless considered me part of Angelus's clan. In their minds, the massacre had been a bid for power, so it was only natural that I had returned to rule the Council on behalf of my masters. Never mind that it had taken a decade or two for me to get here.

Quite amusing, wouldn't you agree?

You can understand why I didn't disabuse them of this notion. Perhaps I might have later on, but...well...

Ah, yes, what an ending. Not anywhere near how I'd expected my life to turn out, but I suppose that's the one thing I've learned.

All that one can really expect is the unexpected.

Such a shame that the more useful insights in life are wasted on---

Willow?

Is that really you?

Dear lord, what on earth are you doing here?

14. This Mortal Coil

Blinking back tears at the endearingly perplexed greeting from her friend, Willow retorted with a grin, "I don't think earth really has anything to do with this place, Giles."

Giles squinted at her weakly from his supine position on a bed much like the one in which his physical body laid, but without the maze of tubes and mechanical devices for sustaining his life. Willow took in uniform whiteness of this manifestation of the spirit plane: white sheets, white floor and walls, blindingly white windows. In stark contrast, towering black curtains framed the windows.

Willow arched an eyebrow and quirked a grin at Hypnoi, who stood beside her.

"Is this really how he sees it?" she asked.

Hypnoi cocked his head noncommittally, his gesture somewhere between a yes and a no. For a second, Willow wondered if the ancient demon just might have a sense of humor, but then she conceded to herself that Giles *had* come of age in the Sixties.

Realizing that Giles was still waiting for an answer, Willow sat down on the bed beside him and explained, "I've been talking with an old friend."

"Old friend? Well...yes, I do suppose you've spent a fair amount of time in the company of Death," Giles murmured somewhat awkwardly.

Willow smiled shakily and shook her head, trying to ignore the stinging in her eyes. "Not Death, just a guide. He's...oh, I don't believe this, it sounds so Anne Rice-y," she muttered in embarrassment. "Giles, he's here to offer you a choice."

Giles frowned. After a slight pause, he asked, "Does he seem to think there's a doubt as to how I would choose?"

Guessing the nature of his confusion, Willow chuckled, "It's nothing like that. It's not a matter of Cake or Death, Heaven or Hell."

Relief eased Giles's expression, although he didn't look any less confused.

"Not all are willing to shoulder the burdens of immortality," Hypnoi explained. "What is asked of you cannot be inflicted like a curse, Watcher, but your advocates have spoken well of you."

Willow watched the play of lines across Giles's face as he frowned in concentration. His lips formed ghost words and she could almost see his thoughts diligently working through what Hypnoi had said.

Immortality.

Watcher.

Awe and comprehension dawned in Giles's eyes. He glanced disbelievingly at the cloaked demon. "The Immortal Watcher is a myth...a legend."

Willow's eyes twinkled playfully behind her tears. "So are vampires, according to the mother of a Slayer I once knew. It's your choice, Giles."

"But...but...I'm hardly qualified," Giles stammered in protest.

"Giles, you know more about Slayers and what they have to face than any other Watcher alive. What more could it take to guide a Slayer that you don't already have?" Willow cajoled him affectionately.

Pushing himself up on one elbow and rolling to face Willow, Giles insisted, "That's precisely the problem! I *don't* understand the Slayer's purpose. I spent half my life trying to understand why such a burden would be placed on a young woman when life and death tend to balance out on their own, and yet I still haven't figured it out."

His sudden outburst finished, Giles dazedly glanced at himself, blinking at his semi-elevated position as if he'd only just realized that the condition of his physical body no longer mattered on this plane. Slowly he sat up and leaned against the pillows.

"Three Slayers have spoken as your advocates, and they say differently," Hypnoi countered evenly.

Giles squinted in mild confusion as he murmured, "Three?"

"One who was your charge; one who looked to you for answers; and one who turned to deceit but was unable to corrupt you."

Comprehension dawned on Giles's face. Softly, he breathed, "Buffy, Megan, and Faith." Then, shaking himself, he turned questioning eyes to Hypnoi and said, "But surely others will come along, equally capable to serve."

Gravely, Hypnoi folded his gnarled hands before him. "Champions exist to inspire hope; the Slayer has been made into a weapon by those who believe the eternal struggle to be a battle of extermination rather than a contest of principles. The Slayer's guidance can no longer be left in their hands."

Willow watched the beatific play of emotions across Giles's face as he grasped the simplicity of the answer that had eluded him all his life.

"To inspire hope..." Giles repeated, a slight smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"Giles, this isn't about being qualified or worthy. It's only a matter of wanting to help, and you've put that above everything. The question is, do you still want to?" Willow prodded.

Giles looked at her intently for a moment, then turned his gaze inward for what seemed like an eternity.

Willow waited, torn as to which answer she hoped for.

She wasn't ready to let him go.

Yet, he'd already done so much, more than his fair share. He deserved to rest.

At last, in an odd voice that sounded like he was surprised to hear himself speak, Giles admitted, "Although I may regret it later, I believe I do."

Hypnoi, who had remained silent throughout their exchange, assured him, "It is not a prison. Immortal, none shall strike you down. But as freely as you have chosen, so may you leave. Rest will await you."

No sooner had the ancient demon finished his gentle guarantee than the illusory room vanished and Willow felt herself hurtle into free-fall. She seemed to rush faster and faster, through what she wasn't sure although every nerve in her body seemed to hum with dissonance. For a moment, Willow wondered if she would rattle apart completely, but in the very next instant, she found herself on solid ground.

Or, rather, soft ground. Willow looked around and saw that she was deep in the woods. It was an old forest, dense with trees and ferns, blanketed with moss and dotted with mushrooms, stumps, and the brittle, crackling leaves of a hundred generations. Looming before her was a tall, sturdy oak. At its base lay Giles -- his physical body, so fragile and near death.

Willow was about to ask Hypnoi why they were here when she sensed a powerful buildup in natural magic. Life itself seemed to be shouting forth. Energy rippled in waves from the oak. Willow watched in fascination as a transformation unfolded.

One minute, there was only an oak, indistinguishable from all the others in the forest.

Then, almost imperceptibly, it began to change. Its massive trunk, scored with rough, scaly bark, seemed to breathe. The deep furrows in the surface coalesced and the wood seemed less solid, more like a thick mud being kneaded and reshaped by invisible hands. A form slowly emerged from the trunk, an entity that, as it separated itself from the tree looked more and more human. And, yet -- not human.

After several moments, there stood before them a wood-nymph of wild, untamed beauty. Her skin was rich, earthy brown and textured not like the smooth, marble of humans, but rather the velvety softness of soil. Long, dark tresses tangled about her shoulders, like a nest of spidery twigs and moss tendrils. In her eyes lay enchantment. Deep evergreen swirled and shifted to amber, red, and gold in a ceaseless, chaotic dance, a gaze that reflected the changing seasons.

She blinked at Willow and Giles curiously, tilting her head to one side.

"Fallen ones," the nymph remarked, still staring raptly.

Confused, Willow frowned for a moment, then explained, "Only one of us is a demon. This man is human. He's a good person, not fallen."

The nymph grinned broadly, obviously amused. At the same time, she knit her brow in mild frustration. "Not the meaning you think. Not bad," she began, struggling for the right words. "Fallen...apart. Separate ones."

Drawing nearer, Hypnoi explained, "You are individual beings. Isolated in a way the Kshua are not. To her, you are like leaves that have fallen from the rest of the tree."

"Kshua?"

"Wood-spirits. What some humans have called dryads."

The Kshua nodded in satisfaction and greeted Hypnoi. "Old One, it is long since last you visited us."

The ancient demon inclined his head in acknowledgment and said, "It is long since I have had a candidate to guide across the threshold."

Brilliant green-gold flecked eyes fell on Willow briefly, then shifted to Giles. The Kshua looked to Hypnoi solemnly, her expression understanding. "It is he."

Once again, Hypnoi nodded. "His advocates have spoken for him, as has his life."

"Then let his advocate surrender him up," the Kshua declared, formally stretching out her arms.

Willow glanced hesitantly, but his face, shadowed in the recesses of his hooded cloak, revealed nothing. Resigned, she realized that no hint he might betray would reassure her, not in a way that would assuage her concern for Giles -- a concern that was personal and limited in scope. She was in the presence of eternal beings, powers who operated on a much vaster scale.

Resolved, Willow lifted Giles in her arms and passed him to the Kshua with the utmost care. His heartbeat was so faint, his breath so shallow, that Willow couldn't repress a brief, irrational flicker of doubt. He seemed too weak to undergo whatever ordeal was in store.

The Kshua cradled Giles in her arms and spared him a momentary gaze of tenderness, like a mother looking down at her child.

A split second later, her head snapped up and Willow felt the sudden shock of fear coursing through her veins. The Kshua's expression was triumphant and terrible to behold. Her eyes glowed fiercely, radiating such a powerful light that Willow instinctively shielded her eyes with her hands.

The ground began to rumble, trembling with the force of an earthquake.

"The earth reclaims its own!" the Kshua shouted, her voice splitting into a multitude, a chorus of exultant echoes. The sound resonated in Willow's ears like a trumpet's blast and in that moment, Willow was reminded of the Hindu myth of Kali, whose powers of creation were inseparable from the tremendous force of destruction.

With a solemn, commanding gaze, the Kshua stepped back toward the massive oak from which she had emerged. Willow watched, stunned, as the tree began to engulf her -- and Giles along with her. It took every ounce of Willow's fortitude to resist the urge to rush forward and rescue him. As it was, she trembled as his body was swallowed up. When his familiar, beloved face vanished beneath scaly, cracked bark, Willow choked out a quiet sob.

For several agonizing moments, nothing seemed to happen. The distant, rumbling thunder continued in the ground, but it was subdued, almost...pensive...

Willow was tortured by thoughts of never knowing what fate had befallen her old friend. However, just as her eyes began to sting with tears, a shape started to emerge from the soil at the base of the oak between its thick, gnarled roots.

A human form pushed up through the dirt and leaves.

Instantly, Willow's fear drained away and was replaced by amazement. She gaped, frozen in place, at the sight of Rupert Giles trembling and convulsing on the forest floor.

Aside from the dew and soil that coated his body, Giles was naked. Even more astonishingly, he looked no older than thirty years old -- younger than he'd been when Willow had first met him. It was as if the roots and soil had filtered out every mortal infirmity, leeched them into the depths of the earth, and let a rejuvenated man bubble to the surface like pure spring water.

Giles coughed fitfully, spitting up grainy clumps of dirt. Unable to hold back any longer, Willow rushed to kneel beside him and gently helped him sit up. He blinked and rubbed traces of soil from his eyes.

"The cycle is renewed," Hypnoi declared, his deep voice rich with satisfaction.

Willow looked at the ancient demon and asked, "What's happened to him?"

"His mortal existence has ended, devoured by the earth as is all life and death on this plane."

Hypnoi paused, took a step forward, and to Willow it looked almost as if he was regarding Giles with an expression of kinship or familiarity.

"As I am a guide to those of this plane whose journeys take them beyond this realm, so will he be a guide to forces from beyond that must emerge here, for the warriors who are chosen to serve the Powers That Be. For too long have certain ambitious mortals interfered with the threads of fate, and by their own hand, their power has been shaken."

Giles was no longer coughing, but was still noticeably disoriented. He leaned heavily against Willow and gazed warily up at Hypnoi, who returned his scrutiny ten-fold.

"He is weak, but soon the Slayer will need him," Hypnoi continued. "The Immortal Watcher is in your charge until he has regained the strength to help her."

As he spoke, Hypnoi raised his hand as if in farewell. Before Willow could protest that she still had questions, the forest slowly faded to a gray blur. When the surroundings sharpened back into focus, she and Giles were on the floor of the Hyperion lobby.

Willow couldn't tell how long she'd been gone, but the lobby was empty. She got her answer in a moment when Angel and Spike came charging in. No doubt they had felt her return through their bond.

"Where in hell's name have you been?!" Spike demanded, his face haggard from worry. "It's been two nights! You bloody disappeared! We couldn't track you anywhere, not even with the witches' help!"

He and Angel halted in astonishment, abruptly realizing that Willow wasn't alone.

"Giles?" Angel managed the barest whisper. His eyes met Willow's. "How is this possible? He looks...he's..."

Willow closed her eyes, hung her head and chuckled lightly to herself. She really was going to kick Hypnoi's ass someday.

Then, lifting her chin, she asked in a shaky voice, "Angel, do you believe in legends?"
 

THE END

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