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summer_of_giles2007-06-08 05:40 pm
glimmergirl.livejournal.com) wrote in summer_of_giles2007-06-08 05:40 pm
Entry tags:
[fic] Psychopompos [G/Wesley, FRT]
Title: Psychopompos
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
glimmergirl
Beta:antennapedia
Pairing: Giles/Wesley
Rating: FRT
Summary: Set in the Wishverse. Giles drives from the Hellmouth in California to the one in Ohio to find Buffy's Watcher.
Disclaimer: Joss, ME, et.al.
California
Morning in Sunnydale comes quietly, with a feeling of relief and postponed hope suspended in the damp air, though the sunlight is barely powerful enough to penetrate the cloud cover and burn off the haze that lingers on the horizon. Even the weak sunlight is welcome after the tense vigil of the previous night. He'd stayed up, waiting, forcing himself to stay awake when his courage and determination felt as if they trembled on the edge of uncertainty. Now that it's light outside, he prepares himself one last cup of tea and drinks it down before he has a chance to grieve for the home he's leaving behind.
Giles departs as soon as it's dawn and realizes it's not so difficult to leave his flat and the few memories he's built there. Half his things are still in England, and half the boxes in his Sunnydale apartment have never been unpacked. There are books in the school library, where Giles has spent more nights than in his bedroom, but it's too risky to try and fetch them. He has a car full of books, a trunk full of weapons, and a suitcase full of clothes. The sky meets the horizon in a wash of grey against grey, and he wonders if the sky in England still looks like this, or if there's some way of knowing if he'll every find out again.
He could have stayed. Maybe he should have. He's already stayed in Sunnydale for two years doing a different job than the one he was sent to do. Maybe he ought to have stayed longer and tried to save the few remaining people, so they could have lived a few days more, and, after his death, said a few dismal words over his corpse before cutting off the head. Their own deaths wouldn't be far behind, unless they, got the chance to leave. To flee, drive a million miles, and maybe return to close the wound in the earth that let hell bleed into this world. He can't do it alone, and he can't do it with the few stragglers left in Sunnydale. The choice was between dying or leaving, and he left, not without remorse or without guilt, and the grey doesn't lift from the sky or from his heart as he leaves the Hellmouth behind.
He knows what it is. The grey feeling that clouds his mind, makes his heart catch once or twice each hour, reminds him of the Buffy Summers he never knew, never watched, never loved. It's guilt, but it feels like the Hellmouth has bled into his very soul, an anesthetized, impenetrable greyness that dulls the blood that fills his veins and keeps him driving at ten miles above the speed limit. What had Rupert Giles ever done to deserve so many chances at living? Can he bleed the greyness from his blood, like he bled out the poison of Eyghon, wondering then if he deserved that chance of renewal?
Whether he deserves it or not, he lives. The strange, spinning giddiness of simply living hits Giles and in that dizzy moment he can hardly believe the feeling. He's alive, and so he must act, and force change upon himself and work towards the hope that he can bring himself back here someday, to force change there, too. Close the wound, stop the bleeding, allow there to be other colors than bloodstained grey.
As soon as he's out of Sunnydale, he ships some of the boxes back to England. They'll arrive before he does. If he does. He buys a bottle of water, a road atlas, and gets change to use the pay phone. Cleveland has a Hellmouth, too, and it also has a Watcher who's lost the same Slayer Giles has. It's as good a destination as any and, more than anything else, Giles desires a destination.
Nevada
The first motel Giles stops at advertises air conditioning and color television as if they were rare luxuries, while the half-burned out, buzzing vacancy sign reveals that most visitors have gone on to discover rarer and more expensive comforts. The clean sheets and hot water are enough luxury for Giles, as is the opportunity to be in bed hours before midnight. He's even paid for two nights at the motel, in case he's able to sleep past the check-out time and to convince himself he doesn't need to be on the road as soon as the sun is up.
It's been nearly two years since he's had an evening like this. Two years of sleeping for a few hours after working in the library, going out again once the sun set to patrol the streets and graveyards of Sunnydale, coming home to shower off dust, dirt, and the sour smell of desperation from his body. Two years of waiting for his Slayer and hoping she'd finally lead him to the destiny for which he'd been preparing himself.
Giles stands under the spray of the shower for as long as he can stand it, until the bathroom's full of steam and he's ready to sleep for a few hours. The light and noise from the television keep the room from feeling too empty and prevent his mind from straying out into the various directions it takes while he's driving. When he wakes up, it's almost early enough to be morning and late enough that if Wesley went out on patrol, he ought to be back by now. He sounds tired when he answers his phone, and Giles' voice is still rough with sleep, but the conversation lasts longer than their previous one. Wesley even sounds pleased to hear from Giles or maybe he's just pleased to have somebody to talk to before he goes to bed, someone who'll ask him how dangerous it was tonight or if he got back safely and unhurt. It only takes a few minutes to discuss the details of when Giles might arrive at Wesley's flat and what time would be best. The rest of the time they talk about the various things both know they have in common without asking: England in the summertime, weaponry, the prohibitive cost of shipping one's library across the ocean.
Giles doesn't learn much about Wesley during the conversation, not anything particularly intimate or interesting, but learns that he wants to discover those sort of things about the other man. Wesley asks most of the questions during this conversations, until his voice becomes deeper and slower with fatigue and he's heard all he could for one night about what happened in Sunnydale after Buffy arrived. His words lose their certainty as he asks those questions, too, and Giles thinks, after he hangs up and sleep tugs at his own eyes again, that perhaps he's learned something about Wesley after all. He'll have to remember what Wesley's voice sounds like, so they're first meeting won't be so strange and so that Wesley won't feel completely unfamiliar to him.
Utah
All the radio stations sound the same, but it's better than listening to his own breathing or the suspicious noises his car makes every so often. If he'd be coming from anywhere other than Sunnydale, he would've had it serviced before driving more than half-way across the country. Maybe he could sell the car in Ohio, or leave it with Wesley before he leaves for England. Just what Wesley needs. A half-useless car from a man he's never even met.
Everything Giles knows about Wesley Wyndam-Pryce he extrapolates from two phone calls and a distant memory of having seen Wesley, as a young boy, getting dragged through one of the Council buildings by his father. He can remember the elder Mr. Wyndam-Pryce, stern, well-respected, well-dressed, and not especially well-pleased to see Rupert Giles back in the Council fold. However, Giles suspects, he conflates this memory with subsequent ones and that while Wesley's father may never have approved of Giles' returning to the Council, it's more likely he never actually paid Giles much attention until they became colleagues. Of Wesley he only has that one memory, and in Giles' mind he's still small and scared, probably no more than ten years old, and trying very hard not to appear as if the tradition he's heir to doesn't frighten him.
Giles opens the window to let in the cold, evening air and scans the radio stations again. He doesn't recognize any of the music he finds and the talk radio is all so monotone. There's a lot of static, too, and he spends more time cursing at the radio than listening to it for a few miles. It's better than talking to himself, however, and trying to figure out if he's really spent two decades of his life preparing to drive to Cleveland.
Twenty years have probably erased all traces of that fear from Wesley's eyes, just like the passage of time has faded the numbing resignation Giles felt as he walked through the dusty, quiet corridors of the Council building that day. Giles could still hear muted trepidation in Wesley's voice, just barely, in the roughness at the edge of his words and in the pauses he took between sentences. Breathing and thinking spaces, and Giles could almost hear him take in a cautious breath before his questions during the last phone conversation, as if Wesley both feared and longed for their answers.
The drive is long and tedious, and in between stops, Giles thinks about this man he's made the end point of his journey. He wants to ask Wesley about Buffy, what it was like to be her Watcher, what it was like to feel the weight of that charge instead of its lack, the missing piece, the extended pause between his own calling that only ended with the arrival and death of the Slayer in Sunnydale. What was it like to be born into the knowledge of his destiny? Do his fingers still tremble in the moments after the adrenaline rush recedes and he finds his hands covered in ash? Does he ever sleep through the night? Alone? Or was he able to find someone who understood the trembling of his fingers and the roughness in his voice? Is he still frightened, or does he only remember being scared?
The questions multiply as the miles pass and although his body becomes stiff and numb, Giles' mind finds itself in a strange labyrinth, made up of those questions of fear, desire, and anticipation. Driving faster only leads him deeper into the endless maze of his thoughts and after a while Giles finds himself focusing on the search for music that'll keep him awake through the rest of the drive that night.
Colorado
He refills the fuel tank, buys cigarettes, and smokes for ten minutes before getting back in the car. He doesn't smoke in the car - there are books in there, after all, and cigarette smoke would never do - but after a half hour passes, Giles thinks it might be all right to eat while he drives. Lunch, dinner, whatever meal he ought to be having right now. He should have gotten something to eat and to fill up the empty ache inside him. Giles hasn't felt hungry since his last stop, where he forced himself to swallow down a sandwich and lukewarm cup of coffee, but the blurred feeling behind his thoughts tells him his mind, if not his stomach, could use some sort of sustenance. The next stop, then. Perhaps. Maybe when he stops to sleep someplace. Another motel room with sheets that fray at the edge and a television he leaves on while he sleeps to avoid the stillness of night.
The road stretches on and on, as if it could reach into another dimension or another world. The faint glimmer of another automobile shimmers, then disappears, on the horizon, swallowed into one of those other-worldly places. Giles had followed that car for a good number of miles until he had to stop to pull on a jumper and the car ahead of him sped up until it vanished or arrived at its destination.
Was that his role, to lead Buffy to the shores of death, and wait, watch, while she stepped over that fine, precarious line? To play the psychopomp, to guide her soul into the world of the dead, and exit himself, untouched by death.
Her soul must be strong, resilient, shining in the underworld as it could have in a different place, a brighter, bolder version of Sunnydale, a world with colors other than the splash of blood on the pavement. A world where Giles didn't live on the edge of life and death, in the dull, liminal zone that prevented him from experiencing either death or life fully himself, and ensured that he saw those around him die a twofold-death, in the humans who perished and in the vampires he dusted.
Dust is the color of death, the color of nearly all the clothes he wore in Sunnydale, the color of the life he lead there. When the sky and the road start to take on the same lifeless hue, Giles realizes he needs to stop again sometime soon. He needs sleep. He needs to wake up someplace where there's sun and the promise of a string of uninterrupted tomorrow mornings. The farther away he gets from Sunnydale, the better he feels, but his foot is jammed up from driving too many hours straight and his mind can't navigate the road as well as it should, never mind trying to get through the maze of thoughts in his head. Food, sleep, and a new day - he looks forward to all three.
Nebraska
He was supposed to be her Watcher.
Well. He had been, though, hadn't he? For a few hours, anyway.
Giles laughs, the sound dry and hoarse, and turns through the pages of a dusty book that he reads in the harsh light of a roadside diner. The waitress glares at him as she passes his table and he hides the frown that comes to his face in his coffee cup.
So that had been his sacred calling. To send his Slayer into the mouth of hell then drive away with an empty heart.
He turns a few more pages and traces the edge of his fingernail down the left column of faded text. The Codex has a concordance, but he's sent that off to England, and it would take too long to read, translate, and cross-reference all the citations. It would be interesting work, to be able to spend a few quiet days in the library, surrounded by reference books and volumes of prophetic writing. Giles gives a small sigh of regret, then reminds himself that quiet days in Sunnydale often meant trouble and that a few not so quiet hours in a questionable restaurant were probably better.
Midway through his second cup of coffee, Giles finds the passage he wants. His Latin is good enough that he doesn't have to translate the words to understand them or to realize their meaning.
She was supposed to die under his watch, he already knew that. He's known that as long as he's known he was going to be a Watcher, even if he didn't know who the "she" was. But now he knows her, remembers her voice and the shape of her hands on a wooden stake, and to see her death prophesied ages before either of them lived leaves a acrid taste at the back of his throat and a chill in his blood. It's there, in the Codex, the book all the other vatic texts reference. The prophecy must be true.
Giles gulps down the rest of his coffee, fingers shaking as he leaves a ten dollar bill on the diner table. Maybe she should've died as soon as the Master rose; maybe her blood should've closed the Hellmouth; maybe she should never have come to Sunnydale at all. If he'd never made that first phone call to Wesley, could she have evaded her death for a few more months or years?
He tries to push the new found knowledge out of his mind, and when he can't do that, he shoves the book into the back seat of his car and stands outside in the sun until the strange, shivering sensation starts to fade.
There aren't any prophecies about his life or death in the Codex. The thought comes as Giles starts the car and he quickly changes his mind, gets back out, and lights a cigarette. The smoke burns his lungs, the midday sunlight is making him sweat, and he has enough time to stand there before he needs to start driving again.
Iowa
In the pale light of early morning, the sun's first rays barely penetrating the cloud cover that seems to have followed him from California and finally caught up with him on the empty road, he imagines Buffy's Watcher. Full of youth and confidence, eager, a suitcase full of handsome clothes and a library of only half the books he's actually read. The sort of Watcher that Giles would have been if --
No.
He would never have been that sort of Watcher. His youth and enthusiasm had passed, swallowed by his years of anger and the demons, drugs, and rebellion he'd pumped through his blood. His return to Oxford had been marked by an emptiness, and a yearning inside him that he slowly learned to fill with different kinds of eagerness: the acquisition of knowledge, a renewed relationship with his parents, the awareness that at some point he would have to face the destiny that he'd tried so hard to avoid. If only he could've worked that destiny out of his blood, replaced it with a different fate, one that would burn through him more quickly.
If only he could have known. If only there had been some guide, some prophecy that let him know his calling would turn out to be an empty one, that he would be stranded on the Hellmouth, surrounded by desolation and the knowledge that his destiny had abandoned him, and that his only meeting with his Slayer would lead her to death, maybe he would've chosen the shorter, faster route to death. Ripper wouldn't have waited, he would've brought the Hellmouth to him and let it swallow him whole, reveling as it burned him from the inside out with its demon poison and the twisting, exquisite ecstasy of annihilation.
A drive towards self-destruction characterized the first half of his youth; a resignation to, and a growing enthusiasm for, living, the latter half. Some of that enthusiasm had faded in Sunnydale, replaced by the need to simply survive, whether or not there was any joy in it for him.
The light that glistens on the horizon is always just a little bit too far away to drive right up to it. Giles imagines it's that same elusiveness that draws him forward and that he'll find the light in Cleveland, dispersed through the words and deeds of the life he'll discover there. Not that it should be any different there; the city has an active Hellmouth, an ex-Watcher, and probably a good amount of trouble, both human and demonic in origin. Yet, the faint light on the horizon tells him it could be different and that something new and unpredictable waits for him.
Illinois
In his role as he who leads the spirits to the underworld, Hermes gains the epithet "Psychopompos." The spirit guide brings the souls to the edge of the river and from there they await the boat, the ferryman, the journey to their last destination. Each soul must pay one obolus to be able to climb into Charon's boat and cross the river; those who cannot render payment cannot cross the Acheron and instead must wander the banks of the river Styx for a hundred years. A century among the colorless shades as the last remnants of life drain away, no destiny to meet, nothing to look forward to except the end of a hundred years. There is no certain knowledge as to how time passes in the underworld. Maybe a hundred years pass quickly and the abandoned shades turn to grey, thin shadows more rapidly than the autumn leaves to dead, dry scraps. Maybe they pass slowly, so slowly that by the time the century is finished, these souls have no more desire to leave the barren shores of the Styx than they had to leave world of the living a century ago.
Who guides the hopeless back to the river of destiny? Does some phantom coin appear on their near translucent tongues to pay their final passage? Surely, after a hundred years, so much of their spirit-life has bled away and even a score of them cannot weigh the boat down any more than one of the newly dead, whose shiny coin and perfectly performed funereal rites pay their passage. Perhaps, owing to the strange distortion of time between realms, only a few hours or days have passed on earth, and somebody is finally able to sprinkle some dirt and say a few prayers over the unburied dead, a slipshod funeral that hopefully suffices during a time of desperation.
The spirit guide is gone by then, though, isn't he? And the crossing of the Acheron must feel like just another wandering.
**
Behind a motel that charges hourly rates for its rooms Giles dusts two vampires. They're stronger, but he's smarter, and therefore faster. Between the crucifix and stake, he's able to take care of them within minutes and escape with only a few bruises, a pulled muscle in his back, and no harm to the food and cigarettes he bought at the twenty-four hour convenience store. He collects the bag and on the short walk to the motel room, he wonders how many more times he'll play this role, how many more vampires he'll dust on the way home, and how many times he'll ask himself if he can ever leave this part of his life behind.
Sleep doesn't come easy that night, and when it does, Giles dreams of grey, rustling leaves and London after a week of rains, the river ineluctable and ever rushing to discover the ocean. He dreams of Cleveland, and Wesley's flat, and upon waking, wonders how one always manages to recognize the previously unseen and unknown places in the dreamscape.
Indiana
The text is in Etruscan and he remembers halfway through the first page that he can't read Etruscan. Nobody can; it hasn't been deciphered yet, but it's all right, because the words sound and feel like English when he reads them aloud. He turns on the light and glances up when he feels her touch his arm.
"Do you remember when we danced together? At the prom?" Buffy smiles at him when he looks up, her hair shimmering, her hand warm as she rests it on Giles' wrist. She's wearing a sun dress and Giles knows without touching her that he would feel that same warmth through the thin material if he placed his hand on her side.
"I... I was supposed to be your Watcher." He thinks they're in the librarian's office at Sunnydale High School, then, no, his office in the Ashmolean, with its own small window, out of which he could see a flowering tree on the brink of spring.
Buffy picks up one of the framed pictures on his desk, still smiling. She looks so young and Giles aches for her to touch him again.
"Yeah. I think you were. Hey, it's gonna be okay, you know. I put the pieces together and the puzzle still fits."
"How did you know? You can't read Etruscan."
"They stopped being un-worky." Buffy shrugs. She doesn't have the scar, so her smile is perfect, unmarred. "Ask Wesley. I think he has a book about it that he wants you to read. You'll like him, he's all British and brainy. Like you." There's a different picture in the frame when she places it down on his desk, brighter colors and Giles thinks he can recognize himself or someone like him in the photograph. Younger, smiling, eager, the sort of Watcher or lover Buffy ought to have had.
"I don't understand. The puzzle, the book..." He's not confused; he just doesn't want her to leave yet. She feels so present and solid, yet when her eyes flicker away, it's as if he can almost see through her, like sunlight through leaves or lace curtains.
"I told you, it's gonna be okay, Giles." Her lips feels warm, too, warmer than her fingers, as she leans down to brush a kiss over his forehead. She smells like springtime flowers dusted in sweet powder, and Giles wants her to stay close to him forever, lips whispering against his forehead so he can close his eyes and rest. "You already understand."
"Are you certain?"
"Completely."
Sunlight streams through the inch of space between the cheap drapes in the hotel room, splashing over Giles' face as he wakes up. He fell asleep with his clothes on, glasses on the other pillow, the taste of stale cigarettes in his mouth. A glance at the clock tells him it's only seven in the morning, and he has three more hours until he has to check out of this hotel. It won't take Giles three hours to have a hot shower, shave, and eat breakfast before leaving. He should call Wesley again, let him know when he's coming, but he closes his eyes again, so he can feel it for a few more minutes. The warmth of sunshine and the scent of springtime, the touch of lips to his forehead and the strangely wonderful prospect of puzzle pieces that fit together flitter through his consciousness in the space between waking and dreaming.
Ohio
"Rupert Giles?"
Three phone calls, two made from pay phones at a gas station and a hotel room in states he can barely remember, and a vague memory, were the only things on which Giles had based his construction of Wesley. In thirty seconds, he has to wildly reconstruct that image, or, really, it feels like the image was being reconstructed while he made his journey and only now can he see it happening, folding, collapsing, reforming and suddenly shimmering to life before him as he walks down a short corridor into a small sitting room where Wesley pours him a drink. Wesley is young, he was right about that. Younger than Giles, at least, but he hides his youth behind a week's worth of stubble, which, in turn, hides a vicious scar that slants across his neck.
"You couldn't control her... it's not your fault." As soon as the words are out of his mouth, Giles regrets them. He doesn't know Wesley and he didn't know Buffy, not really. "I'm so sorry..."
Wesley frowns, head bowed for a few seconds, and shakes his head. "She didn't need controlling. She needed somebody to teach her different forms of combat and strategy, which I did. And she needed somebody to teach her to know her enemy as well as possible." He pauses, head still bowed. "And she needed somebody to watch and send her out to the places where the evil was the worst. Which... I did."
Ice knocks against glass as Giles puts his whiskey down on the floor by the sofa. He rests his hand on Wesley's arm, feels tension and taut muscle that he suspects have formed only since Wesley left England and developed the kind of strength living on a Hellmouth requires. "You did the right thing."
"How can I know that?"
Giles' hand tightens on Wesley's arm as he recognizes his own guilt and uncertainty in Wesley's voice. He won't tell Wesley about the dream, at least not yet; that belongs to Giles and to the Buffy he ought to have known. Maybe, someday, when it won't feel as if he's taking her away from Wesley again by sharing those strange otherworld moments. "I found... on the way here, I was reading... there was a prophecy."
Wesley looks uncertain, maybe even skeptical, but there's a flash of eagerness in his eyes as Giles reaches into his bag and fetches the book. Brainy, Giles thinks, remembering both his dream and the bookshelves that lined the narrow corridor that led from the front door into the sitting room. There are more bookcases in the living room, enough that Giles could spend hours scanning the titles and discovering which volumes both he and Wesley own. He keeps all his lexica together on one bookshelf, though half of them are on the coffee table, amidst notebooks, pencils, and scraps of paper covered in Wesley's neat, narrow penmanship.
"Here... it's not in one of the main prophetic books of the Codex, I hardly realized the signs had pointed to this passage until later." Giles opens the book, fingers shaking like they had in the diner car park, and places it on Wesley's lap. He can hear the soft intake of breath and the warmth of Wesley's leg against his as Wesley finds and reads the passage.
"It all played out like this, then. With Buffy and the Master?" Wesley's voice is too tight and quiet to betray much emotion and his face is still, but the grief that darkens his eyes is too strong to disguise. "I wish I could've been there. I should've..."
Giles nods, silent sympathy the only thing he has to offer, and lets Wesley put this new knowledge in some sort of context. After Wesley closes the book, Giles slides his hand between Wesley's shoulder blades and almost thrills at the closeness and the feel of the repressed sob that shudders through Wesley's body. Before Giles can determine what, aside from shared loss, draws them together, Wesley closes the book and stands up from sofa.
"You must be tired. You should shower and rest; we'll have dinner in a few hours, or whenever you're hungry."
"All right. But, don't go to any trouble."
"It's no trouble. Not any more than I'd go to for just myself."
Wesley shows him the bathroom, hands him a pile of clean towels, and walks away before Giles can protest about taking Wesley's bedroom from him. He's grateful for it, though, and the bed is much more comfortable than the ones in the motels he's been sleeping in for the past few days. He's still groggy from sleep when they sit down for dinner - bread, stew, and fruit for pudding - so the meals passes with few words between them. Wesley brings him an extra blanket, tea, and a book before taking his pillow to the sofa and he's gone by the time Giles realizes he's been given Wesley's Watcher's Diary to read.
Between reports of training regimes, nightly patrols, and frustrated conversations with a sixteen year old girl, Giles reads the struggle of building a relationship fraught with reluctance on Buffy's part and unsteady confidence on Wesley's. The uncertainty and reluctance diminish as the pages and months pass and Giles can see the loyalty and growing affection as Buffy grows more reconciled to her destiny and Wesley more willing to follow her instincts rather than the Council's guidebooks. There's only one gap in the text, a few blank pages dated about six months ago, no explanation before or after and the diary picks up once more as if the empty pages were a mistake. Except for the date, written in a hand less steady than usual, which tells Giles that Wesley hasn't finished his diary yet.
Another set of dates and blank pages comes at the end of the book, another sign that the narrative remains incomplete and Giles' heart races when he sees the dates are the ones during which Buffy was in Sunnydale, his own name written on the first page of the section.
The realization comes to Giles with a sensation of relief mixed with excitement. He's not just the psychopomp, not only the messenger of grief and ill fortune, but of comfort and unspoken words to finish the incomplete story, to save Wesley from seeing the drained and broken body of his Slayer. Their Slayer, and the three of them are bound together in this book of memories and in this life that had them travel the same roads at different times in opposite directions. Until now, and the convergence of destiny and the end of his life as a Watcher, when he puts down the pen and finishes the last chapter of Wesley's diary, is exhilarating.
He belongs here, now, in this small bedroom lit with the soft, gold light of one lamp and when Wesley walks by the door of the bedroom and pauses, Giles can tell he knows. He knows what Giles knows, and there's no time to ask or question before their fingers tangle together and Giles gets up from the bed to stand next to Wesley, kissing him with a fervor that comes from two years of not being kissed or touched or bound to anyone.
With the first kiss, Giles closes his eyes and sees the grey leaves of autumn, the Thames after a storm, Sunnydale in the quiet hours just after dawn and the shimmering highway that lead him to Cleveland. Wesley's pulse is warm and fast beneath the hand Giles rests on his chest. He imagines Wesley unscarred, blue eyes bright and clear of grief and anxiety, and in the same moments he sees himself unbroken, the green trees and blue sky spinning above their heads.
Wesley's the first lover Giles has had in years and he can hardly believe the desire that wells inside of him, the eagerness to be guided back down to the bed to be touched and kissed and made love to until he's too tired to feel anything but the warmth of Wesley's body surrounding his.
**
He wakes up late, the morning air still cool enough to make him shiver as he pushes the tangled sheets and blankets off to sit up on the bed. Wesley's gone, but Giles can hear him moving about the flat's kitchen, along with the muted clatter of dishes and the running of water. It's strange to wake up to sunlight and the sounds of domesticity, more like a dream of living than life itself. Wesley returns with breakfast and looks almost shy as he sits down next to Giles on the bed.
"I brought toast and cereal, in case you wanted both. I wasn't sure." He smiles as he hands Giles a dish. "You can stay as long as you like. Give me a chance to learn what you prefer for breakfast."
"I'd like that. Very much, in fact. Thank you." Giles accepts toast and jam and doesn't bother mentioning he won't be leaving any time soon. They've already decided to move Giles' books into the living room before patrol tonight.
Wesley settles next to him on the bed, kisses Giles' shoulder, then hides his face against Giles when Giles traces one finger over the jagged red line on his neck.
"How did you..." He touches the scar again, gently, and curves his hand around Wesley's neck when Wesley doesn't flinch or move away. "The missing days in your diary?"
Wesley just looks down and is silent. When he speaks his voice is low and sad, but it doesn't break. "Not all prophecies are true."
They're both silent for a few minutes longer. There's sun and birdsong outside the bedroom window and Giles knows that someday, not today, not here, and not any time soon, but he knows that one day Wesley will tell him the story. The same thrill of knowing that he felt last night goes through Giles and he brushes the back of his hand over Wesley's cheek before taking another sip of his tea.
**
The epithets of Hermes are as varied as the role of the god himself. Slayer of Argus, the god of orators, poets, travelers, and thieves, the charm-bringing, luck-bringing messenger of the deathless gods. Boundary-crosser, patron god of those who exist on the thresholds and uncertain places in time and space. He doesn't bring answers, but guides one to the paths that lead to the questions that need to be asked and perhaps answered.
Author:
glimmergirlBeta:
antennapediaPairing: Giles/Wesley
Rating: FRT
Summary: Set in the Wishverse. Giles drives from the Hellmouth in California to the one in Ohio to find Buffy's Watcher.
Disclaimer: Joss, ME, et.al.
California
Morning in Sunnydale comes quietly, with a feeling of relief and postponed hope suspended in the damp air, though the sunlight is barely powerful enough to penetrate the cloud cover and burn off the haze that lingers on the horizon. Even the weak sunlight is welcome after the tense vigil of the previous night. He'd stayed up, waiting, forcing himself to stay awake when his courage and determination felt as if they trembled on the edge of uncertainty. Now that it's light outside, he prepares himself one last cup of tea and drinks it down before he has a chance to grieve for the home he's leaving behind.
Giles departs as soon as it's dawn and realizes it's not so difficult to leave his flat and the few memories he's built there. Half his things are still in England, and half the boxes in his Sunnydale apartment have never been unpacked. There are books in the school library, where Giles has spent more nights than in his bedroom, but it's too risky to try and fetch them. He has a car full of books, a trunk full of weapons, and a suitcase full of clothes. The sky meets the horizon in a wash of grey against grey, and he wonders if the sky in England still looks like this, or if there's some way of knowing if he'll every find out again.
He could have stayed. Maybe he should have. He's already stayed in Sunnydale for two years doing a different job than the one he was sent to do. Maybe he ought to have stayed longer and tried to save the few remaining people, so they could have lived a few days more, and, after his death, said a few dismal words over his corpse before cutting off the head. Their own deaths wouldn't be far behind, unless they, got the chance to leave. To flee, drive a million miles, and maybe return to close the wound in the earth that let hell bleed into this world. He can't do it alone, and he can't do it with the few stragglers left in Sunnydale. The choice was between dying or leaving, and he left, not without remorse or without guilt, and the grey doesn't lift from the sky or from his heart as he leaves the Hellmouth behind.
He knows what it is. The grey feeling that clouds his mind, makes his heart catch once or twice each hour, reminds him of the Buffy Summers he never knew, never watched, never loved. It's guilt, but it feels like the Hellmouth has bled into his very soul, an anesthetized, impenetrable greyness that dulls the blood that fills his veins and keeps him driving at ten miles above the speed limit. What had Rupert Giles ever done to deserve so many chances at living? Can he bleed the greyness from his blood, like he bled out the poison of Eyghon, wondering then if he deserved that chance of renewal?
Whether he deserves it or not, he lives. The strange, spinning giddiness of simply living hits Giles and in that dizzy moment he can hardly believe the feeling. He's alive, and so he must act, and force change upon himself and work towards the hope that he can bring himself back here someday, to force change there, too. Close the wound, stop the bleeding, allow there to be other colors than bloodstained grey.
As soon as he's out of Sunnydale, he ships some of the boxes back to England. They'll arrive before he does. If he does. He buys a bottle of water, a road atlas, and gets change to use the pay phone. Cleveland has a Hellmouth, too, and it also has a Watcher who's lost the same Slayer Giles has. It's as good a destination as any and, more than anything else, Giles desires a destination.
Nevada
The first motel Giles stops at advertises air conditioning and color television as if they were rare luxuries, while the half-burned out, buzzing vacancy sign reveals that most visitors have gone on to discover rarer and more expensive comforts. The clean sheets and hot water are enough luxury for Giles, as is the opportunity to be in bed hours before midnight. He's even paid for two nights at the motel, in case he's able to sleep past the check-out time and to convince himself he doesn't need to be on the road as soon as the sun is up.
It's been nearly two years since he's had an evening like this. Two years of sleeping for a few hours after working in the library, going out again once the sun set to patrol the streets and graveyards of Sunnydale, coming home to shower off dust, dirt, and the sour smell of desperation from his body. Two years of waiting for his Slayer and hoping she'd finally lead him to the destiny for which he'd been preparing himself.
Giles stands under the spray of the shower for as long as he can stand it, until the bathroom's full of steam and he's ready to sleep for a few hours. The light and noise from the television keep the room from feeling too empty and prevent his mind from straying out into the various directions it takes while he's driving. When he wakes up, it's almost early enough to be morning and late enough that if Wesley went out on patrol, he ought to be back by now. He sounds tired when he answers his phone, and Giles' voice is still rough with sleep, but the conversation lasts longer than their previous one. Wesley even sounds pleased to hear from Giles or maybe he's just pleased to have somebody to talk to before he goes to bed, someone who'll ask him how dangerous it was tonight or if he got back safely and unhurt. It only takes a few minutes to discuss the details of when Giles might arrive at Wesley's flat and what time would be best. The rest of the time they talk about the various things both know they have in common without asking: England in the summertime, weaponry, the prohibitive cost of shipping one's library across the ocean.
Giles doesn't learn much about Wesley during the conversation, not anything particularly intimate or interesting, but learns that he wants to discover those sort of things about the other man. Wesley asks most of the questions during this conversations, until his voice becomes deeper and slower with fatigue and he's heard all he could for one night about what happened in Sunnydale after Buffy arrived. His words lose their certainty as he asks those questions, too, and Giles thinks, after he hangs up and sleep tugs at his own eyes again, that perhaps he's learned something about Wesley after all. He'll have to remember what Wesley's voice sounds like, so they're first meeting won't be so strange and so that Wesley won't feel completely unfamiliar to him.
Utah
All the radio stations sound the same, but it's better than listening to his own breathing or the suspicious noises his car makes every so often. If he'd be coming from anywhere other than Sunnydale, he would've had it serviced before driving more than half-way across the country. Maybe he could sell the car in Ohio, or leave it with Wesley before he leaves for England. Just what Wesley needs. A half-useless car from a man he's never even met.
Everything Giles knows about Wesley Wyndam-Pryce he extrapolates from two phone calls and a distant memory of having seen Wesley, as a young boy, getting dragged through one of the Council buildings by his father. He can remember the elder Mr. Wyndam-Pryce, stern, well-respected, well-dressed, and not especially well-pleased to see Rupert Giles back in the Council fold. However, Giles suspects, he conflates this memory with subsequent ones and that while Wesley's father may never have approved of Giles' returning to the Council, it's more likely he never actually paid Giles much attention until they became colleagues. Of Wesley he only has that one memory, and in Giles' mind he's still small and scared, probably no more than ten years old, and trying very hard not to appear as if the tradition he's heir to doesn't frighten him.
Giles opens the window to let in the cold, evening air and scans the radio stations again. He doesn't recognize any of the music he finds and the talk radio is all so monotone. There's a lot of static, too, and he spends more time cursing at the radio than listening to it for a few miles. It's better than talking to himself, however, and trying to figure out if he's really spent two decades of his life preparing to drive to Cleveland.
Twenty years have probably erased all traces of that fear from Wesley's eyes, just like the passage of time has faded the numbing resignation Giles felt as he walked through the dusty, quiet corridors of the Council building that day. Giles could still hear muted trepidation in Wesley's voice, just barely, in the roughness at the edge of his words and in the pauses he took between sentences. Breathing and thinking spaces, and Giles could almost hear him take in a cautious breath before his questions during the last phone conversation, as if Wesley both feared and longed for their answers.
The drive is long and tedious, and in between stops, Giles thinks about this man he's made the end point of his journey. He wants to ask Wesley about Buffy, what it was like to be her Watcher, what it was like to feel the weight of that charge instead of its lack, the missing piece, the extended pause between his own calling that only ended with the arrival and death of the Slayer in Sunnydale. What was it like to be born into the knowledge of his destiny? Do his fingers still tremble in the moments after the adrenaline rush recedes and he finds his hands covered in ash? Does he ever sleep through the night? Alone? Or was he able to find someone who understood the trembling of his fingers and the roughness in his voice? Is he still frightened, or does he only remember being scared?
The questions multiply as the miles pass and although his body becomes stiff and numb, Giles' mind finds itself in a strange labyrinth, made up of those questions of fear, desire, and anticipation. Driving faster only leads him deeper into the endless maze of his thoughts and after a while Giles finds himself focusing on the search for music that'll keep him awake through the rest of the drive that night.
Colorado
He refills the fuel tank, buys cigarettes, and smokes for ten minutes before getting back in the car. He doesn't smoke in the car - there are books in there, after all, and cigarette smoke would never do - but after a half hour passes, Giles thinks it might be all right to eat while he drives. Lunch, dinner, whatever meal he ought to be having right now. He should have gotten something to eat and to fill up the empty ache inside him. Giles hasn't felt hungry since his last stop, where he forced himself to swallow down a sandwich and lukewarm cup of coffee, but the blurred feeling behind his thoughts tells him his mind, if not his stomach, could use some sort of sustenance. The next stop, then. Perhaps. Maybe when he stops to sleep someplace. Another motel room with sheets that fray at the edge and a television he leaves on while he sleeps to avoid the stillness of night.
The road stretches on and on, as if it could reach into another dimension or another world. The faint glimmer of another automobile shimmers, then disappears, on the horizon, swallowed into one of those other-worldly places. Giles had followed that car for a good number of miles until he had to stop to pull on a jumper and the car ahead of him sped up until it vanished or arrived at its destination.
Was that his role, to lead Buffy to the shores of death, and wait, watch, while she stepped over that fine, precarious line? To play the psychopomp, to guide her soul into the world of the dead, and exit himself, untouched by death.
Her soul must be strong, resilient, shining in the underworld as it could have in a different place, a brighter, bolder version of Sunnydale, a world with colors other than the splash of blood on the pavement. A world where Giles didn't live on the edge of life and death, in the dull, liminal zone that prevented him from experiencing either death or life fully himself, and ensured that he saw those around him die a twofold-death, in the humans who perished and in the vampires he dusted.
Dust is the color of death, the color of nearly all the clothes he wore in Sunnydale, the color of the life he lead there. When the sky and the road start to take on the same lifeless hue, Giles realizes he needs to stop again sometime soon. He needs sleep. He needs to wake up someplace where there's sun and the promise of a string of uninterrupted tomorrow mornings. The farther away he gets from Sunnydale, the better he feels, but his foot is jammed up from driving too many hours straight and his mind can't navigate the road as well as it should, never mind trying to get through the maze of thoughts in his head. Food, sleep, and a new day - he looks forward to all three.
Nebraska
He was supposed to be her Watcher.
Well. He had been, though, hadn't he? For a few hours, anyway.
Giles laughs, the sound dry and hoarse, and turns through the pages of a dusty book that he reads in the harsh light of a roadside diner. The waitress glares at him as she passes his table and he hides the frown that comes to his face in his coffee cup.
So that had been his sacred calling. To send his Slayer into the mouth of hell then drive away with an empty heart.
He turns a few more pages and traces the edge of his fingernail down the left column of faded text. The Codex has a concordance, but he's sent that off to England, and it would take too long to read, translate, and cross-reference all the citations. It would be interesting work, to be able to spend a few quiet days in the library, surrounded by reference books and volumes of prophetic writing. Giles gives a small sigh of regret, then reminds himself that quiet days in Sunnydale often meant trouble and that a few not so quiet hours in a questionable restaurant were probably better.
Midway through his second cup of coffee, Giles finds the passage he wants. His Latin is good enough that he doesn't have to translate the words to understand them or to realize their meaning.
She was supposed to die under his watch, he already knew that. He's known that as long as he's known he was going to be a Watcher, even if he didn't know who the "she" was. But now he knows her, remembers her voice and the shape of her hands on a wooden stake, and to see her death prophesied ages before either of them lived leaves a acrid taste at the back of his throat and a chill in his blood. It's there, in the Codex, the book all the other vatic texts reference. The prophecy must be true.
Giles gulps down the rest of his coffee, fingers shaking as he leaves a ten dollar bill on the diner table. Maybe she should've died as soon as the Master rose; maybe her blood should've closed the Hellmouth; maybe she should never have come to Sunnydale at all. If he'd never made that first phone call to Wesley, could she have evaded her death for a few more months or years?
He tries to push the new found knowledge out of his mind, and when he can't do that, he shoves the book into the back seat of his car and stands outside in the sun until the strange, shivering sensation starts to fade.
There aren't any prophecies about his life or death in the Codex. The thought comes as Giles starts the car and he quickly changes his mind, gets back out, and lights a cigarette. The smoke burns his lungs, the midday sunlight is making him sweat, and he has enough time to stand there before he needs to start driving again.
Iowa
In the pale light of early morning, the sun's first rays barely penetrating the cloud cover that seems to have followed him from California and finally caught up with him on the empty road, he imagines Buffy's Watcher. Full of youth and confidence, eager, a suitcase full of handsome clothes and a library of only half the books he's actually read. The sort of Watcher that Giles would have been if --
No.
He would never have been that sort of Watcher. His youth and enthusiasm had passed, swallowed by his years of anger and the demons, drugs, and rebellion he'd pumped through his blood. His return to Oxford had been marked by an emptiness, and a yearning inside him that he slowly learned to fill with different kinds of eagerness: the acquisition of knowledge, a renewed relationship with his parents, the awareness that at some point he would have to face the destiny that he'd tried so hard to avoid. If only he could've worked that destiny out of his blood, replaced it with a different fate, one that would burn through him more quickly.
If only he could have known. If only there had been some guide, some prophecy that let him know his calling would turn out to be an empty one, that he would be stranded on the Hellmouth, surrounded by desolation and the knowledge that his destiny had abandoned him, and that his only meeting with his Slayer would lead her to death, maybe he would've chosen the shorter, faster route to death. Ripper wouldn't have waited, he would've brought the Hellmouth to him and let it swallow him whole, reveling as it burned him from the inside out with its demon poison and the twisting, exquisite ecstasy of annihilation.
A drive towards self-destruction characterized the first half of his youth; a resignation to, and a growing enthusiasm for, living, the latter half. Some of that enthusiasm had faded in Sunnydale, replaced by the need to simply survive, whether or not there was any joy in it for him.
The light that glistens on the horizon is always just a little bit too far away to drive right up to it. Giles imagines it's that same elusiveness that draws him forward and that he'll find the light in Cleveland, dispersed through the words and deeds of the life he'll discover there. Not that it should be any different there; the city has an active Hellmouth, an ex-Watcher, and probably a good amount of trouble, both human and demonic in origin. Yet, the faint light on the horizon tells him it could be different and that something new and unpredictable waits for him.
Illinois
In his role as he who leads the spirits to the underworld, Hermes gains the epithet "Psychopompos." The spirit guide brings the souls to the edge of the river and from there they await the boat, the ferryman, the journey to their last destination. Each soul must pay one obolus to be able to climb into Charon's boat and cross the river; those who cannot render payment cannot cross the Acheron and instead must wander the banks of the river Styx for a hundred years. A century among the colorless shades as the last remnants of life drain away, no destiny to meet, nothing to look forward to except the end of a hundred years. There is no certain knowledge as to how time passes in the underworld. Maybe a hundred years pass quickly and the abandoned shades turn to grey, thin shadows more rapidly than the autumn leaves to dead, dry scraps. Maybe they pass slowly, so slowly that by the time the century is finished, these souls have no more desire to leave the barren shores of the Styx than they had to leave world of the living a century ago.
Who guides the hopeless back to the river of destiny? Does some phantom coin appear on their near translucent tongues to pay their final passage? Surely, after a hundred years, so much of their spirit-life has bled away and even a score of them cannot weigh the boat down any more than one of the newly dead, whose shiny coin and perfectly performed funereal rites pay their passage. Perhaps, owing to the strange distortion of time between realms, only a few hours or days have passed on earth, and somebody is finally able to sprinkle some dirt and say a few prayers over the unburied dead, a slipshod funeral that hopefully suffices during a time of desperation.
The spirit guide is gone by then, though, isn't he? And the crossing of the Acheron must feel like just another wandering.
**
Behind a motel that charges hourly rates for its rooms Giles dusts two vampires. They're stronger, but he's smarter, and therefore faster. Between the crucifix and stake, he's able to take care of them within minutes and escape with only a few bruises, a pulled muscle in his back, and no harm to the food and cigarettes he bought at the twenty-four hour convenience store. He collects the bag and on the short walk to the motel room, he wonders how many more times he'll play this role, how many more vampires he'll dust on the way home, and how many times he'll ask himself if he can ever leave this part of his life behind.
Sleep doesn't come easy that night, and when it does, Giles dreams of grey, rustling leaves and London after a week of rains, the river ineluctable and ever rushing to discover the ocean. He dreams of Cleveland, and Wesley's flat, and upon waking, wonders how one always manages to recognize the previously unseen and unknown places in the dreamscape.
Indiana
The text is in Etruscan and he remembers halfway through the first page that he can't read Etruscan. Nobody can; it hasn't been deciphered yet, but it's all right, because the words sound and feel like English when he reads them aloud. He turns on the light and glances up when he feels her touch his arm.
"Do you remember when we danced together? At the prom?" Buffy smiles at him when he looks up, her hair shimmering, her hand warm as she rests it on Giles' wrist. She's wearing a sun dress and Giles knows without touching her that he would feel that same warmth through the thin material if he placed his hand on her side.
"I... I was supposed to be your Watcher." He thinks they're in the librarian's office at Sunnydale High School, then, no, his office in the Ashmolean, with its own small window, out of which he could see a flowering tree on the brink of spring.
Buffy picks up one of the framed pictures on his desk, still smiling. She looks so young and Giles aches for her to touch him again.
"Yeah. I think you were. Hey, it's gonna be okay, you know. I put the pieces together and the puzzle still fits."
"How did you know? You can't read Etruscan."
"They stopped being un-worky." Buffy shrugs. She doesn't have the scar, so her smile is perfect, unmarred. "Ask Wesley. I think he has a book about it that he wants you to read. You'll like him, he's all British and brainy. Like you." There's a different picture in the frame when she places it down on his desk, brighter colors and Giles thinks he can recognize himself or someone like him in the photograph. Younger, smiling, eager, the sort of Watcher or lover Buffy ought to have had.
"I don't understand. The puzzle, the book..." He's not confused; he just doesn't want her to leave yet. She feels so present and solid, yet when her eyes flicker away, it's as if he can almost see through her, like sunlight through leaves or lace curtains.
"I told you, it's gonna be okay, Giles." Her lips feels warm, too, warmer than her fingers, as she leans down to brush a kiss over his forehead. She smells like springtime flowers dusted in sweet powder, and Giles wants her to stay close to him forever, lips whispering against his forehead so he can close his eyes and rest. "You already understand."
"Are you certain?"
"Completely."
Sunlight streams through the inch of space between the cheap drapes in the hotel room, splashing over Giles' face as he wakes up. He fell asleep with his clothes on, glasses on the other pillow, the taste of stale cigarettes in his mouth. A glance at the clock tells him it's only seven in the morning, and he has three more hours until he has to check out of this hotel. It won't take Giles three hours to have a hot shower, shave, and eat breakfast before leaving. He should call Wesley again, let him know when he's coming, but he closes his eyes again, so he can feel it for a few more minutes. The warmth of sunshine and the scent of springtime, the touch of lips to his forehead and the strangely wonderful prospect of puzzle pieces that fit together flitter through his consciousness in the space between waking and dreaming.
Ohio
"Rupert Giles?"
Three phone calls, two made from pay phones at a gas station and a hotel room in states he can barely remember, and a vague memory, were the only things on which Giles had based his construction of Wesley. In thirty seconds, he has to wildly reconstruct that image, or, really, it feels like the image was being reconstructed while he made his journey and only now can he see it happening, folding, collapsing, reforming and suddenly shimmering to life before him as he walks down a short corridor into a small sitting room where Wesley pours him a drink. Wesley is young, he was right about that. Younger than Giles, at least, but he hides his youth behind a week's worth of stubble, which, in turn, hides a vicious scar that slants across his neck.
"You couldn't control her... it's not your fault." As soon as the words are out of his mouth, Giles regrets them. He doesn't know Wesley and he didn't know Buffy, not really. "I'm so sorry..."
Wesley frowns, head bowed for a few seconds, and shakes his head. "She didn't need controlling. She needed somebody to teach her different forms of combat and strategy, which I did. And she needed somebody to teach her to know her enemy as well as possible." He pauses, head still bowed. "And she needed somebody to watch and send her out to the places where the evil was the worst. Which... I did."
Ice knocks against glass as Giles puts his whiskey down on the floor by the sofa. He rests his hand on Wesley's arm, feels tension and taut muscle that he suspects have formed only since Wesley left England and developed the kind of strength living on a Hellmouth requires. "You did the right thing."
"How can I know that?"
Giles' hand tightens on Wesley's arm as he recognizes his own guilt and uncertainty in Wesley's voice. He won't tell Wesley about the dream, at least not yet; that belongs to Giles and to the Buffy he ought to have known. Maybe, someday, when it won't feel as if he's taking her away from Wesley again by sharing those strange otherworld moments. "I found... on the way here, I was reading... there was a prophecy."
Wesley looks uncertain, maybe even skeptical, but there's a flash of eagerness in his eyes as Giles reaches into his bag and fetches the book. Brainy, Giles thinks, remembering both his dream and the bookshelves that lined the narrow corridor that led from the front door into the sitting room. There are more bookcases in the living room, enough that Giles could spend hours scanning the titles and discovering which volumes both he and Wesley own. He keeps all his lexica together on one bookshelf, though half of them are on the coffee table, amidst notebooks, pencils, and scraps of paper covered in Wesley's neat, narrow penmanship.
"Here... it's not in one of the main prophetic books of the Codex, I hardly realized the signs had pointed to this passage until later." Giles opens the book, fingers shaking like they had in the diner car park, and places it on Wesley's lap. He can hear the soft intake of breath and the warmth of Wesley's leg against his as Wesley finds and reads the passage.
"It all played out like this, then. With Buffy and the Master?" Wesley's voice is too tight and quiet to betray much emotion and his face is still, but the grief that darkens his eyes is too strong to disguise. "I wish I could've been there. I should've..."
Giles nods, silent sympathy the only thing he has to offer, and lets Wesley put this new knowledge in some sort of context. After Wesley closes the book, Giles slides his hand between Wesley's shoulder blades and almost thrills at the closeness and the feel of the repressed sob that shudders through Wesley's body. Before Giles can determine what, aside from shared loss, draws them together, Wesley closes the book and stands up from sofa.
"You must be tired. You should shower and rest; we'll have dinner in a few hours, or whenever you're hungry."
"All right. But, don't go to any trouble."
"It's no trouble. Not any more than I'd go to for just myself."
Wesley shows him the bathroom, hands him a pile of clean towels, and walks away before Giles can protest about taking Wesley's bedroom from him. He's grateful for it, though, and the bed is much more comfortable than the ones in the motels he's been sleeping in for the past few days. He's still groggy from sleep when they sit down for dinner - bread, stew, and fruit for pudding - so the meals passes with few words between them. Wesley brings him an extra blanket, tea, and a book before taking his pillow to the sofa and he's gone by the time Giles realizes he's been given Wesley's Watcher's Diary to read.
Between reports of training regimes, nightly patrols, and frustrated conversations with a sixteen year old girl, Giles reads the struggle of building a relationship fraught with reluctance on Buffy's part and unsteady confidence on Wesley's. The uncertainty and reluctance diminish as the pages and months pass and Giles can see the loyalty and growing affection as Buffy grows more reconciled to her destiny and Wesley more willing to follow her instincts rather than the Council's guidebooks. There's only one gap in the text, a few blank pages dated about six months ago, no explanation before or after and the diary picks up once more as if the empty pages were a mistake. Except for the date, written in a hand less steady than usual, which tells Giles that Wesley hasn't finished his diary yet.
Another set of dates and blank pages comes at the end of the book, another sign that the narrative remains incomplete and Giles' heart races when he sees the dates are the ones during which Buffy was in Sunnydale, his own name written on the first page of the section.
The realization comes to Giles with a sensation of relief mixed with excitement. He's not just the psychopomp, not only the messenger of grief and ill fortune, but of comfort and unspoken words to finish the incomplete story, to save Wesley from seeing the drained and broken body of his Slayer. Their Slayer, and the three of them are bound together in this book of memories and in this life that had them travel the same roads at different times in opposite directions. Until now, and the convergence of destiny and the end of his life as a Watcher, when he puts down the pen and finishes the last chapter of Wesley's diary, is exhilarating.
He belongs here, now, in this small bedroom lit with the soft, gold light of one lamp and when Wesley walks by the door of the bedroom and pauses, Giles can tell he knows. He knows what Giles knows, and there's no time to ask or question before their fingers tangle together and Giles gets up from the bed to stand next to Wesley, kissing him with a fervor that comes from two years of not being kissed or touched or bound to anyone.
With the first kiss, Giles closes his eyes and sees the grey leaves of autumn, the Thames after a storm, Sunnydale in the quiet hours just after dawn and the shimmering highway that lead him to Cleveland. Wesley's pulse is warm and fast beneath the hand Giles rests on his chest. He imagines Wesley unscarred, blue eyes bright and clear of grief and anxiety, and in the same moments he sees himself unbroken, the green trees and blue sky spinning above their heads.
Wesley's the first lover Giles has had in years and he can hardly believe the desire that wells inside of him, the eagerness to be guided back down to the bed to be touched and kissed and made love to until he's too tired to feel anything but the warmth of Wesley's body surrounding his.
**
He wakes up late, the morning air still cool enough to make him shiver as he pushes the tangled sheets and blankets off to sit up on the bed. Wesley's gone, but Giles can hear him moving about the flat's kitchen, along with the muted clatter of dishes and the running of water. It's strange to wake up to sunlight and the sounds of domesticity, more like a dream of living than life itself. Wesley returns with breakfast and looks almost shy as he sits down next to Giles on the bed.
"I brought toast and cereal, in case you wanted both. I wasn't sure." He smiles as he hands Giles a dish. "You can stay as long as you like. Give me a chance to learn what you prefer for breakfast."
"I'd like that. Very much, in fact. Thank you." Giles accepts toast and jam and doesn't bother mentioning he won't be leaving any time soon. They've already decided to move Giles' books into the living room before patrol tonight.
Wesley settles next to him on the bed, kisses Giles' shoulder, then hides his face against Giles when Giles traces one finger over the jagged red line on his neck.
"How did you..." He touches the scar again, gently, and curves his hand around Wesley's neck when Wesley doesn't flinch or move away. "The missing days in your diary?"
Wesley just looks down and is silent. When he speaks his voice is low and sad, but it doesn't break. "Not all prophecies are true."
They're both silent for a few minutes longer. There's sun and birdsong outside the bedroom window and Giles knows that someday, not today, not here, and not any time soon, but he knows that one day Wesley will tell him the story. The same thrill of knowing that he felt last night goes through Giles and he brushes the back of his hand over Wesley's cheek before taking another sip of his tea.
**
The epithets of Hermes are as varied as the role of the god himself. Slayer of Argus, the god of orators, poets, travelers, and thieves, the charm-bringing, luck-bringing messenger of the deathless gods. Boundary-crosser, patron god of those who exist on the thresholds and uncertain places in time and space. He doesn't bring answers, but guides one to the paths that lead to the questions that need to be asked and perhaps answered.