The Watcher's TaleBy Medea
Chapter Three
7. BetrayalBuffy 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."