summer_of_giles | FIC: Arms and the Man 2/6 (Giles/Buffy) R

Title: Arms and the Man 2/6
Pairing: Giles/Buffy
Rating: R

Continued from part 1.

Two days later their plane was landing in Heathrow, slamming down on the runway as far away from home as she'd ever been, and Buffy was still wrangling with Giles over whether it was a good idea or not for her to have come. At worst, it would be a vacation for a working Slayer who hadn't been out of town since that family vacation in Cabo. At best-- well, she wasn't sure what would happen. Giles might make contact with an organization that would help the two of them fight evil.

From the delayed flight, the traffic on the M-something-or-other dinky sub-freeway, and the even smaller winding roads they drove on after that, it was past dinner time when they reached the inn in the middle of nowhere. Not nowhere; Giles explained they were vaguely near Glastonbury, which Buffy had heard of because Oasis had played the festival. But that was not going on now, and they were miles away from the site anyway, in a village near nothing in particular. Giles had been directed here because his cousin's funeral would be in the village church.

The twilight had just begun to shade into night when they got themselves checked into their inn. The room had two narrow beds and had its own bathroom attached, which looked ridiculously tiny to Buffy but that Giles seemed to think was a major feature in an inn like this. Buffy was a strange combination of exhausted and wired, not ready to sleep yet. Besides, she was hungry.

They dropped their luggage onto their beds, unopened, and went downstairs to the pub. Giles ordered himself a pint of something and Buffy, stabbing wildly at the confusing list of names on the chalk board behind the bar, ordered cider. Giles's beer came in a tall straight glass and was black with creamy foam on top. She tasted it; it was warm like they all said English beer was and it was bitter and sweet at the same time. Giles snagged his glass back while she was pulling a face and drank deeply from it. He set it down on the table between them with a thump. He looked relaxed, sitting there slouched on the bench across from her, satisfied with himself. He'd been in a strange mood all day, alternating between being happy to be in his home country and anxious about something. At the moment he'd settled on happy. The beer left a bit of foam on his upper lip, which he licked off. Buffy watched his tongue and thought about how long she'd known Giles and how much she knew about him, and how comfortable they'd become with each other, that she could steal sips of whatever he was drinking so casually.

Buffy's own drink looked like carbonated apple juice. It was sweet and completely nummy. She drank as deeply as Giles had, and sputtered.

"This cider tastes funny. Is this alcoholic?"

Giles laughed at her. "It's cider."

"Which means extra-chunky apple juice where I come from, but I'm guessing it's like applejack for you Englander types."

"Not that strong. But possibly we should eat a bit of dinner now to cushion the blow."

Giles was always telling her to eat more to fuel the Slayer metabolism. Her inner Slayer spirit had now joined forces with her Watcher, so Buffy had given in. Food it was. "I could do that. Like, about three dinners."

"What would you like?"

Buffy flapped a hand at him. "Anything. Delight me with the cuisine of your people."

Giles made a face at her, then called over the waitress for a brief conversation. She saw them looking at her a couple of times, but she resolutely ignored them in favor of sipping at her cider. She was determined to demonstrate to Giles that she'd moved on from last year's beer incident and had indeed learned to hold her liquor. Though he probably wouldn't want to know how she'd learned, and she honestly wasn't all that proud of it, either. Her first year of college had featured stupidity, study, and slayage in about equal measures. Probably it had been a typical freshman year, aside from the blood and mayhem.

Buffy turned her cider glass around and around, watching the bubbles rise against the glass.

"Everything all right?"

"Yeah, just thinking. What's the name of this place?"

"The Lancer's Rest."

"Weird name for a hotel."

"Typical for an inn this old. And suggestive." Buffy waggled her eyebrows at him. Giles smiled at her. "Not that sort of suggestive. I mean that it hints at the answer to our question. I believe I've worked out why I was asked to come here."

"Spill."

Giles raised a forefinger. "I believe my cousin to have been a member of the Order of St George. A peculiarly English group, in service of a peculiarly un-English saint."

"George, the guy who killed the dragon?"

"The same. He is alleged to have founded several orders of knights in various countries. Which, since the historical figure lived before knights existed, is quite unlikely." He punctuated this announcement with a healthy swig of his black beer.

"So the Order wasn't founded by him. Frauds?"

"Hardly." Giles had more of his beer and licked his lips. "They are quite authentically a medieval demon-hunting group that survived and is operating to this day. Rather like the Council in some ways, different to them in others. They've always been rather more explicitly military, where the Council are more scholarly. Though the Council have always preferred to have, er, the Slayer do--"

"The dirty work."

Giles nodded. "The Order trains men to be demon hunters. From childhood, usually, as the Council does. There might or might not be a mystical component. It's rather secretive. Again, just as the Council is."

"But they don't get along."

"Apparently not, given how my father reacted to my cousin's choice. There is a fierce rivalry. There often is between these groups. Seems counter-productive, but there it is."

He shrugged and drank more of his strange beer. Dodgers versus Giants, then, no sense to it, just ritual hatred. Buffy turned her attention to her cider again, which continued to be alcoholic yet tasty, and thought about rivalries and baseball teams. Did they compete for the star players? Was Giles a star player?

"So. These George guys called you because why? Sale on swords?"

The waitress chose that moment to arrive with their dinners. Giles leaned back in his chair and waited until she'd gone to answer.

"I don't know. They weren't a group I attempted to send feelers to. They must have heard somehow. Otherwise they'd have recruited me immediately after our break with the Council." Giles shrugged.

They'd find out, she supposed. Buffy looked down at the strange food on her plate, and was surprised to realize it was perfectly ordinary roast beef in sauce, with veggies and a potato. One hundred percent normal food. She found Giles waiting for her reaction with a cocked eyebrow, so she decided not to play his little game. She ate like the starving Slayer she was and said nothing at all to him about the food.

Two dinners and one more pint of black beer later, they returned to their room together. Giles was still in a good mood, but more mellowed out. Buffy beat him into the bathroom to change into her pajamas and brush her teeth. When she emerged, Giles traded places with her. She was wired despite the flight, the drive, and the cider. Her body seemed to have no idea what time it was, really, even though it was dark out. The dark was her time. Hunting time. Wakeful time. Was there anything to hunt? Their room had one tiny window that looked out over the roof of another wing of the inn. She tugged it up and open and stuck her head out. Starlight, wispy clouds over a half-moon rising, the sound of an owl hooting somewhere nearby, a car driving past. No vamp-tingle even in the least. It was odd to not feel it. It battered at her every time she paid attention in Sunnydale.

Giles emerged from the bathroom with his toiletry bag in hand. He bent and replaced it in his suitcase, then turned to her. His eyebrow went up in silent inquiry.

"No vamps," she said and it came out a little whiny.

Giles made a sympathetic noise. He yanked the bedding free from his mattress and climbed in. Buffy left the window open and turned off the light at the door. She sat cross-legged at the end of his bed. Giles didn't object, but he drew up his knees and clasped his arms around them. The blankets covered him up to his waist. Dark red blankets, his arms pale against them, his t-shirt shimmering white behind. She'd seen Giles in various states of undress, but she'd never spent the night with him like this. She'd spent the night in his apartment, had slept on Xander's basement floor with him and the gang, but she'd never been alone with him in a tiny little room, thousands of miles away from home. She wasn't sure why that mattered, but it did.

She was strangely aware of his body, of his masculinity. And he was definitely male to her just then. And he had gray at his temples, and was nearsighted, and stammered when he was nervous, and had to hide in his flat alone after too much time spent with their noisy friends. But he never seemed to mind her company. She was maybe as much as a refuge for him as he was for her.

Something flared hot in her chest and she reached out and took his left hand. She'd done it without thinking, but it felt right. He squeezed her in return for a moment then let his hand relax in hers.

This was the hand Angel had damaged. There were thin scars along the fingers he'd broken. It was Giles's sword hand. He'd made a good recovery, but even now he was still working to build the gripping strength he'd used to have. He'd told her that just recently, when she'd resumed weapons training with him. This hand, callused and scarred. It was suddenly unbearably desirable to her, this man's hand in hers. She held herself completely still, mind controlling her body's impulses for now. Only her thumb moved, stroking over his.

"Buffy--" he said.

Buffy braced herself for the moment when he distanced himself, but he was gazing at her steadily and silently. His eyebrows came together and he studied her for an uncomfortably long time. Buffy didn't flinch. She continued to stroke his hand with her thumb. Eventually he seemed to find whatever he'd been looking for, and he looked down at their joined hands. He shifted and leaned forward. His fingers grazed her palm, and she breathed in. He raised her hand, turned it in his, and brushed a kiss against her knuckles. He lingered there for a moment, then released her.

"I must try to sleep now," he said. "You should too."

Buffy opened her mouth to object, but he shook his head and she stayed silent. Net yet was the message. She slipped down from his bed and went over to hers and got in. He turned off the light. He rolled onto his stomach and closed his eyes. His breathing slowed.

Buffy lay in her own bed and watched him sleep with Slayer-sharp eyes. Something in her stirred, the same thing that made her hunt, but this time it wasn't driving her out into the moonless night. That belongs to you, it said. And it came along with a tickle of desire. Honor those impulses, he'd said. Honor the Slayer within. What would Giles make of this impulse? Would he tell her to honor this one too?

Buffy woke first, troubled by the time shift, and she slipped into the room's tiny bathroom to get in a fast shower. When she came out, Giles was sitting up and rubbing at his face. His hair was rumpled and his chin stubbly. He could sometimes be slow waking up, she'd noticed, so she gave him his space. She filled the room's electric kettle and plugged it in. Tea from bags, which Giles had taught her to sniff at. He'd gulp it down anyway. But then, she'd drink instant coffee in a pinch, herself.

Giles got himself out of bed when the kettle whistled. She poured his authentically inauthentic morning cup of tea, with two units of sugar for the Watcher with the sweet tooth. He came over to collect it from her.

"Breakfast?" she said.

Giles shook his head. "The tea will do." That was the first sign she'd seen from him that any of this was affecting him.

He carried his cup with him into the shower. He came out again ten minutes later, cup empty, half-dressed in trousers with bare feet, hair wet, a towel around his shoulders. He was bare-chested. He extracted a little black bag from his suitcase and carried it into the bathroom with him. He left the door open, set it on the sink, and unzipped it. A shaving kit, she saw. He ran water into the sink and lathered up his face.

She had seen him shirtless once before, at the beach last summer. He'd filled out since then, filled out and slimmed down at the same time. His year of jogging instead of shelving books was visible in that bare chest and in the legs inside those dark trousers. He'd been training her in weapons use a lot recently, maybe five hours a week, and it had begun to shape him. He had biceps now, and shoulders. The muscles in his forearms shifted as he braced himself on the sink. That was sword-fighting muscle. She hadn't realized what it took to fence with her until she'd watched Xander try to stand in a guard position for more than thirty seconds. His wrist had wavered inside twenty, and that had been with a wooden sword and not a steel broadsword.

Giles toweled his face dry and cast another one of those enigmatic looks at her, but remained silent. Buffy watched him button a white shirt and tuck the tails into his trousers. He fastened bracers to his trousers and slipped them up over his shoulders. A tie went on next, one with a diagonal stripe pattern that she'd seen him wear once or twice before. Cufflinks. The signet ring. He was in the full regalia this morning, then. For funerals, she left off the jewelry, but Giles put it on. Except for his earring: he wasn't wearing anything in his ear this morning, though she could see the dimple of his piercing. How often did he wear an earring? Often enough that the hole didn't close up.

Giles shrugged on his jacket and stood before her in somber glory.

"One might think you'd never seen a man dress."

"I haven't. Well, not in real clothes, anyway." Riley had worn a suit once or twice, but nothing like this.

"Hmm."

Buffy stood and straightened his jacket collar for him. She brushed a bit of imaginary lint from his shoulders. It was just an excuse to touch him, but he didn't seem to mind. He tilted his head and said, "You're ready in rather better time than usual."

"No choices to make," Buffy said, and she shrugged. Funerals weren't flashy dress occasions and she hadn't brought much jewelry with her. Her taste had moved to more practical pieces these days anyway. No more dangling things in her ears that made her vulnerable when fighting. It was all solid sensible captive bead rings in her ears. Though she had her silver cross on its chain around her neck. She never went without that. Again, it was practical.

"What time is the funeral?" she said.

Giles glanced at his wristwatch. "In an hour. If you're in the mood, we could take a walk around the village. The church isn't far."

"Sounds good."

Buffy was in need of some motion after being cooped up in the plane and in the car for so long. She snagged her sunglasses and was ready to go.

They'd driven through town like this yesterday but she hadn't managed to get a good look at them. They'd been on main roads and this town was all about the little winding streets off the main road. It was utterly gorgeous to her eyes, everything green and growing. It had rained some time in the night and the grass was wet. Rain, in summertime, so strange. The houses looked like a picture-book, like they were from a movie not from real life. There was another inn, a pub, a grocer, a shop aimed at tourists, and a collection of houses where people lived. There wasn't much more: they'd walked all the way across the place in ten minutes.

It made Sunnydale look huge. Sunnydale was a one Starbucks town and this place was... Buffy hoped it never had a Starbucks, ever. It was too pretty for that.

The church they were heading to was outside the town proper, a short walk along a little winding road labeled merely "Wells Cross". There wasn't a sidewalk as such, a single-track gravelled path that mostly paralleled the official road. The occasional car passed them, also bound for the church.

The church itself was old, though Buffy had no way to make any guesses about how old. It was more of a weird agglomeration of little buildings than what Buffy thought of as a church, though it had a tall steeple and a bell. Its gray stone walls were flecked by lichen and broken by narrow arched windows. The steep roofs were shingled with wood. There were old grave sites right next to the walkway, with dates on them in the 1600s. So it was at least that old. She'd have to ask Giles later. It was also larger than she expected, given the tiny size of the village.

"Goodness," Giles said. He was leaning back and looking at the roof of the church, which fascinated him for some reason Buffy couldn't guess at. She was more interested in looking for signs of Travers or anybody else obnoxious. There were more people going inside than she had expected, somehow. Standing on the steps was a man who was looking around just like she was. Buffy saw him spot Giles and react. This had to be the Whiting guy they were there to meet. He came forward and shook hands with Giles.

"Rupert," he said. "It's been a long time."

"Gerald. Indeed it has."

Whiting turned to Buffy and hesitated, only for an instant but long enough that Buffy raised an eyebrow.

"Buffy Summers," Giles said, without bothering to explain who she was or why she was here. If Whiting knew Giles was a Watcher, which he almost certainly did, he'd know who she was already.

Whiting extended a hand to her. Buffy shook his hand and said what you were supposed to say when meeting somebody at a funeral, but only with the back half of her brain. The front half was furiously trying to parse this guy. He made her spidey sense tingle, but not in the creepy way. He looked like what she'd expect: suit and tie, conservative haircut gone a little shaggy and gray-shot, a face that was all character and once-broken nose. He had a handshake of surprising firmness, an upright stance and wide shoulders. An athlete in a suit, like Giles, only unlike Giles he wasn't bothering to hide it.

Giles was speaking. "You were close? Forgive me if I'm prying. I hadn't seen him to speak to since I was in prep school."

"At one time," Whiting said. "I hadn't seen him in some months. I had been traveling on-- business." That last was evasive.

"I am sorry."

"Death comes to us all. Sometimes unexpectedly."

"May I ask how he died? On the phone you said it was a heart condition, but--"

Whiting glanced around them, at the people walking past into the church. "Come walk with me," he said, and he headed off to the left.

They walked clockwise around the church, following a stone-flagged path in a grassy lawn. The grass and the stones were in the shadow of the church and still wet from the rain last night. The railing along the path looked new.

When they were out of easy earshot of the front, Whiting said, "I'm not entirely comfortable discussing this before outsiders, but--"

"Buffy knows what we do," Giles said. His eyebrow was up.

"Ah." He glanced at her again with slightly more interest than before, then turned to Giles. "I suppose you know what this is about."

"I've got a theory. This village is where tradition puts the Order of St. George."

Whiting nodded. "Tradition, legend, and reality. We are indeed here."

Giles's expression was faintly smug, but probably Whiting didn't know him well enough to read it. "And my cousin was one of you."

"Yes."

"Did he die well?" Giles seemed to hesitate over that mode of expressing it, but Whiting didn't mind.

"Alas, it was indeed his heart. Undiagnosed weakness, apparently. He did not die with his boots on as he would have preferred."

There was no irony in Whiting's expression as he said this. Dying quietly didn't count as dying well, somehow. Buffy understood the feeling at the same time she hated it. Did she want to die in action, going down fighting? Preferably winning as she died? Maybe. Maybe she wanted to die from a heart attack in distant middle age. Would heart attacks hurt? She had already died once, and while it had screwed with her head for a while afterwards, the actual death part hadn't hurt. She wasn't scared of the pain any more.

Whiting said, addressing Giles, "Forgive my directness at a moment like this, but we don't have that much time. I'll come to the point if I may."

"Please do."

"Alec's death leaves us with a gap in our ranks at a time when we are thin to start. There was something in his papers that attracted our attention to you. He wrote that he'd always thought you were a better candidate for our ranks than he had been."

"Oh?"

"Yes. We attempted to approach you once, some time after you obtained your degree, but you had vanished deep within the Watcher organization and we judged it not worth the bother."

That sounded perilously close to an insult and Buffy folded her arms. Giles did not seem offended. He said, "Yes, I'd have been particularly keen on the Watchers at that point in my career."

"And not so keen now."

"No." There was a wealth of meaning in Giles's wry tone that Buffy knew was meant for her amusement. She let herself smile for an instant, where Whiting couldn't see it.

"Yes, we'd heard earlier in the summer that you were seeking new affiliation. You are truly free to do so?"

"I am."

"Then perhaps we might find our interests aligned. We seek men like you, men who are born to fight demons. Warriors."

"I'm a scholar, not a warrior."

"I very much doubt--"

"He's a warrior," Buffy said, cutting him off. Whiting looked at her as if surprised she'd spoken. "Trust me."

Whiting laughed. "Forgive me, but I doubt you have any idea."

Buffy bit down on her urge to let him have it. "Oh, do I."

"Miss Summers is the Slayer," Giles said to Whiting.

Whiting rocked back onto his heels. "Oh! Oh. The Slayer. We hadn't realized that you were still working with Rupert. I mistook-- Well. Forgive me. You would indeed know a warrior when you saw one."

Whiting seemed genuinely apologetic. Buffy was mollified.

Giles said, "Sorry to surprise you like this. I thought you knew. Buffy left the Council shortly after I did."

Whiting shook his head and said, "We assumed that when the Council sacked you it retained the Slayer for itself. I'm frankly shocked they've allowed this."

Buffy said, "It was up to me, not to them."

She let some acid creep into her tone, maybe too much, because Giles almost stuttered as he said, "Miss Summers considers me to be her Watcher still."

Whiting frowned. "And is that what you consider yourself to be?"

Giles said, "Yes." His jaw was set in a way that Buffy knew meant he was a little grumpy, though she didn't know what had set him off. She thought Whiting had made a good recovery from his gaffe. "If you don't want the Slayer as well as her Watcher, we'd best end this discussion now."

Whiting leaned forward and just touched Giles on the shoulder. "I seem to have got off on the wrong foot here. Not much of a diplomat, I'm afraid. More comfortable with a sword."

Giles's jaw relaxed. "Sorry, I'm a bit on edge myself. We had a run-in with the head of Council a few days ago."

"Travers?"

"He said something about seeing me here. I do expect to see my uncle, who's a staunch Councilman."

"Bother," Whiting said, in a way that made Buffy suspect he'd wanted to say something much nastier. "We shouldn't be seen talking. Look, old man, if you're interested, I'll take you to meet our chancellor tonight. Or do I need to give you a recruiting pitch?"

Giles looked at Buffy before answering, which surprised her. She shrugged ever so slightly at him and stifled her urge to tell him to say no. This had to be about him, no matter how much she wanted to make it about her. He might say no himself, after all, given how annoyed Whiting had just made him.

"No need for a pitch," Giles said, at last. "I should like to speak with your chancellor."

Whiting nodded. "I'll come round to fetch you at about seven and we'll have a bit of dinner first. I know where you're staying."

"Of course you do," Buffy said, under her breath.

"Best you enter the church on your own. Discretion." And he was off without another word, trotting away from them along the path.

She turned to head back the way they'd come, but Giles beckoned her to follow Whiting. "Never walk around a church widdershins, Buffy," he said, solemnly.

"Widderwhat?"

"The wrong way round," he said, twiddling a finger counterclockwise. "It's bad luck." He tilted his head and then she saw the smile on the corner of his mouth. They let Whiting get a good lead on them, then started walking.

"All this sneaking around," she said.

"Would you prefer to confront the Council head-on?"

"I owe Travers a punch in the nose."

"I shall endeavor to prevent you from meeting him again, then."

"Spoil-sport. Except he said he'd be here, so maybe you don't get to have a say. So there!"

"Let's try to avoid him, Buffy."

Giles's voice had gone serious and he looked uneasy, so Buffy gave in. If Travers was there, though, Buffy didn't spot him on their way into the church or even once they got inside. The church looked big on the outside but the part of it they were using for the ceremony was smaller than Buffy had expected. It was nearly full. They found seats in a row of pews near the back, which gave her a good view. There were more men than women in the church. Some obvious families, with scrubbed-shiny children mostly behaving themselves. In special pews on either side of the lectern was a pack of guys in their twenties, filing in together in a neat line. They all looked like they were football players, or something. Athletes. Wide shoulders and upright stances. Not a single desk jockey in the bunch of them. Buffy looked again, and saw the row of women behind the men, again with bodies that said athlete in a way she couldn't quantify. And their seats at the front had to mean something too.

A cluster of people were heading toward the front more slowly. They were grouped around a short older guy. Buffy saw first his white hair, then that he was in a wheelchair. It was a modern chair, lightweight, high-tech, with the wheels canted inward. The man seated in it didn't look as if he were about to play hoops, though. He was as well-dressed as the rest of them. He parked himself in a space alongside the row full of football players. Once he was settled, the funeral began, as if they'd been waiting for him.

The funeral was nothing like any of the ones Buffy had been to, and she'd been to too many. She watched Giles and did what he did, stood with him, sat again when he did. It caught her by surprise when he slipped down to kneel on the little stool in front of their bench. Other people were too, she saw, mostly older ones. Giles's head wasn't down, though. Instead he was staring in the direction of the coffin. His eyebrows were together and he looked almost angry. Thinking hard about something, Buffy knew, turning something important over in that huge brain. What conclusions he'd reach he might or might not ever tell her.

Then she saw that he wasn't actually staring at the coffin. He was staring at a group of people at the far side of church, near the front. Buffy narrowed her eyes and took a good look at the row of well-tailored backs, and then she spotted him. Quentin Travers, the toad with a beard. Next to him was another old guy, taller than the QT. Flanking them was a pair of broad-shouldered thick-necked hunks of meat. Travers had his back to them, and if they were lucky, he wouldn't turn around.

She rolled her eyes at Giles. Giles half-smiled at her in response, then turned his attention back to the front of the church. Buffy continued her scan of the people, as discreetly as she could. Religion bored her, but she did feel respect for the guy who was dead. Though if he'd died fighting evil, probably he didn't care so much what was going on at his funeral. He'd have moved on to better stuff, if she believed what Giles told her. He believed it, anyway, and that was usually enough for Buffy.

Buffy let her eyes drift up, to the funny arched ceiling. The church itself was pretty old, way older than anything that existed in the US. At moments like this she wished she'd paid more attention in history class, but it was one of those subjects she'd never managed to be interested in, not even after she'd figured out that college could be good. For instance, she wanted to know about all those shields that were on every wall of the church, some high up in the air. They each had a colorful design on them that shone out bright in the dim light of the church. What were they supposed to mean?

Eventually the service ended and the coffin was carried slowly out of the church by six of the burly men from the group in the front row. Resting on the coffin was, she saw, another one of those shields with a nearly-glowing design on it. Was it for the dead guy's family? She would ask Giles later.

She and Giles filed out to the churchyard at the very back of the crowd, dawdling even more to let them all get ahead. Buffy wasn't sure Travers had seen them, but she wouldn't bet against it. Giles offered her his arm. Buffy took it and allowed him to lead her away from the main crowd, away from the church and into the cemetery proper, with the procession pulling ahead of them. Had Giles ever offered her his arm before? It was a strange gesture, an intimate one in some ways but it let him keep his formal distance. Maybe he was trying to hint to her that he was interested. Maybe he was nervous. Maybe he was feeling extra-English. Maybe it was nothing. To experiment, she squeezed his arm a little bit. He responded by pressing her hand.

They meandered away from the church and deeper into the maze of greenery. This was the sunny side of the church, away from the buildings and the trees. It was warm and bright and there were flowers blooming everywhere around the graves. Cemeteries were cheerful places in the sunlight. Or so she thought. Maybe she wasn't mainstream on this topic. She spent so much time in them that she had developed some pet theories about them. This one was nice. Old by Sunnyvale standards, maybe a little overgrown and untended. The dates on the monuments were a hundred years back, a hundred and fifty. Victorian. There were no vampires in it that she could sense. No unquiet dead wandered here, just squirrels and birds and bugs. Bees blundering around among the flowers. And people, though there were none in sight. Not far away she could hear a man's voice speaking in the cadences of a ceremony. She couldn't make out the words but it had to be the funeral, reaching the last part, where they put the body into the ground.

Giles came to a halt and perched himself against the back of a bench. He tugged at the knot of his tie then snugged it back up again. He was gazing at a marble monument of the gaudy kind she was familiar with from certain older Sunnydale graves. An upright sword was cut into the stone. Alongside it was a man's name. He'd died at age twenty-five in 1961. One of the knights, perhaps, cut down before he had a chance to have a life. He'd lived longer than the average Slayer. Buffy shivered. She'd had enough of meditating about death. Good things never happened when she let herself get all self-pitying and maudlin.

"Nice ceremony," she said, and was surprised to realize that it had been. It had felt sincere, the right mix of pomp and people.

"Traditional," Giles said. "Rather pointedly so. And well-attended."

"Guessing those were the knights of Saint Jerry. Not to mention Mr Don't You Dare Attend, right up at the front. What's up with that?"

Giles frowned. "The man with him was my uncle, here to see his son buried. He's always been a staunch Councilman. I wonder." He pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment, thinking, then shook his head.

Politics. Family politics, Council politics, all the nonsense Giles had once told her about while attempting to explain what it had been like for him when he'd rejoined the Council after his breakdown. It hadn't been fun. It probably wouldn't have been fun even if he hadn't needed to prove himself to them constantly. Buffy had liked Travers even less after Giles had told her that story.

Giles straightened suddenly. "You might yet get your wish," he said. He pointed past her with his chin. Buffy turned and Travers headed their way, the two goons behind him.

Buffy touched Giles's arm to reassure him. She took one step to the side to give herself enough room to move if she needed it. She could sense Giles shifting his own stance as well. She found herself flexing her left hand without realizing she was doing it. Feint with the left, block his counter with the right, and then kick to break his nose. That was assuming he could counter. Travers's rounded shoulders signaled desk jockey all the way.

She grinned at Travers as he came closer, thinking about the crunch and how it would feel. That was the thing about the Slayer spirit. It totally enjoyed the violent solution to problems.

"Good morning, Quentin," her Watcher said, as cool and polite as he ever got.

"Good morning, Rupert," Travers said. "And to think you claimed to have no idea what I was talking about."

Giles shook his head but made no attempt to explain himself. Travers turned to Buffy. He gave her a half-bow that managed to convey her complete unimportance. It was amazing how he did that. It was weird that he did that, given that he allegedly thought that her allegiances mattered. "Miss Summers. I regret meeting you here."

"I don't," Buffy said. "Was hoping we'd run into you."

Giles folded his arms. "Where is my uncle?"

"He has more pressing concerns, this being his son's funeral."

Buffy saw Giles's jaw muscles flex. No doubt he was swallowing some particularly magnificent piece of sarcasm rather than speaking, which was criminal. When he finally spoke, his voice was mild. "Please give him my condolences and tell him I am sorry to have missed speaking with him."

"Of course." Travers cleared his throat. "I should prefer to hold this conversation elsewhere."

"I should prefer not to converse."

"I have no wish for conflict, Rupert. Truly."

"Then what is this about?"

"You must step aside. You must cease to cling to the Slayer as if she were your property."

"She's your property instead, is that it?"

Travers chuckled dutifully. "In a manner of speaking. She is our charge. Our duty. She is no longer yours. Your duty is ended."

"I swore an oath."

"Yes, yes, you swore to safeguard her. How can you do so if you become one of these fellows? Blundering about, flailing their swords around, getting themselves killed. Go and have adventures if you like, Rupert. Have your middle-aged crisis. Return the Slayer to our care."

"Hello! Right here. In front of you. Slayer with opinion about her own life. And here's my opinion: you can bite me."

Travers looked at her, blinked once, and turned to face Giles squarely. It was so very obviously a dismissal that anger burned her chest immediately. She ruthlessly tamped it down, as Giles had taught her, and looked for the threat beyond the taunt. Goons. Right. They were in motion and one of them looked like he was maneuvering behind Giles.

"Giles, step back," she said. He immediately obeyed. The goons froze in place.

Buffy walked around behind Travers and hopped up onto a grave marker. Great launching point if she needed to kick his head off, and the goon who spun to watch her seemed to know it.

She cursed the impulse that had made her choose shoes with heels instead of sensible sober flats. If she had to, she'd just kick them off. And trust to her reaction time. Though on the upside, she was probably going to get to punch somebody.

She knew Giles was aware of her position, though he didn't react. Neither did Travers.

Giles spoke. "It hardly matters, Quentin. Think of the long term. Fifty years from now, you'll still have the Slayers."

"It sets a precedent."

"If humanity is preserved, does it matter who saves it?"

"Your loyalty was always dubious. What could I expect from a man who would take a demon to bed?" He seemed to think that was about as savage a dismissal of Giles as was possible, and sure enough it made Giles flinch. Then he turned to Buffy, who didn't flinch because she was too busy keeping her anger in check.

"You're coming to London with us now, Miss Summers. This is no place for you. We'll take better care of you."

"No, you really won't," Buffy said.

Travers raised a hand and the man nearest her lunged for her. Buffy moved almost without thinking. Training and Slayer reflexes and every little bit of anger she felt for Travers, and the guy found himself on the ground before he'd run two steps toward her, curled around himself and his paralyzed solar plexus. Four heartbeats later Buffy had a knee in the small of his back and his wrist in her grip. Giles had showed her a way to hold an arm so that the victim broke it himself if he struggled. Maybe today she'd find out if it really worked.

Travers's hand was still in the air. He lowered it slowly. His second man now stood just before him, in a ready stance. Giles edged around closer to Buffy. The guy underneath Buffy struggled and she pulled his arm a little further up. He grunted.

"You will not harm a human," Travers said. "You cannot."

"Says who?" Buffy said, sweetly, to the man whose arm she held. "I beat up bad guys. I think I see a bad guy here. The good guys never carry knuckledusters, for instance." She put a little more pressure on his arm, and he swore and dropped them. "That's a good little baddie. Be nice and I won't turn your elbow into mush."

She had already put enough strain on the elbow and shoulder that this guy would be out of commission for a while, but didn't bother saying so. That was the secret: she'd never had any trouble punching out humans. Killing them, no, she'd need a huge reason to do that, but she could cheerfully pound them into hamburger. And she hadn't had a good fight in days.

"Never fight the Slayer, Quentin," Giles said.

Buffy shifted her grip and lifted goon number two up to his feet. Big guy, way over two hundred pounds and most of it muscle, and he was easy to lift. She gave him a little shove toward Travers. He stumbled, caught himself, and backed away from her, rubbing his arm, bent over. Buffy waved to him. He'd made a nice object lesson.

Travers turned to the still-functional gorilla and muttered something. The man relaxed and backed off. Travers shook his head and sighed.

"You must stand aside, Rupert."

"My answer is the same." The sarcasm there could have cut glass.

"Very well. That was your last chance."

And that was it. Travers turned tail and left. The three of them returned along the path back to the churchyard. Widdershins, Buffy noticed. She bent and picked up the knuckledusters where the meat-man had dropped them. Good quality, actual brass, nice and heavy. Worn smooth by use, or maybe by years sitting in somebody's pocket. Too big for her hand. She gave them to Giles, who examined them as carefully as she had and also tried them on.

"You're wrong, you know," he said, examining his fist. "About these things and, er, bad guys."

"Yeah?"

"You know I own a pair."

"Oh, right."

Giles frowned at them and uncurled his fingers. He tossed the dusters into a thick patch of grass. She looked her question at him and he shrugged. "Bad aura," was all he said.

"What the sweet merry hell was that about, Giles? Cause I seriously don't get it."

"How did he know? That's what puzzles me. That first visit, he knew something."

"Somebody tipped him off?"

"Perhaps."

"Here's what really pisses me off. He thinks I'm property. Some mindless fighting machine that you're in charge of, that he wants the pink slip for. Don't I get a say?"

Giles sighed. "You're rather older than any Slayer he's known. Most have been mere girls."

"I'd have smacked him if he'd said that to me when I was fifteen."

Giles tutted. "Violence."

"Solves all problems. Sure solved this one."

"Perhaps. Well. Shall we make our own strategic retreat?"

Giles offered her his arm again. Buffy took it. One step and and her shoe cracked under her. She said a bad word under her breath and kicked it off her foot and up into the air. She caught it and gazed in dismay at the missing heel. She considered the shoe for a second, thinking about how the heel had been attached. Then she wrenched the heel free from the other one. It was harder to do than the movies made it look. The first time she'd tried it she'd totally failed. But it was now neither the second nor the fifth time she'd sacrificed shoes to the cause of Fighting Evil. She stepped into her new really awful flats and looked up to see Giles with a wry look on his face.

"Sorry. Didn't think to tell you to dress for combat."

"I should always plan for it. Nice morning at church? Dress for trench warfare."

They spent their afternoon driving around the countryside and stopping to look at pretty things. The weather was good, which was something Buffy was not used to worrying about much, but Giles insisted they take advantage. She saw a lot of old churches, flotillas of sheep, and many miles of gentle hills covered in impossibly green grass. It was alien to Buffy, California girl all the way. She stood on a fence rail, leaning out over to scratch the head of a friendly horse, and thought about what California must have looked like to Giles when he got there. Golden yellow hills burned dry by the sun, the dusty olive leaves of scrub oaks, the morning fogs, the cold surf. This place was storybook to her, with the thatched roofs on cottages and the green hedgerows and sheep, but it was normality to Giles.

They spoke the same language here, but they did things differently. Those shields on the walls of the church, for instance. Buffy thought about those while she lay sprawled out on her bed back at the inn, watching Giles write in his journal with the fountain pen he always used. The last church they'd been inside had been cathedral-sized. It had had all kinds of funny things on its walls. Memorials to dead people, mostly, and some flowery carvings commemorating a military hero or two. No American church Buffy had been inside had ever had anything like that. The idea faintly scandalized her, in fact.

Everything was so old. All those churches they looked at, older than everything in Sunnydale except the Spanish mission. The Order was pretty ancient too, as these things went. Like the Order of Taraka, though Giles had said that was thousands of years old, plural, while this one was only about a thousand years old, singular. Babies! Compared to the line of Slayers, definitely babies.

Giles capped his pen and wrapped up his journal with its funky leather strap. Back into his suitcase it went, then he turned to her. "Whiting said he'd be by in an hour. I trust that will be enough time for you to dress."

"What do I wear? Funeral clothes again? Dress to impress?"

"Strike a balance, if that is at all possible for you."

Buffy stuck her tongue out at him and Giles grinned. He hid in the bathroom to change, which made Buffy a little sad because she'd enjoyed watching him dress up that morning. Getting dressed herself was a good distraction, though, because she had to solve the problem of looking just so from only the clothes she'd brought with her, sans her only pair of really nice shoes. Jewelry yes, sexy looks no. Something midway between professional Slayer and California college chick. Something that would look like a match to formal Giles, so that she wouldn't look out of place on his arm. And no heels, just in case.

Giles emerged. He was more conventionally dressed than he'd been that morning. Same tie, same cufflinks, different trousers. He looked more English than he usually did. Usually he pinged her as eccentric professor, any nationality, but tonight he looked like what he was, an Englishman. She wasn't sure what was doing it. Maybe it was the tie. Maybe it was the cut of the jacket, which was different somehow. Or his shoes, which weren't those stolid boring Oxfords he'd worn so often in Sunnydale. She said nothing, however, merely absorbed the differences and filed them away for future pondering. Then she realized he was staring at her right back, or at least looking at her in a way he didn't usually. Had she overdone it? No, she was not showing too much shoulder, way less than usual. Maybe it was that the black dress was what she thought of as serious-face clothes, for adult dinner parties not teenager flings. Had Giles seen her wearing it before? No. Apparently he liked it.

Whiting showed up on time. He looked as well-pressed as he had in the morning, and just as exhausted. It didn't seem to slow him down at all; he led them across town to a little restaurant inside a house off the main road, talking animatedly to Giles the whole way.

Buffy wasn't sure what she'd been expecting from the restaurant. It was quiet to the point of hushed, old, dim in the corners, cozy. And the food was amazing in an understated way. She had no idea what she was eating, other than that Giles told her she didn't want to know. She ate the food, tasted the wine more for curiosity than pleasure, and listening to the two men talking. They started out catching up with each other, discussing the careers of mutual acquaintances, and doing the usual boring reminiscence thing. Buffy found her attention wandering, though she did notice when Whiting tried to find out what Giles had been up to when he'd been away from the university. Giles gave a vague non-answer that didn't satisfy him, but he didn't dig. Too polite, probably. The discussion wandered to monsters they'd fought, and Buffy was able to join into the conversation on equal grounds. Giles was showing her off to Whiting a little bit, she thought, and Whiting was showing off a little himself. He'd done his time in the demon trenches for sure. He'd had some run-ins with vampires himself, since they were common in the older cities of Europe. The Slayer couldn't be everywhere, after all.

Whiting pressed Giles for examples of battles he'd fought on his own. Buffy found herself recounting the story of how the Hellmouth had nearly been opened again, during her senior year, and how Giles had helped her fight back the tentacle-thing. Giles automatically corrected her with the species identification, but for some reason he was reluctant to grab his fair share of the glory. Maybe boasting wasn't the done thing for him, but Buffy wanted to be sure Whiting understood the depth of Giles's demon-hunting résumé.

After dinner Whiting excused himself to the street outside the restaurant, where he had a brief conversation on his cellphone. When he came back in, he said, "Shall we head over to the grounds? Sir John would like to speak to you now."

Sir John, Buffy deduced, was the leader of the knights.

Giles drove them in the little rental car. He followed Whiting's directions out of the village and onto a tiny road heading west, deeper into the countryside. The sun was still well up from the horizon. The landscape glowed where it touched, though long shadows were over the fields. Buffy was torn between gawking out the window and watching Whiting. He looked more somber than he'd been during dinner. Then they got near the grounds and she had no eyes for anything but the view. There was a castle tower there, right there, a gray round thing with crenellations on top and tiny windows. Winding away from it was a long gray stone wall with an iron gate set in it. Before the gate was a little building with a light on inside. As they pulled up to the gate, a man came out of the building. Whiting leaned out the window and raised his hand. The man opened the gate. As they drove past, Buffy could see that he had a sword on his hip.

Whiting had Giles drive along a winding road until he reached a rambling stone house. Two stories, older than Victorian but not crazy old, and some parts were newer than that. Buffy didn't have much time to gawk at the suits of armor standing in the hallway, because Whiting was leading them into a dimly lit side room. The walls were hung with antique weapons and the furniture was the solid wood and leather kind Buffy'd seen in period films.

The white-haired man in the wheelchair was there, holding a glass of something. There was an older man standing smoking by an empty fireplace. A few younger men, one of whom Buffy remembered seeing at the funeral, stood by an open window. The one she'd remembered popped out because of his hair, which was magnificent and long, as if Braveheart had been more into shampoo than blue body paint. It was a little odd seeing a man with that much hair in a gorgeous suit like that one. The cascade of hair was caught in a band at his thick neck. The guy was huge. He wasn't fat; those were muscles on his muscles. The guy he was talking to was a burly guy too, but he looked like a waif next to Braveheart. He was exactly the sort of man Buffy could imagine wearing real armor and riding one of those giant horses into a muddy, bloody battlefield, with a rippling banner on his lance.

Buffy's nostrils flared. The inner Slayer liked that one.

The man in the wheelchair was Sir John Conway. Whiting introduced her first as the Slayer and then mentioned her name. Conway nodded to her. She wasn't sure what that meant. Giles he introduced as the candidate they'd come to meet, and Giles was immediately the center of attention. Buffy could see that he wasn't happy about that. He'd made himself shorter than he actually was, somehow. His shoulders were a little curled in. He was nervous and instead of responding by sticking his chin out he was hiding. Buffy wanted to help but had no idea how. She wasn't sure if helping was a good idea. He had to figure it out himself.

Somebody offered her a drink, and Buffy shook her head. Giles accepted a glass of Scotch. He sniffed at it and said something appreciative, and there followed a bit of discussion of whisky, which Buffy ignored.

The upside of Giles being the center of attention and not here was that Buffy felt free to observe as much as she could without feeling rude. Seven men in the room. She was the only woman. Conway was the oldest person there, going by the white hair. He was in a wheelchair, yes, but he still had the athleticism of everybody associated with the Order she'd seen. He looked as if he could land a punch hard enough to knock her teeth out without needing to stand up. There was something about him that said he'd done some punching in his time and was willing to do it some more. The jaw, maybe. He had one that could rival Giles's, which had always ranked as the stoniest cliff of a jaw she'd ever seen.

He and Giles were already deep into an intense conversation. Giles's glass of Scotch sat forgotten on the little table beside his chair. Time to pay attention again.

Conway was saying, "We have the difficulties with recruiting that any esoteric order has in these times. We locate people with the demon-hunter destiny upon them, only to discover that they are skeptical in the face of all evidence. Or are cowards. And so our numbers are always low. Lower than usual at the moment."

"So Gerald told me."

"Yes. And here we come to it. We need demon hunters. Whiting tells me that you are one."

"I am called as you are."

"Then we may begin."

Buffy saw Giles's knuckles whiten where he gripped the arm of his chair. He was definitely nervous.

"You are no longer with the Council of Watchers and are seeking affiliation, I am told."

"Yes."

"You did not attempt to contact us directly."

"I sent out more general feelers into the community. Your organization was mere rumor to me. I know what you were historically but nothing of what you are."

"I suspect that you can guess what we are. We train our men and women, we induct the worthy candidates into our number by granting them the dub, and then we send them out into the world to fight evil as they see fit. When they need aid, those of us who wish to aid go. We are all knights-errant."

Buffy wasn't sure what that was, other than a general adventuring sort of guy with a sword and a giant horse. She had a vague memory of The Boy's King Arthur and a painting of Lancelot with his armor chopped up pretty unrealistically. But Giles seemed to get him exactly, and to be pleased by the term.

"We have changed little in our means and even less in our motive. In this we resemble the Slayer." Finally Conway turned to her and seemed to acknowledge her presence in the room. "She fights with little more than a wooden stake, if I understand it correctly."

"Usually," Buffy said. "I've tried to go high-tech but it didn't work out." Bullets worked against demons only sometimes, and against vampires never. The simple, timeless weapons were the ones Buffy used. Stakes. Swords. Flames.

"So we have found as well. When one goes to slay a dragon, bring a sword and shield."

So they weren't like the Initiative. That was good.

Giles said, "You are dragon-slayers, then, like your namesake."

"All evil is our prey. Your Slayer's enemies are often ours, though we do not share her special affinity for the vampire."

Buffy stared at him hard, but he seemed to mean nothing special by that. He was focused on Giles, not on her. Giles's body language had changed a little. He'd forgotten to be nervous and was now leaning forward in his chair, elbows on his knees.

"You seek to recruit my Slayer?"

"We are uninterested in the Slayer."

Buffy felt the urge to protest that she was recruitable, but she sat on it. Besides, she'd just finished dealing with an organization that had been interested in her. Interested in the capture, dissect, and re-implement sort of way. Now the Council was interested in her again, and though they were more interested in keeping her alive than killing her, she wasn't counting it as am improvement. She could deal with a good dose of complete indifference.

Conway's indifference seemed to annoy Giles for some reason. He had his jaw set again. He said, "Why not? Do you not recruit women?"

"We do."

"Historically--"

"Historically we have not. However, we have revised our charter. We have been actively recruiting women for a decade now."

"Since you took command," from the huge guy with long blondish hair. Conway waved him off, however.

"Why not the Slayer, then?" Giles said.

Whiting spoke up. "The Slayer does not need the sort of assistance the saint offers. She already has her own power, if I understand the myths. She is bound to a different Power. As you know."

Like hell she knew that. How did Whiting know something about herself that she didn't? And why did he sound a little snippy? Buffy shot a glare at Giles, who glared right back. Another one of those things she was supposed to have learned from the Slayer handbook, then. She'd make him tell her later. If she cared enough. What mattered was her relationship with the Slayer spirit inside, not with any of this other crap. Besides, Giles would have told her already if it had mattered, in one of those intense Slayer training sessions they'd had recently.

Giles subsided back into his chair. He picked up his tumbler and hid his face behind it for a second. He set it back down and glanced over at Buffy. She wrinkled her nose at him, trying to make him smile. He didn't bite, however.

Conway said, "You no doubt have questions."

"I do."

"Ask."

"How many of you are there?"

"Twenty-five active knights. The number has never been more than thirty, at times as few as ten. We cannot say why."

"Support staff?"

"Twice that number again, most of them here in Wells Cross. A handful of student candidates."

Giles caught her glance briefly. He'd once told her that the Council had dozens of researchers on staff. This outfit was much smaller, which might explain why he'd only heard rumors of it.

"Would I be among your support staff?"

"You would take the dub as one of our knights or not join us at all." That was as blunt as it got.

"What obligations would you lay upon me?"

"Aid to your fellows, if they should need it and you be in a position to assist. Attendance here at certain yearly ceremonies. The saint's feast day, for instance."

"That seems very little to ask."

"And risking your neck daily in the fight against evil is not a great thing to ask?"

Buffy said, "He does that already."

"Ah." Conway did not seem entirely impressed. Buffy wanted to set him straight right then and there, maybe with a boast about Giles's vampire-staking skills, but once again she managed to shut herself up. Giles's show, not hers, she reminded herself. And a good demonstration was always better than mouthing off about what he could do. Pity there hadn't been any vampires around. Maybe in London they could find some. Big cities were usually crawling with them.

Giles picked up his tumbler of Scotch and turned it in his hands. He wasn't drinking much, Buffy thought, more toying with it to be polite. From behind the glass, he said, "I am curious what the Order might offer me. What advantages would I gain allying with you instead of returning to the Council?"

"Beyond the gifts of the power, you mean?"

Giles set his glass down. "I suppose I had better ask what those are."

"You don't know?" Giles shook his head. "They are similar to the gifts granted the Slayer in kind, though not in degree. We are stronger, faster, and better-coordinated than ordinary men."

Buffy sat forward sharply. That was good. Then she thought about Conway's wheelchair. "Healing?" she said.

Conway fluttered a hand in the air. "Perhaps some minor advantages over ordinary humans. Nothing like what you have."

Buffy wasn't so happy about that, because half the time what she worried about with Giles was that he'd get hit on the head and not wake up. Though if he were stronger and faster, he'd be able to avoid a lot of those situations. It would be stupid to complain about only getting a ten times supernatural boost instead of the full Slayer fifty. Or whatever the numbers were. It was still a boost. She met Giles's glance and shrugged a shoulder at him.

He said, to Conway, "I had no idea. I, I'd been supposing I'd find a more mundane sort of organization to support us. An archive to assist in research. Firepower in case of threats too great for the Slayer. This is entirely a surprise."

"Does our order still interest you?"

Giles looked at her, eyebrows raised. She pointed at him to say, up to you. He turned to Conway and said, firmly, "Yes."

"And now I shall determine if we are interested in you. What would you bring us?"

"I am fluent in five ancient languages. I can read a further--"

Mr Braveheart was out of his chair again. "We don't give a ruddy damn about books."

"Such a pity." Giles had been stammery to start with, but his retort was all sharp around the edges.

"Eric? Perhaps you'd care to explain. Politely, if you are able."

Dust-dry sarcasm in turn, and was that the ghost of a smile Buffy could see on Conway's face? The Braveheart-hair guy didn't seem fazed by it. He stepped into the middle of the circle. Buffy looked him over from shoes to the top of that shaggy head and just barely refrained from licking her lips. He said, "We need warriors, not librarians. You don't look like much. Can you fight?"

Giles pushed his glasses further up on his nose. "I like to know what I'm fighting before I leap in. But I can fight, yes."

"You'll need to prove it. We don't hide behind little girls."

"Neither do I," Giles said, and his voice had gone quiet in the scary way.

"He'll be tested with weapons, Eric. We shan't skimp on it." Conway turned to Giles and said, "You will forgive the nuisance, but we had trouble with the last adult candidate we dealt with."

Conway didn't say any more, though Buffy was dying of curiosity. More than one Council refugee? Wesley had been fired too, but he'd ended up on Angel's team. Somebody else, then. Mr Hair nodded as if satisfied, then turned to look at Whiting. Everybody was looking at Whiting, in fact, waiting for something they knew to expect.

Whiting cleared his throat. "Yes. Well. I played rugby with Rupert, so I have no doubts on the courage score. It's his later career I'm concerned with. His dealings with the Council appear to have left him with certain, ah, encumbrances."

"Hey, wait a minute!"

Whiting cut her off. "I refer to oaths he has undoubtedly sworn to the Council, oaths that are in force on his soul no matter what his worldly employment status is."

Buffy subsided.

Conway said, "Are you encumbered, Mr Giles?"

"The answer is yes, of course I am encumbered, as you put it. I have sworn two oaths on my immortal soul in my life."

"The Watcher's oath," Conway said.

"Yes. Sworn when I became Watcher to the active Slayer. That oath binds me to her service so long as she shall live." Giles glanced in her direction and away again, to Conway. "I will not break it. If this interferes with your order's requirements in any way it's best we end this cordially now."

Conway steepled his fingers together and tapped his forefingers against his lips. "You were fired from your post."

Buffy shifted in her chair, but Giles didn't budge. "Yes."

"And you feel you have not broken your oaths."

"Quite the reverse."

"Ah." Conway turned his gaze to her instead of Giles. Buffy glared right back at him. She was starting not to like him much. "And the other oath?"

"Oh! That. I swore to defend this world against evil with my life. I suspect you would ask me to swear the same, if not with those exact words. The Council was not named. Just the defense of humanity."

"Gerald?"

Whiting shrugged. "If that satisfies you." He relaxed back into the depths of his armchair and crossed his knees.

"If I may ask." Giles paused, but no one spoke to stop him. "The Slayer's goals are compatible with yours. My oath should not stand in the way. I am sworn to the same fight you are, unless I have misunderstood you."

"You have understood us," Conway said, slowly. "Well. Neither of us will make any final decisions tonight. My proposal is this: that you both spend the next few days with us. We will each investigate the other."

Giles said, "This is acceptable."

"We will fit you into the framework of our order as best we can, to give you the flavor of it. Many of our knights begin their careers here in their teens, as pages. All of us served as squire to one of our knights for a period of at least two years. We will begin there, I think." Conway smiled at Buffy in a way she didn't completely like. "Yes. I have it. You will serve as your Slayer's squire for the next few days. This will suit you both."

"Oh?"

"Your Slayer's page will explain the requirements to you. Good? Yes. I believe we are done here. Good night, Miss Summers."

Her page? What page? Buffy grimaced at him, because she couldn't manage to think of anything polite to say that wasn't also sarcastic. They all stood, except Conway who could not. Giles gave him an odd little half-bow. Whiting headed to the door, and they followed him out into the hallway. The door clicked shut behind them. Buffy let out a long breath. It had been oddly stuffy in there despite the open window.

Continued in part 3.

FIC: Arms and the Man 2/6 (Giles/Buffy) R

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