Chapter 28: Watching
Sitting in a nicely comfortable armchair, a glass of scotch in hand, Giles was pretending very hard not to hear the insistent knocking on the door. He had a pretty good idea of who was trying to intrude and right now had no particular wish to see the lady. Taking a swig from his glass, he let out a sigh. He wasn’t even fooling himself. Of course he wanted to see her. And talk some sense into her. Except that she was proving to be just as inflexible as her father. In any other case, he might have enjoyed hearing her arguments and trying to convince her with his own. But it was Buffy’s life that was in the balance and there were no compromises possible.
*****
“I can’t believe I left Manon with them!”
“How could you have guessed?”
They were back in Quentin Travers’ old office, one of the rare places they could talk without anyone within earshot. He had settled into one of the so uncomfortable chairs, and was already regretting it, while she was in front of the window, looking out.
“It’s my job to guess,” Andrea insisted. “I’m her Watcher, I have to keep her safe. And instead I leave her in the care of two vampires.”
“Even the High Council told you it was OK”, Giles reminded her softly.
“It was before they knew Buffy lost her soul. It’s valuable for the Slayer to train with friendly vampires, but it’s not OK when they turn murderous.”
Giles shut his eyes tight, wishing that when he opened them he would discover it was just all a horrible nightmare. He had thought that Buffy being turned had been the most dreadful experience of his life as her Watcher, coming very close to seeing her broken body at the foot of Glory’s tower. But this… Learning that after three peaceful years, and right after preventing one more apocalypse, she was now soulless and, according to Willow, seemingly impatient to drink warm human blood… The one thing all Watchers feared for their Slayers. Because if it happened, it was the Watcher’s responsibility to see that the undead Slayer became ashes. His responsibility, for, supposedly, a turned Slayer never waited long before coming after her Watcher. But he wouldn’t let that happen to her. They would find a way. They had to find a way. And, in the meantime, all of Giles’ hopes rested on a creature he had loathed for a long time, until their quiet truce evolved slowly into something very close to friendship. Spike had to restrain her. Willow had confirmed that was what he was doing, and on the phone the vampire had said he wouldn’t let her do anything she would have to feel guilty for.
“Spike will control her,” Giles said, once more, with all the confidence he could muster. “Manon and everybody else will remain safe until Buffy regains her soul.”
She turned to him, and he could see the conflict in her eyes. She wanted to believe him, but she didn’t dare to.
“I can admit that Spike is an unusual vampire,” she said slowly. “And I am grateful to him for saving Manon’s life, more so than I can say. But are you really, completely sure that he will control her? He may act like he has one, but he doesn’t have a soul either. What is to prevent him from going on a killing spree with her?”
Giles blocked out the thought. He just refused to think one second about that possibility.
“He knows her soul will be restored, sooner or later. He won’t let her be hurt by her own guilt. He loves her too much for that.”
“What if we can’t restore her soul?” Andrea persisted. “What if…”
“Don’t”, Giles interrupted her, rising from the chair. “We will find a way. We have to.”
“There is nothing in our books. Seventy-eight Watchers are rereading everything they can for the second time today, but you know it as well as I do, they would have found it the first time around if there was anything. And if we don’t find anything, she is too great a menace to be allowed…”
He opened the door and turned back to look at her.
“When you’ve been Manon’s Watcher for a decade,” he said coldly, “when you’ve seen her bleed and cry and still keep fighting so many times that you wish you could just take her burden away and let her live the life that has been stolen from her, then you can tell me again what we can allow Buffy to do or not.”
With that, he stepped out of the room, closing the door behind him. Clenching and unclenching his fists repeatedly, he strode to the master index, the one book that listed every single volume the Council possessed. There had to be something else, something they hadn’t looked through yet. And he would find it.
*****
He hadn’t found anything. Neither he nor any of all the Watchers present in London. They still had a few books to check, there were a few volumes missing from the library, borrowed by some Watchers abroad, and they were trying to contact the last few of them. But for Giles, all hope was gone. For a moment, he had dared believe in another possibility, but the Council had quickly stopped him in his tracks.
The Mage wasn’t really his friend. Just an acquaintance, really. And he had only helped out before with Angel to pay off his very unusual debt. But Giles had trusted that he would be willing to help against some kind of payment, and he had contacted him. He had no idea then what the payment would be, and had been surprised when the answer had come. A trinket. The Mage would agree to help Buffy for a trinket. But not just any kind of trinket. A pendant. One that was worth as much as half of the Crown Jewels. One that had magical powers that the Council was reluctant to let anyone but high ranking Watchers know about. More powers, it was rumored, than the Council even knew. Just a bauble, really, hidden in a safe in the headquarters’ basement, unseen and untouched by anyone for years. A bauble the Council would never let go.
Bringing his glass back to his lips, Giles realized with surprise that it was empty. And noticed at the same time what he had been successfully ignoring so far, the continuous banging on his door by a very determined person.
Sighing, he rose to his feet, not very sure whether he was going to get a refill or open the door. He finally did both.
“My dear, I think you are the most obstinate and annoying person I ever had the pleasure to meet.”
To his own ears he didn’t sound inebriated, but he couldn’t deny, at least not to himself, that his head wasn’t quite so clear right now. Andrea seemed to notice, because she crossed her arms in that so exasperating feminine fashion, and eyed the glass in his hand reproachfully.
“Are you going to let me in?” she asked coolly.
Giving her a mock bow, he took a step back and allowed her in.
“Drinking is not going to help Buffy,” she remarked, still very calm, as she entered his apartment.
“It’s not going to kill her either”, Giles shot back. “And neither am I.”
She sighed softly and shook her head. “Even if it came to that, you know they wouldn’t ask you to do it. They would send Manon and Chloe. Or a full team. Or the Slayers and a full team.”
“And Buffy would best them all with one hand tied be…”
He frowned and tilted his head. “Even if?” he asked, surprised. “They said earlier that it was decided, either we found a solution before we got there, or she was dust.”
“You commented yourself that I am the most obstinate person you know, didn’t you?”
A small, satisfied smile tugged at her lips as she slowly removed her gloves, and Giles could only watch her in silence, not daring to let himself hope again.
“They will give him the pendant,” she said softly. “They want to talk to her first, make sure she’s not too far gone, but they agreed to pay the price of your Mage.”
Giles mouth opened, words already filling his mind, questions and thanks mixed together, but she placed a finger across his lips to silence him.
“Do realize,” she said very seriously, “that if Buffy has already killed humans, with or without Spike’s help, or if the Mage can’t help, she might still get staked.”
He nodded, slowly, knowing that it would never get to that. Spike wouldn’t let her. And the Mage would be able to help. He was just certain of it.
*****
So far, for everything that concerned Hostile 17 and its removal, there had been one very clear rule: do not let anyone know that anything akin to the Initiative was back in Sunnydale. And when the orders said anyone, they really meant any of the so-called Scoobies. So that meant no uniforms when they were on mission. And, of course, nothing that could alert anyone who had seen the weapons before. No tasers, no walkie-talkies, not one of the many little gadgets that would have made their lives so much simpler.
But that rule had changed. They had believed the vampire still unable to hurt anyone, which meant that they had time. The events of the previous night proved that he could hurt again. No time left to watch and wait.
So the high tech toys were out in full force. And so was the team. Two nondescript vans, each packed full. A nice little device revealed someone, a woman judging by her curves, under a hot shower on the first floor. And someone else, in the kitchen, who appeared on the screen at the same temperature as the air around him. It was now or never. Riley gave the order, and was among the first to run to the backyard.
*****
At that moment, if Cordelia had had a body, she would have screamed her irritation and thrown a very memorable temper tantrum. Something to shake everything from Heaven to Hell. It was even more infuriating to know that it would take barely more than a snap of her fingers to right that awful mess. And the Powers That Be only knew how much her fingers itched! Except that she didn’t really have fingers here.
It might have been better if Angel stopped calling out to her. She could have answered him, but to tell him what? That she knew, had known at the moment it happened, but wouldn’t do a thing about it? No, she couldn’t say that. He wouldn’t understand. After all, she wasn’t even sure she understood herself. Wasn’t sure she would be able not to do a thing if she started thinking about it too deeply.
Something else might have helped. If only she could have taken her mind and incorporeal eyes off the two vamps… But she kept watching, with the sick fascination and certainty that she was going to assist in a horrendous, monstrous train wreck, with the knowledge that it would be incredibly easy to stop it before it got too far, with the awareness that she couldn’t.
And now… with these idiots who thought they were so smart… Spike would unlive or die his final death, Buffy would create a carnage or control herself, her soul would return or not, the Council would be broken or strengthened, the two Slayers would survive or a new one would be Called, the Scoobies would be fine or shattered… A snap of her fingers was all it would have taken. But she would keep watching and do nothing else until the end. And just hope it would end quickly and well.