Giles Ficathon: Watchers' Oaths, G/W,

[kivrin]

This is for the brilliant kindkit

The assignment was:

One character they'd like to see in the fic with Giles: Wesley
One item/action/theme/word/etc that they'd like to see in the fic: Oxford English dictionary
Up to two restrictions (things they don't want in the fic): No fluff
(Optional) what kind of fic they'd like to receive. (This section is NOT a requirement that you have to fulfill but to give you an idea of what kind of fic they would like. You are free to take or leave any suggestions as you see fit.): It'd be nice if this was set *after* BtVS season 3. I'd like to see how the less prim-and-proper Wesley relates to Giles

Thanks to glimmergirl for last-minute beta assistance.


WATCHERS' OATHS

The taxi ride gives me ample time to regret everything: accepting the invitation, ringing up, coming to Los Angeles in the first place. Damned urban sprawl. The cabbie finally halts outside a block of flats that's made an effort at actual architecture. Inside, however, it's as anonymous as a hotel. Should have gone to a hotel. But I'm here, at the door of number 105, with the cab gone, my bag in hand, a ticket for tomorrow in my pocket, and nothing to do but knock.

Only the fact that he says my name keeps me from stammering out "sorry, wrong door" and turning away. When I last saw him, nine months ago, he had changed from the Sunnydale days, but now he's unrecognizable: bearded, shaggy-haired and hollow-eyed, and clad in jeans and a slightly stretched-out jumper.

"Giles," he rasps again, stepping back to let me inside.

"Thank you." The flat is bland as well, like a hotel or a department-store mockup. Well, aside from the ancient texts strewn about, the weapons behind the door, and the Concise Oxford English Dictionary on the coffee table.

"Drink?" Wesley opens a cupboard and gestures at the array of bottles. "Wine also. Some lager."

"Whisky, please."

He shows me a bottle of scotch.

"Lovely. Thank you."

When he turns to hand me the drink, I see a long crimson gash that runs from just below the Adam's apple nearly to his ear. On the phone he said 'I hurt my throat,' which turns out to be a bit of an understatement. The shock must show in my face, but his is impassive. He steps out of the room, then returns with a bottle of red wine and a corkscrew. "Sunnydale tomorrow?" he asks as he works.

"No. Home. It's an early flight. . . I'll need to get a cab at six. Presuming this storm in Chicago that's disrupting every flight in America has cleared up by that time."

"I'll drive."

"No, that's not. . ." My eyes go to the wound again. "I imagine you're meant to be resting."

Pryce gestures towards me with his wineglass. "Meant to be in London."

"I live in Bath, actually. The museum sent me to deliver some things they've had on loan from the Getty. Now that they're restoring the imitation Roman villa, they want the things back. Roman relics aren't exactly my field, but I know enough to be a good errand boy."

"Chance to visit. Buffy," he adds quickly.

So I had thought, too, when I agreed to the trip a few months ago. "I haven't been to Sunnydale."

We drink in silence for a few minutes.

"Museum," Pryce says, at length.

"I'm sorry?"

"You're working at a museum in Bath, then," he says in a painful whisper.

"Yes." I wonder why he doesn't ask the obvious question. I'm glad he doesn't; I haven't any answer. Perhaps he's guessed. God knows he looks lonely enough himself, and he lives here.

"Sorry." He gestures to his throat. "Not much of a conversationalist."

"That's all right." I come to a decision and swallow the rest of the scotch. "I'm the one who should apologize, this is. . . you were too kind to offer to put me up, but you're not well and I can't impose any. . ."

"Glad."

"What?"

He leans back in his chair to look at me. "You called. You're here. I'm. . ." He shrugs.

Oh. Well then. I sit down slowly.

"Wanting to ask you. Something you said, last time we were..." He opens and closes one hand, indicating the space between us and the exchange of words that might generously be called a conversation.

Something I said, or something I did? "I said a great many things, many of them predicated on an erroneous assumption, and the rest on the fact that I was about to bury Buffy."

Pryce goes on. "About oaths. Protecting. Doing what others. . . shouldn't have to."

"Oh?" Did I say that to him? I recall saying it to Buffy. I remember her profile in the dim training room, her small, slender body hunched near mine on the sofa, the drug-dulled pain in my side, the weight that lay on us both that we could not seem to carry together. I remember remembering it and weeping, during the months when that was the last time we'd been alone together. But in the long night after she died, sitting on her porch. . . did I say that?

"Why you went away?"

Went home. Except it's not. "To do the things others can't and shouldn't have to?"

"Because you already had." He looks at his wine, then puts the glass down and looks deliberately at me.

"The. . . I left Sunnydale. . ." I pick up my glass, but there's nothing left in it. "Well, yes, in a way. Not so much for what I'd done as what I would have done." Again, I try to remember that night, and wonder what I said, how much Pryce knows. His face gives no clues. "The children are, of course, much more focused on my second departure, as the first was quite, ah, convenient for Willow's plans. As I found out later."

"Why? Again?"

"I left because Buffy needed to stand on her own two feet, to learn the truth of her ability to cope with her life - not so much in the slaying as in the household tasks and looking after. . . Dawn. She was regressing, and by staying in Sunnydale I. . . I believe the proper pop-psychological terminology would be that I was 'enabling' her." I rehearsed those lines many times, but after six months they're awkward in my mouth. I'd carefully avoided all the trite and grandiose words - no "for your own good," no "hurt you to help you," no "duty as your Watcher." But the concepts had been there, were still there.

"Hurt her so she wouldn't hurt herself." Pryce gives the smallest of nods. "Or others."

I take up my drink again. "Yes, I suppose. It sounds noble, doesn't it. When I leave out the. . . vengeful six-year-old aspect of the whole thing, in which I leave to. . ." I shrug. Hurt her because she hurt me. "Leave because she left." Made that foolish gamble on the tower. Left me facing Dawn across the shop counter every afternoon.

Pryce touches his chest. "Thinking of leaving."

"Oh?"

He rises and brings me a stack of papers and more scotch. He tells the story as if dictating a report for the Council: textual references first, demonology next, human feeling never. I check the notes and translations as he talks, doing my best to listen in the same vein, never mind how the thought of Angel holding an infant turns my ribs to iron and sets up an ache, no less sharp for being psychosomatic, in my fingers. I hold to the facts: a miraculous birth, a prophecy of doom, betrayal upon betrayal and a desperate gamble that ends in ashes.

"It didn't end well," Pryce murmurs at last.

Another fine British understatement. "I'm sorry." I am, though to my shame it is for Pryce alone, not for the strangers who were his friends, nor for the bereaved father.

He takes his notes back and shuffles them. "Said I should have told them. But that. . ."

"Would have defeated the purpose."

"Don't understand. Can't expect Angel to, but. . ."

"The civilians might?" I shake my head. "One might as well expect a Slayer to heed her Watcher."

"Historically, they have. Or so I was taught."

"Buffy never did well in history." I remember her books on the old library table, the smell of tea and parchment in my office, the ache of my muscles after training. In Bath, I jog, and I've started fencing again. The Council sends me manuscripts to transcribe and transcriptions to translate. "Tiresome girl," I say firmly.

"You don't. . ." Pryce begins, after a pause.

"Of course I fucking miss her!" I look into my scotch so I won't have to look at him. "Enough to make me wonder if Travers was right. I doubt it's possible to be as frustrated by someone and still. . . well. Unless she's your child."

". . .want food," he finishes uncertainly. He has a few take-away menus in one hand.

Oh god. "No. Thank you."

We sit quietly for several minutes.

"Don't know what I'll do," Pryce says, his rough voice even softer than usual. "Can't not fight. Tried that. But without. . ."

Yes. "We were always taught that the world needed us. The slayers, whatever other animate tools might exist, they told us they needed the Watchers."

Pryce closes and opens his eyes in acquiescence. I wonder if he's remembering old Staunton, even older than I knew him, standing at the lectern in the dim mahogany chapel, exhorting like a Shakespearean actor turned evangelical preacher, before the graduates marched out to "Onward, Christian Soldiers."

"Turns out we need them." I shake my head. "It's not cricket, that sort of trick."

"Too much to hope they might be grateful." Pryce goes to the kitchen and brings back ice for my glass before pouring us fresh drinks. This time he sits down on the sofa with me. "Imperialist of us to think so."

"Especially since we're not really Watchers anymore."

"You are."

"Once a fallen Watcher, always fallen. And yet."

"Can't not fight," he says again.

"Not only that. Can't not. . . try. To protect her. No matter how she. . ." I shake my head. "No matter how unhelpful it might be."

"Father's love?"

"Do you love Angel?" I don't give him time to answer. "No matter if you do, how you do, he's still. . . the way in. What lets you. . . do the job, fulfill your destiny, keep the oath. Or whatever the hell it is." I bolt the rest of my scotch and pour another.

"Thought the oath was balderdash," Pryce says.

I laugh, a hard dry sound. "Curiously enough, so did I, until I suddenly found that it wasn't. Amazing what one learns about being a Watcher when one's no longer a Watcher."

"Yes." He sips his wine. "How proud they might be of one, if one weren't. . ."

"Indeed."

We drink quietly for what seems a very long time.

Pryce breaks the silence. "I'm sorry."

"What?"

"For bringing up. . . only I had hoped. Speak with you."

"No, not at all."

"It wasn't meant to. . ." his voice trails off.

I frown at him. "Pryce. What?"

" Didn't bring up. . . troubles. . . to prevent anything." He looks me in the eye, answering the question he hasn't asked.

"No. Not at all," I say again, shaking my head. "Besides, you're hurt."

"You were last time." His lips tighten. "The first time," he amends, as if it weren't the same time. Now he seems young; his old self flickers at the edges of my vision. But the hand that comes to rest on my scarred side has none of his former hesitancy.

He winces when I kiss him, but opens his mouth and draws me closer. He closes his eyes, but I keep mine open, even when he bites my shoulder. Tonight I'll watch for myself alone.