Epilogues (Giles/Buffy) FRAO

[dhw]

Title: Epilogues
Author: darkheartwalsh
AO3 Mirror: HERE
Rating: FRAO
Setting: Post-Chosen, Post-Comics
Pairing(s): Giles/Buffy, Giles/Faith (implied, minor)
Word Count: approx.. 10,000
Warnings: Suicidal ideation, Future AU
A/N: Thank you to the lovely dragonyphoenix for being wonderful enough to beta this fic for me, and thank you to quaggy for her suggestions regarding prophecies and pop-culture. You both rock.

Also, please take note of the warnings. This story focuses on a topic that some may find potentially triggering.


Summary:

Sometimes, there are no happily ever afters. Only endings.

Or

Giles runs; Buffy follows.







Choice, not chance, determines your destiny

– Aristotle


Α | α

For the first time in four years, Mr. Edmund Fairweather of 32 Vicarage Road, Oxfordshire, completes The Times cryptic crossword. It takes him two hours and twenty-six minutes, along with three cups of tea and four chocolate digestives, start to finish. In quiet celebration he carefully removes a single cigarette and a book of matches from a wooden box upon the mantelpiece. As he does so, his fingers brush against a small gold coin of unidentifiable denomination.

He is twenty-three years old and he is living a lie.

Elsewhere, deep in the heart of London, a woman sits at her desk and stares at the grey wall beyond. In her hand, her left, she holds a golden stater, the head of Athena on the obverse facing her palm. Her name is Buffy Summers, and she is watching something that isn’t there. Seeing not simple grey plaster and office furniture, but the interior of a house she’s never been in, and the familiar face of a man she used to know, once upon a time. A smile begins to curl at the edge of her lips.

Despite all appearances to the contrary, these two facts are not unconnected.

Today is a Monday and it is the beginning of the end. An epilogue.

Of a sort.




Β | β

At the office in which Edmund Fairweather plies his trade, the sign above the door reads, ‘Babel Translations’. It’s a small sort of outfit. Situated on the outskirts of Oxford city centre, between the Post Office and the local Off-Licence, it provides gainful employment for exactly three people: Will, Sarah, and of course, Edmund. Former students, of one era or another, they spend their nine-to-five translating the weird and the wonderful. Everything from microwave manuals to children’s books. French, German, Spanish, Mandarin, perhaps even a little Thai to pass the time; requests come in, and English comes out, give or take a day or three.

In the smallest office, up on the second floor, sits the man in question, dressed in shirtsleeves and red box cloth braces. His hair, dark, is cropped high and tight; his glasses are thick-rimmed and round; there is a ghost of a beard, shot through with scars, at his jaw. He has the air of an ever so slightly unkempt Professor, though much too young, all rumpled cotton and yesterday’s socks.

His office, too, is of a similar tone. His desk is a mountain of paper, his floor covered in piles of books, and upon the windowsill, there sits a particularly leggy spider plant shedding yellowed leaves in a halo around the pot. It’s a throwback to another life, another place, where the sun shined no matter the season. A place where the night brought fear and the whisper of death upon the breeze.

Edmund thinks of those nights more often than he’d like. Remembers the watching and the waiting. Feels the dread deep in his bones, the way it used to consume his thoughts, his actions. He remembers what came after too, once the town he’d come to call home had sunk into the desert. It makes him shiver, cold though his form is bathed in the golden shafts of sunlight that pour in from the window. He feels nauseous, suddenly at sea, his stomach rolling though the floor is still, solid, beneath his feet.

Today is a Bad Day.

Not the Worst; he hasn’t thought of her today. Nor has he thought of the pills in the top drawer of his desk, or the blades in his bathroom cabinet. It’s fine. He has no plans. Not today, because it’s merely a Bad Day.

But it is about to get worse.

The clock strikes ten and there is a knock upon the door. Three sharp raps upon stained oak, followed by the twist of the gilt knob and the squeak of ancient hinges. It swings open to reveal a woman, mid-thirties, dressed in a tan trench coat and suede boots. Blonde. Petite.

He blinks; there is a ghost standing in the doorway, leaning against the old oak frame. The ghost of a girl he used to know, once upon a time, back when he’d been someone else entirely. Back when he thought about saving the lives of others rather than ways of ending his own.

“Can I come in?” The accent is American, the edges softened through years of London living, and all too familiar.

The ghost, the woman, doesn’t wait for a reply. She simply waltzes in, paper rustling as she walks by, the door closing behind her with a loud creak.

“C-can I help you?” he stammers.

It can’t be her. He’s sure of it. It’s just a passing resemblance, just his mind playing tricks on him. It is a Bad Day, after all. And his mind? Well, he isn’t in the right of it. Hasn’t been for a long time.

He watches, green eyes wide behind his spectacles, as she draws out the chair in front of his desk and sits primly upon the edge of the seat. Her legs are crossed daintily at the ankles and the neckline of her coat bows out to reveal the honeyed skin of her chest. She’s thin, perhaps too much so. He can see the suggestion of ribs and the shadow of her slight cleavage where it disappears into her shirt.

“Mr. E. Fairweather,” she says, reading the gilt plate that graces his desk with a lopsided smile. “What does the E stand for?”

“E-Edmund.” The words are thick in his mouth, his tongue uncooperative. “I-it stands for Edmund.”

She quirks a sandy eyebrow and replies, “Interesting choice.”

It can’t be her. She doesn’t know where he is; he’d made very sure of that. Wouldn’t care to know, either, he thinks. Not after the trouble with Faith: the betrayal had cut too deep, and there were things that simply couldn’t be unsaid. Acts that couldn’t be undone. Yet…

“Can I help you?” he repeats, shuffling the papers on his desk. “Do you perhaps have something you wish me to translate?”

“You know, I think I do.” She grins a wide, toothy smile. “Strange, that.”

In her hands there is a large object, flat and rectangular. It is wrapped in brown paper held together with sellotape. Funny, he thinks, that he hadn’t noticed it before. Slowly, she runs a fingernail, perfectly manicured, beneath the lip of the paper, pulling it back and away to reveal a book. An old one, bound in tatty black leather, the pages vellum and yellowing at the edges. Grin dampening, she slides the dusty tome across the desk, the golden embellishments glinting in the morning sun.

“Page eight-hundred and ninety-six.”

He reaches out a tentative hand, his damaged fingers ghosting over the gilded letters embossed upon the spine.

Πέργαμον.[1]

A feeling of deep dread begins to settle low in his stomach at the sight. He’s seen this book before, a long time ago, a lifetime even, and it told him of the end of the world. The end of his world.

“This?” he breathes, almost to himself.

“Yup. Concerns you, too,” she replies, looking around the office. “Gotta say, never thought you’d return to stuffy central.” She peers over his shoulder at the jacket that hangs from the back of his chair. “Is that tweed?”

He blinks. It is her. The book, the accent, the warmth in her hazel eyes. There can be no denying it. Buffy has come for him, the translation as false a pretence as his own name; come to drag him back to his former life, his former self. The thought makes him sick to his stomach. He will not go without a fight.

“No.”

“Looks pretty tweed-tastic to me.”

Edmund shakes his head.

“No, you misunderstand me. French, German, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Mandarin.” He pushes the book back towards her. “I cannot translate this for you. It does not fall within my area of expertise.”

It’s a lie, and one she sees through immediately.

“Don’t be difficult. I know you read Greek. And Latin.”

“I-I think you’re confusing me with someone else,” he states, removing his glasses, polishing the lenses with the handkerchief he keeps in his left hand pocket. “No Greek. And certainly no Latin. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to take your business elsewhere.”

“Nope.” She gives him a hard stare. “Kinda got my heart set on you.”

“Why?”

“You know why, Gi–”

Bile rises up in his throat as he realises what she’s about to say. He cuts her off with a slam of his hand, his left, upon the desk, rattling the empty teacups against their saucers.

“Look, what do you want?” he snaps, his throat tightening with anger.

“I want you to translate page eight-hundred and ninety-six.”

He feels nauseous. His heart is hammering a tattoo against his chest. Insufferable woman. He wants to tell her to piss off back home, wherever that may be, back to Dawn and Spike and Angel. To leave him alone. To let him forget.

Instead he says, “And if I refuse? Which I will. Am, even.”

“No. You won’t.” She stands, hands on her hips. “And you know why?”

“Enlighten me.”

“Because I know you, and you know me.”

Edmund swallows and looks away.

“I’m not entirely sure that’s true anymore,” he says. “I’d like you to leave now, please.”

They lapse into silence. Edmund hears the soft thud of her shoes against the carpet as she sweeps from the room, leaving nothing but the book and sweet scent of her perfume behind. She smells vaguely tropical, he notes. Of coconuts, maybe. Mixed with jasmine. He takes a deep breath and can’t help but think of California.

“All the names in the world,” she says, pausing at the door, her hand curling around the edge of the wood, “and you choose something worse than Rupert?”

And then she is gone. Edmund eyes the book warily.

Today is a Bad Day.



Γ | γ

If you’d have asked her back in Sunnydale where she thought she’d be in fifteen years time, Buffy probably would have said, “Dead”, and that would have been the end of it. Slayers are not known for their longevity, after all, and even at twenty-one, she’d outlived most of her predecessors. They did not, as a rule, make thirty.

But here she is: thirty-six years old and counting, sitting in a B&B in Oxfordshire, watching as a dark shadow stalks along the lane beyond the garden wall. Vampire, most likely, and fresh, not yet used to the night. It will be an easy target.

Buffy reaches down for the crossbow that sits upon the bed and thinks of that question: where will you be in fifteen years time?

And her answer: dead, like Faith and Kendra and all those who came before.

Indeed, working for the Council would not have been top of her short (one item only) list. Yet, a decade and a half on, there is an ID card in her purse, and a desk back in London with her name on it.

Funny, how the world changes.

Crossbow in hand, she leans over the sill of the window, her fingers unhooking the latch as she presses against the leaded glass. The window swings open silently, the cold, night air assaulting her senses. There is the scent of death upon the breeze.

Buffy is here on business, both personal and professional; she has come to bring her Watcher home.

She fingers the coin that sits in her pocket, smoothing over the ridges of its finely milled edge. Faith’s last gift, her only gift to the girl she’d replaced all those years ago. It is destiny, she thinks. Has known it ever since she laid eyes upon that book, four years previously. Read the prophecy contained within codex’s dusty pages. Or, at least, read the translation provided by the denizens of the Council library.

The Lethe runs cold and deep, and in it drowns the lost son of Athena. Gold paves the way for he who watches, soon to be caught in the wave from which there is no return.
Hysminai guides. Peace follows.[2]

There can only be one meaning, she thinks: Giles is to come home, and she is to guide him. Or, should she fail, he will sink into his new life and forget there ever was a man named Rupert, or a girl named Buffy.

It is a thought, that final one, that has kept her nights sleepless and her days filled with panic and dread. He cannot leave, cannot forget her. She will not allow it. And, now that she has found him, she must persuade him to come home. To never leave her again.

But how? He is a stubborn man, more so now given the vigour of youth. And therein lies the rub. A straightforward question would never provide the outcome she seeks (her query: where will you be in fifteen years time? His answer: with you, Buffy. Always with you). So, instead she must be clever.

There is only one option she can see: he must read the prophecy. Must see for himself where fate’s path leads, and how the future cannot be changed. It’s why she’d given him the codex, why she waits for him on the edge of the city he calls home. Why she seeks to break the bubble of the life he’s created here.

Slowly, she brings the crossbow up, quarry in her sights. It’s as easy as riding a bike, she thinks, and with a curl of her index finger, she lets the bolt loose. She ran away once, she remembers. Ran away from the death and the destruction and the surety that the man she’d killed, the man she’d loved, was never coming back. And Giles? Well, she can relate. They’re not so different anymore. At least, not in the ways that truly matter.

The shot flies true, leaving nothing but grave dust upon the damp tarmac.

Buffy is thirty-six years old, but she feels older and has done for a long time.



Δ | δ

Edmund reads Spanish, Italian, French, German, Russian, Mandarin, Welsh, Arabic, and of course English, both Old and new. His Norwegian is passable, and his Portuguese adequate enough to get by. But his Dutch, well, the less said about that, the better.

He reads other languages too. Older ones. Obsolete ones. But that’s the other him. The him that died over a decade ago.

Dead languages for a dead man.

It seems fitting. Neat.

“Ed?” Will’s voice floats through the closed door. “Sarah and I are off to the pub, if you want to join?”

He looks around the room, at the piles of paper that litter each and every surface, each bearing marks of his own making. Corrections. Alterations. Translations. It reminds him of University; of the mornings spent in Professor Pruitt’s office thinking in languages long dead, of the afternoons spent The Bear Inn not thinking at all.

“First round on me?” chimes in Sarah, seemingly undeterred by the silence radiating from his side of the door. “Deal expiring in, oh, about thirty seconds.”

It would be rude to refuse such an offer. And if there is one thing he cannot abide, this new him, it is rudeness.

Edmund grabs his coat from the back of his chair, pushing aside all thoughts of the book burning a hole in the top drawer of his desk, and of the woman who gave it to him a little over a fortnight ago.

He pulls open the door, two beaming faces greeting him from the stairwell beyond.

“Thought you’d got lost in there, mate,” says Will, clapping a hand on Edmund’s shoulder. His grin may be broad, but there is worry lurking in the deep blue of his eyes.

“Busy day,” replies Edmund, his gaze fixed firmly upon the floor.

“Work hard, play hard, right?” says Sarah. “Or so they say.”

“I don’t believe anybody has ever said that,” mutters Edmund.

They emerge out onto rainy streets, the steel grey skies dark with the promise of thunder. From the corner of his eye, Edmund can see the outline of a familiar figure. Slim, blonde, leaning against a low brick wall, umbrella shielding her from the worst of the downpour.

Swallowing roughly, he turns away, head down, and follows his colleagues as they pick their way through the puddles. As he makes his way down the wet streets, the thinks he hears the ghost of his name upon the wind.



Ε | ε

The rain falls often in the dreary little country Buffy now calls her home. Fat splotches forever tumbling from the grey skies, leaving puddles upon the cracked pavements and in the potholes that litter the roads. It is depressing, dark. Nothing like the California climate of her childhood. And so, when the cloudless days come, when the sun shines, she treasures them.

Today the sun is shining. It is the first day of summer and she is sat upon the grass of Christ Church Meadow, watching. Waiting. Upon the path that wends its way along side the Cherwell, she can see an all too familiar figure. He is dressed in chinos, beige, and a light cotton shirt, his usual spectacles exchanged for a pair with darker lenses. There is a book in his hand and a purpose to his stride.

She would recognise him anywhere. Perhaps even anywhen, which amounts to much the same thing these days, when she thinks about it.

That’s the trouble with time. It’s never really linear. Instead, it loops back when nobody’s looking, forming knots and snarls, catching the unsuspecting in the kinks.

Buffy pushes herself up from her place upon the ground, hastily brushing grass clippings from her legs. She runs to intercept him, bounding up behind her quarry with a spring in her step. He’s taller than she remembers. Slimmer too, all elbows and knees and scarred cheekbones. Her breath catches in her throat at the sight of him, golden light illuminating his features; familiar yet so different, merely hinting at the man he would become, at the man he once was.

“Fancy meeting you here. I thought the English didn’t do sunshine,” she says with a smile.

It is not returned.

“Why won’t you leave me be?” he replies. “I’ve made my wishes very clear.”

The smile falls from her face. “We don’t always get what we want.”

“Have I ever?” he mutters, almost to himself.

The question catches her unawares and she blinks.

“Giles?” she says, her hand reaching out as if to grab him. “Why won’t you talk to me?”

He doesn’t reply. Instead, he turns on his heel, striding back up the path alongside the river.

“Giles!” she calls as the golden coin in her pocket clinks against her keys. “Edmund!”

He does not look back.



Ζ | ζ

Edmund was born in 1994, or so the relevant paperwork claims. He remembers the year surprisingly well for one apparently so young; the IRA ceasefire, the railway strike that brought the country to its knees, and the incessant repetition of that song from Four Weddings (seen under duress with Liv at the Gaiety in Bristol) on the radio. Three years before he left for California, and ten before he came back to his flat in Bath with the Slayer he’d (eventually) left it to.

She’s dead now, that Slayer, though she lives on in his dreams. Or, more accurately, dies in his nightmares. Dies over and over and over again.

Edmund relives it each night, but remembers only fragments. The shimmering flow of the stream, reeds dancing in the wind; a scream, a howl; the suggestion of sharp teeth and burning red eyes; a body, hers, torn to shreds upon the grassy bank. The scene skips and repeats like a scratched record, replaying relentlessly behind his eyes every time he falls asleep, bringing with it nothing but guilt and the memory of pain.

It’s driving him mad. Yet another notch upon the bedpost of his broken psyche.

“Giles?”

Edmund blinks as the question cuts through the low buzz that hums in his skull. He frowns, momentarily unsure of where, perhaps even when, he is. Slowly, he becomes aware of a light tapping against the door, the sound followed by:

“Mr. Fairweather?” A pause. “Edmund?”

The voice is horribly familiar; one that makes his heart pound in his chest, his stomach crease into knots. He does not answer, sitting stock-still and silent, hoping, praying, she’ll leave. His gaze drops to his hands, the pale skin gnarled and disfigured, and to the book upon which they rest. He thinks of that other Slayer, then. The one he’d come to regard as a friend, both colleague and confidante, despite all the hurdles and stumbling blocks that had littered their beginning (and their middle, and their end…). He knows what she’d say.

‘Fuck it, G. You owe them nothing.’

She’d understood him in ways that Buffy simply couldn’t.



Η | η

It’s been three weeks since she’s seen him last. Two days since she knocked on his office door. Four hours since she called (and got nothing but the dial tone for her trouble). It feels like a lifetime.

What if it’s already too late, she thinks? He won’t speak to her. Won’t see her. Won’t come home. What if he has already decided? That, in being Edmund, he forgets how to be Giles?

The thought makes her sick to her stomach, pain lancing through her chest as she walks through Oxford’s bustling streets.

Faith’s coin in her hand, a comforting weight in her palm, she turns the corner and, miracle of miracles, there he is, standing still and silent by Baliol’s locked gates.

Buffy opens her mouth to speak, but he catches sight of her and the words die in her throat. A look of pain creases his youthful features, followed by one of anger, his green eyes burning. She watches as he flees, head down, hands jammed into the pockets of his trousers.

“Wait,” she says to the empty air. “Please.”

What if it’s too late? Or worse: what if it has been all along?



Θ | θ

For Edmund, today is another Bad Day. One where the skies are grey and the world is bleak, devoid of colour and the vibrancy that had been so characteristic of his California dreaming. They come more frequently now, helped along by the ghost that isn’t. The blonde that shadows his every footstep, a smile on her pretty face as she claws him back into the life he’s left behind.

He wants the day to end, to fade out into sweet, thoughtless silence rather than the dreams he knows are waiting. He can think of more than one way to achieve that goal; dark ways, quick ways. But he isn’t thinking about killing himself. Honestly, he isn’t. And he’s certainly not thinking about the knives in the kitchen, or the fact that his flat is four floors up with windows that open just that little bit wider than they really should.

He has no plans. At least no firm ones.

Not that it means anything. Because some days, the Worst ones, he just wants the voices to stop. Well, the voice. The one that runs like an undercurrent through his thoughts, invades his dreams. The one he hears screaming every time his closes his eyes.

He can hear it now, that voice in his head, as he reaches for the bottle of paracetamol that sits next to his toothbrush.

‘What ya doing, G?’

Nothing, he swears. He has a headache. Just a headache. And no plans.

‘Seems pretty fucking ungrateful, don’t ’cha think?’

Edmund shakes two from the bottle, screwing the lid back on before he thinks the better of it. He swallows the little white pills dry, wincing as they scrape his throat on the way down. A small punishment, but deserved, he reasons. And it’s probably better this way, with two rather than forty-two.

Slowly, he closes the cabinet door. He doesn’t look in the mirror; he knows his reflection all too well, this second time round, can trace the scars that spread like cobwebs across his youthful countenance. Instead, he stares up at the ceiling, watching the shadows crawl across the plaster.

‘I died for you.’

True, he concedes. Which is rather the problem, really.



Ι | ι

The English talk a great deal about the weather. It was something Buffy had discovered in the years since she’d exchanged California for Croyden. She’d heard a statistic about it once: that, at any given moment, up to a third of the tiny island were busily engaging in conversations about that very topic. It had struck her as odd, as far as national past times go. But then, she reasons, they did have rather a lot of it to make conversation about.

Today it is unseasonably sunny, even for the summer. Giles’ office is uncomfortably hot and she can feel a bead of sweat running down the hollow of her spine.

“Hot out,” she says, in fine English tradition, as the owner of said office walks through the door.

He stops dead, his face falling. There is a sheen to his brow, damp patches beneath his arms. The sleeves of his shirt are rolled up around his elbows and his top button is undone, exposing more of the knots and ridges that weave across his skin like little silver snakes.

She wonders how he had explained them away, all those scars. Car accident? Gas explosion? Mugging gone wrong? Or maybe he went for something a little less dramatic; perhaps he told them he fell through a glass door as a child, or had a particularly unfortunate encounter with the family dog.

She smirks wryly at thought. The latter? That could almost be the truth, she thinks, if you squinted.

“Have you done the translation, yet?” she asks, schooling her expression into something more serious.

“This is harassment. I’ll call the police,” he replies. “Don’t think I won’t.”

“Don’t be so childish.”

“I’m long past being childish.”

“Could have fooled me,” she spits. “Only kids run away, Giles.”

There is the shattering of fine china against wooden walls.

“Get out.”

Reluctantly, she does, but not before she adds, “You can’t run forever, Giles.”

“Watch me.”



Κ | κ

Some days, the good ones, it is difficult for Edmund to remember that he isn’t simply twenty-three. That he had a life before this one; a life where he felt something other than the cold, crushing weight of guilt and the lingering sense that, once, he had been at peace. A life where he laughed, loved. A life where he thought death had been an end, rather than a new beginning.

But the good days are few and far between. As they have been since he awoke naked and child-like upon Alasdair’s floor, staring up at the horrified faces of those who surrounded him.

Edmund has always been of the opinion that the dead should remain so. To do otherwise is to defy the natural order of things. He knows now that the promise of rest, sweet and eternal, is the reward for a life well lived. It is a reward he has been denied twice over; one he needs so desperately, yet cannot quite bring himself to seek.

Not today.

Settling down in his office chair, teacup in hand, he stares at the book that sits accusingly upon his desk. The Pergamum Codex.

Perhaps, if he doesn’t open it, chooses not to know, whatever it is that awaits him between the crisp vellum pages will not come to pass. It’s a tempting thought, no matter how irrational. Prophecies pass no matter the number of observers, the physics of divination more meta than quantum. It is only the details that change.

The phone rings. He lets it go through to the machine, unwilling to answer. He already knows whose voice will crackle across the line. This makes her fifth call of the week, thirty-fifth of the month. It is a Wednesday and lunch begins in an hour, not that he will eat.

“Hey, Edmund.” She stresses his name as though it’s a private joke. It isn’t funny. “So still no translation, then?” A pause. “I know you’re there. I know you can hear me.”

Rage fills him. How dare she treat him this way? How dare she drag him back into the life he has tried so hard to forget? A life he no longer wants, every breath a betrayal of what should have been. Does she not care about his feelings at all?

Of course not, he thinks. Selfish girl. She never has. Not before, and certainly not now.

“Pick up the phone, Gi–”

He pulls at the telephone cord, wrenching the socket from the wall in a shower of dust and plaster, the room descending into silence once more.



Λ | λ

Faith had been buried in the spring of 2013. Or at least what had been left of her. Buffy remembers it well, along with what came after.

The funeral had been small. Ten, maybe twenty people. Council mostly, with the odd acquaintance scattered here and there amongst the mourners. Buffy had stood by the grave as they’d lowed the casket into the sodden earth, watching as the white wood became dark with shadows and ash.

“She was a good Slayer,” she’d said grudgingly, squinting in the light of the noonday sun. “In the end.”

Beside her, the air had grown still.

“I – I’m sorry, Giles. I know she meant a lot to you. I can’t imagine how you begin to feel after… after what happened.” The words had been hard to say, even then, so she had changed the subject. “What will you do now your favourite Slayer’s gone?”

The question had been snide, though it hadn’t begun that way. She couldn’t help it; she was hurting too, and some habits are hard to break.

There had been no reply. Instead, he had simply walked away, walked out of her life and his own, the wounds on his arms, his face, still red raw and weeping.



Μ | μ

It would be easy. A quick slip of the knife and goodbye Edmund. Goodbye Rupert.

He could picture it now.

‘Whatever happened to the old boy, anyway?’

‘Heard he had an accident preparing dinner. Rather ruined the salad.’

He’s died before. Has come close more times than he dares to count, too.

It would be easy, wouldn’t it? To end it here. Now.

No more Council. No more Slayers. No more Buffy and certainly no more Giles.

And yet, there’s something holding him back. Guilt, perhaps. Or obligation. They look much the same from his perspective.

With a barely audible sigh, he glances down at his hands, at the scars upon them and the blade he holds, and thinks, ‘Not today.’

Head spinning, he sets the knife down upon the chopping board with a clunk, licking tomato juice from his fingers.

Maybe tomorrow, but not today. Never today.




Ν | ν

“So,” she says, “you going to talk to me today, or what?”

She stands outside the front door of his flat, hands on her hips, expression challenging. Autumn has come. The leaves have begun to change and the warm summer winds now bring a chill as they blow.

There is no answer, but she knows he is there behind the door, listening.

“I’ll keep coming back,” she says. “I won’t give up. Not again.”

Buffy is true to her promise. She knocks each day at 8pm, before patrol, the leaves of the trees turning from green to red and gold and brown around her.



Ξ | ξ

Edmund drinks vodka, neat, with cheap lager chasers where Rupert drank whiskey. It’s a small change, in the grand scheme of things, but one worth noting.

There have been other changes, too. Some subtle, some less so. But one thing that remains constant, from one life to the next, is his ability to find trouble, should he care to look.

And tonight he plans to do just that.

He is in a bar just off the Oxford Road, three sheets to the wind and spoiling for a fight. It’s a rough sort of pub in a rough sort of area, just like the dives he frequented last time he hit twenty-three, his name neither Edmund nor Rupert, but something with decidedly more visceral overtones. The men here look the same as they did then, too: bald and heavy set, all thick neck and no chin, reeking of sweat and desperation and booze. Town as clearly as he is Gown. A tinderbox waiting for a match. One wrong glance, one brash move…

Slowly, and not without a slight sway to his movements, he pours the last of his lager over the closest man’s head, watching as it turns the t-shirt he wears all but transparent. And just like that, like magic, trouble finds him. Or maybe he finds it.

The first blow hits hard and will leave a bruise; a great splotch of green and blue upon his jaw peeking through the stubble. But the second misses, fist knocked off course as Edmund ducks, smashing his elbow hard into the man’s gut, leaving him breathless and wheezing.

“Is that all you’ve got?” he goads, nimbly evading the clawing hands that reach out for the lapels of his jacket. “Come on. Fight me.”

Edmund takes another swing, his opponent blocks, the fight a complicated dance between sticky tables and overturned stools. A vicious tango, wild and brutal, each vying for the lead. And it goes like this: dodge; weave; strike; feel. Rinse and repeat until one falls.

It’s like riding a bike; dead or undead, they all fight the same. They are slow, stupid, and he trained Slayers, once upon a time. Even drunk and still a little on the lanky side of youth, it’s an uneven match. Edmund lands three blows for every one of his opponent’s, each with pinpoint accuracy.

Dodging.

Weaving.

Striking.

Feeling.

It’s exhilarating. He’s hitting faster, harder. Laughing, even as a fist catches him on the jaw, sending blood and spittle flying.

“Giles!”

He turns at the sound. Doesn’t see the next swing coming. Nor the glint of metal wrapped around knuckles.

The blow hits just as he catches sight of the blonde by the bar. The one who called his name; a name he no longer cares to use, but still turns his head, catches his attention, as much as he wishes it wouldn’t.

And then he sees nothing save stars. Tiny golden sprites that dance across his darkening vision like fireworks. There is pain. It blossoms from a point just above his right eye; again at his jaw as the second fist strikes down. Another. And another. Left fist, right fist. Blow after blow, all blurring into one, until he can do nothing but feel as the world begins to fade to black.



Ο | ο

As Buffy drives, Ex-Watcher slumped with ill-grace in the passenger seat, she thinks Fate has a strange sense of humour. Her primary objective is complete, if only on a technicality. She is taking him home, just not quite in the way she expected.

Funny, too, that she is driving and he is her passenger. Before, a lifetime ago, back when they’d simply been Buffy and Giles rather than something quite so complicated, he’d always taken the wheel. But he’s in no state to drive now even if she’d allow it, drunk and bleeding, barely conscious as they sail through Oxford’s midnight streets. And nostalgia counts for little these days.

They are ten minutes from his flat when he rouses.

“Buffy?” he asks blearily.

“That’s me,” she shouts over the roar of the radio. She glances over at his hunched form, watching as he brings a shaky hand up to the mess of his face to probe split in his eyebrow. “You’re gonna feel that in the morning. And the rest.”

“Glasses?”

“Fucked,” she replies bluntly. “If you will go picking fights in bars.”

There is a short pause. One that she is sure held a sigh, or a groan; the volume of the stereo is too high to tell.

“Spare me the lecture.”

“No lecturing. I figure you’re smart enough to work out for yourself exactly why that was such a dumb idea. What the hell were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t,” he replies. And then, changing the subject, “Your driving has improved considerably.”

“Practice and time. I’m not sixteen anymore.”

Another pause.

“What on earth is this… this racket?”

“Zomboy, I think.” She checks her mirrors, drifting between lanes, dodging the little traffic there is with an ease borne of long years spent navigating London’s overcrowded streets. “Dubstep.”

“Pardon?”

“It’s Dubstep. You know, EDM. England’s latest gift to the club scene.” At his blank look, she elaborates. “Dance music.”

“Music? This isn’t music. Music needs a melody, at the very minimum.” He pinches the bridge of his nose in frustration. “This is noise.”

The traffic lights turn red. The car pulls to a halt.

She looks at him, hazel eyes bright, a small smile playing at her lips. He stares back.

“What?”

“For a moment there, you kinda sounded like you. Older you, I mean.”

He coughs, his green gaze dropping to his lap. “Yes, well…”

“No, I like it.” She places a hand on his leg, giving it a quick squeeze before her grip returns to the gearshift, her attention once again on the road, on the green light in front of them. “It’s nice to know you’re still in there - the you that I remember.”

“I’m not that man anymore,” he says. “I haven’t been for a long time.”

Buffy takes a deep breath. She wants to ask him why he thinks that way. And to ask him why he ran, why he simply walked out of his life and never came back. But she doesn’t.

Instead she asks, “Did you ever think about me after you stopped being you… or before?”

When you left San Francisco for London? When you left me for Faith?

“I…”

“’Cause I thought about you. Thought about you a lot. Thought about all the things I did, all the things I said. Cruel, horrible things. And I drove you away.”

“You didn’t need me.”

“And Faith did?”

“For god’s sake, Buffy, it wasn’t a competition.” His eyes drop to his hands. “Can we not leave the dead in peace?”

“You loved her.”

“Not… not like that.”

“Like what?”

There is a pause. “Not like you.”

She deposits him at his front door of his flat at three minutes to midnight. In the distance, she can hear the bells of St. Mary’s chiming the hour early. Beside her, she can hear the jangle of keys.

“Thank you, Buffy,” he says, his words quiet and only slightly slurred as he opens the door.

“Can I come in?”

“I think it would perhaps be best if you didn’t.”

It is not an answer she is willing to accept. This is the most he’s said to her in years, and certainly the most civil he’s been. Perhaps it’s the concussion. Or the booze. Either way, she presses the advantage.

“You took a pretty heavy beating back there, Rocky. I don’t think you should be alone right now.” She waves at the mess of his face. “Plus, you could probably do with some help patching that up.”

He sighs heavily, his gaze averted.

“Fine.”



Π | π

Letting her in had been a mistake. He knows that now, is as sure of it as he is of his own name. Which, when he thinks about it, is perhaps not the best basis for comparison.

“Tea?” he asks, at a loss for what to say, to do.

Some things changed. Some things didn’t.

“No.” She shakes her head.

“Coffee, then? Or beer? There may even be a bottle of pop at the back of the cupboard,” he says.

“Giles?” She catches his arm, her fingers flexing around the bicep. A little show of strength that does not go unnoticed. “Just… wait a sec. Please.”

“Buffy,” he breathes.

Her hand skims up the outside of his arm, trailing gooseflesh in its wake. His gut twists at the touch; maybe it’s the booze, or perhaps the concussion.

“Look at me.”

And he does. He looks at her, really looks. She’s changed, he thinks, aged. Her face has thinned, there are fine little lines around her eyes, and he’s sure he can see a grey or three at her temple. The observation fills him with something suspiciously like joy (it’s been so long, he’s forgotten what it feels like).

Never, in all the years he had spent as her Watcher, had he dreamt she’d see thirty. If twenty had been a miracle, then twenty-five had been nothing short of divine intervention. But thirty? Unimaginable.

And yet, here she is: thirty-six and as beautiful as ever. Age suits her. She looks good.

Too good.

In the mess of his mind, an idea begins to form. It is not a clever one.

Before he thinks the better of it, he pushes her back against the wall, his mouth on hers. Crushing. Consuming. She tastes sweet, almost cloyingly so, and it seems almost indecent. He’s old enough to be her father, has slept with her mother, and maybe this would drive her away. After all, she’d never expressed anything other than revulsion regarding the more base aspects of his nature. His mouth on hers, his hand on her breast, his thigh pressed in the crux of hers, and she should run, runaway fast, runaway now. Only logical, he thinks.

It surprises him when her mouth opens beneath his, tongue tangling with his own. Surprises him further when she pushes him down onto the bed (how they’d got there, he doesn’t remember), her legs straddling his, hands pressed against his aching cock.

It’s obscene. Freudian. Unexpected too, but he doesn’t want it to end. So it doesn’t.

She grips his wrists as she fucks him, her hold so tight he can feel the bones beginning to grind together. It hurts. A counterpoint to the pleasure that knifes through his gut as he rocks against her, driving himself deep into her wet cunt.

This isn’t the first time he’s fucked a Slayer. He’d fucked her, too. On his eighteenth birthday, or perhaps that was fifty-eighth, after they’d saved the world. Again. It had been quick and quiet and dirty, his back against cold concrete, her teeth at his throat. And when he’d come, her thighs slick and cooling in the night air, he’d opened his eyes to find nothing had changed. He still felt hollow, empty, nothing more than a ghost.

Maybe this time will be different. It’s a small hope, but one he clings to. After all, he’d loved her once, perhaps still does deep down. And Faith? Well, he’d loved her too, but not quite in the same way.

Buffy breathes his name as she shudders around him. Not his first, but his second, just as Faith had done all those years before. And, as before, when he comes, opens his eyes, nothing changes. His head still hurts and the room is still spinning; there’s still rope beneath his bed and rafters in the attic that will take his weight; the Bad Days will still come, he can feel it, and maybe next time he’ll have a plan.

She sighs deeply, her forehead resting against his. Her skin is sticky with sweat, cheeks damp with tears.

“Giles,” she repeats. “Please come home. Come with me to London. Or California.”

She says the words and nothing changes. Buffy still doesn’t understand. Faith is still dead. It’s still his fault.

“Buffy, I…” He takes a deep breath, closing his eyes. He can see no other option. “The translation...”

“Fuck the goddamn codex,” she says. “Just… just come home with me.”

Nausea wells up within him, his throat tight and burning. He isn’t that man anymore. Isn’t the man she so desperately wants him to be. He’s just a shell; hollow and empty, a dead man pretending, no better than the ghosts and ghouls that stalk her in the night.

Why can’t she see that?

“I’ll have the translation ready in the morning.”



Ρ | ρ

She is dreaming. And so is he.

Dreaming of rushing water. Sinking. Drowning. Of hands and feet scraping along the stones and shifting sands of a riverbed, dragged deeper by the current.

And above the water, of a woman screaming.



Σ | σ

He had been fourteen (that first fourteen) when he had learnt of psychopomps, sixteen when he had first read the name of the ferryman, and twenty-four (Randall’s death barely behind him) before he really understood what any of it meant. His first life had been spent learning, his second living the lessons the one before had taught.

The book, the Pergamum Codex, sits before him, the number 896 at the bottom of the open page. Beside it there is a scrap of paper and a pencil, translation scrawled inelegantly upon the torn page.

The Lethe runs cold and deep, and in it drowns the lost son of Athena. Gold paves the way for he who watches, soon to be caught in the wave from which there is no return.
Hysminai guides. Peace follows.

He thinks of the coin he had given Faith all those years ago. One of a pair, linked through time and space and magic, though what had happened to the other, he doesn’t know. They’d probably buried her with it, he thinks, as Charon’s payment. Even dead Slayers needed Watchers, and who better to guide her through the underworld than the most famous watcher of them all? It is destiny, he thinks, the stater a token of passage across the Styx, the inescapable wave.

And the coin of his own? He rises from his seat, takes three steps over to the mantelpiece, to the box that sits there, and flips back the lid. In the shadow of the interior, next to a battered packet of Regals and a book of matches, there is the glint of gold. Slowly, he lifts the stater from the box, cradling it in the palm of his hand. It is warm to the touch and, oddly, makes him think of his bed, of the woman in it.

Psychopomps, he thinks, and slowly, he begins to understand. A plan begins to form.

Beyond the window, in the half-light before dawn, he can see the shapes of birds flitting like shadows across the sky.

Edmund stares down at the coin. It is the twin of Faith’s, their connection forged in the ancient fires beneath the temple of Athena, her coin calling his own in death just as it had in life. He knows now what he must do. Why Buffy had come, and why Faith had never really left.

His fingers smooth over the stater, trace the outline of Athena, and thinks that history has a way of repeating itself. Only, this time, there has been a transposition during the duplication: he ran, she followed.

But he will die once again, all the same.



Τ | ς

When Buffy wakes, she is alone. A frown creasing her brow, she rises from the bed and begins to dress, wrapping her cardigan close to ward off the chill of the morning.

The flat is empty, and Giles nowhere to be found. There is only the Codex for company, sat open upon the coffee table, pages fluttering in the draught from the open front door. Buffy stares down at the scrap of paper that sits beside the book. A feeling of dread begins to take root in her belly as she reads the notes and annotations that litter the text of the translation, Giles’ own interpretation laid bare for her to see.

It differs from her own.

Her hand slips into the pocket of her jeans, her fingers brushing against the coin she keeps there. Faith’s coin. As her flesh meets metal, images flash through her mind. Images of Giles and of the river beside which he stands, his pale skin mottled blue from the winter chill. She watches as he stares down at the coin in his hand, the twin of her own, green eyes burning bright. Thoughts flow through the link, too. Dark thoughts of the river, of its fast-flowing waters, and of endless, dreamless sleep.

Bile rises up at the back of her throat as comprehension dawns.

Rupert Giles is going to kill himself. Or at least attempt to.

She sets off from the flat at a run. It does not take long to find him, Faith’s coin guiding her through the maze of Oxford’s grey streets.

“Giles!” she shouts, her voice barely audible over the rush of the river.

“I understand now,” he says, his eyes fixed upon the coin he holds.

“Giles.” She takes a slow step towards him. And another. And another. Each takes her closer to the bank’s edge, the rain-swollen river that rushes beneath it, and the man who teeters upon its threshold. “Giles, come away from there. Please.”

He isn’t listening.

“I’ve wanted this for so long.”

“Giles.” She’s so close now. But not quite close enough. “Giles, don’t.”

His eyes meet hers.

“We cannot change our destiny,” he says and falls back into the river to be swept away by the undertow.



Υ | τ

The water is cold and dark and deep.

And he is drowning.



Φ | ϕ

The walls of the Radcliffe ICU are white. Clean. The scent of disinfectant, pine, fills the air, masking the stench of sickness and disease that permeates the ward.

Giles is awake and has been for hours, sat wrapped in hospital cotton, his face drawn and pale. Wires and tubes, connected to machines that whirr and beep and gurgle, thread out from his almost motionless form. It makes Buffy think of the last time they had sat like this, almost half a decade before, his skin a web of stitches and the last of Faith in shreds in the morgue below.

Under the harsh fluorescent lights, she can see the ghosts those wounds upon his arms and his chest. Jagged little lines that bisect the bones, silver now, catching the light as he sits staring into nothing.

In the distance, church bells chime and he says, “Self-destruction has always been my forte.”

“No demons this time,” she replies, thinking of Eyghon and the tattoo that once graced the crook of his arm.

“Only my own.”

“Better than someone else’s.” She takes a deep breath. “Giles we have to talk. What you did, back there at the river, I –”

He cuts her off swiftly, his voice tight. “I’d rather we didn’t.”

Buffy shakes her head. “I know,” she says gently, placing her hand on his. His skin still holds a chill. “But you need to.”

“I –“ Giles draws away from her touch.

“Please. Talk to me.”

Silence falls heavily upon them, broken only by the steady beep of the heart rate monitor. It doesn’t take long before he speaks again. And just like that, it all comes out. Like poison from a wound.

The night Faith died, he tells her, he had been drinking. Heavily.

It isn’t the admission she expected, but she sits and listens regardless, watching as a single tear wends its way down his cheek.

“I was waiting. I knew it was there. I-I could see it skulking in the shadows, biding its time, red eyes burning. And it could smell the booze on me. Easy prey.” He draws a shaky breath, eyes shut tight, remembering. “I was there on the riverbank, alone, so sure that I would die. But then Faith… There she was, fighting. Losing. A-and then I fell… I fell,” he finishes meekly.

“It’s not your fault,” she says, tone gentle. “Faith made her choice.”

“I wanted to die.”

She blinks. “What?”

“That night,” he says, his gaze upon his shaking hands. “I had a plan. I wanted it to look like an accident. A terrible, horrible accident.”

Slowly the pieces start to slot into place.

“You lured the Barghest[3],” she says.

“Yes.”

“And Faith…”

“I didn’t know,” he says quietly. “She was supposed to be in London, with Angel. I…” His voice drops to a whisper. “I didn’t know she’d be there. I didn’t think...”

“God.”

“They should have left me, after Twilight. Angel. I-I was at peace.” His hands clutch at the blankets. “The dead are not meant to live again. You didn’t need me, nor did Faith, and Angel should have known better. I should have been left to rot.”

A small sigh escapes her lips as she understands. She’d felt the same way once. Had indulged in similarly self-destructive behaviour, too. How could she not have seen it? Not known how had felt? Not offered to guide him through the path she herself had trodden?

Selfishness, she thinks, and all she’d done was make it worse. First driving him to Faith, and then out of his mind. The thought makes her feel ashamed.

“I…” she says, taking his hand. “I’m glad they didn’t.”

“I wanted to die that night.” He looks at her then, his green eyes boring into hers. “And in the nights since. But Faith… I couldn’t. Not until you brought me that book. The prophecy…”

“It felt like you had permission,” she says, understanding. “And now?”

“I don’t know,” he says simply. “Not today, but I can’t guarantee that will be true tomorrow.”



Χ | χ

Just over a week passes before his lungs no longer hurt. It will be three before the scratches and scrapes from the stones of the riverbed begin to heal. He remembers surprisingly little; only small hands pulling him from the water and the strip lights that flashed across his blurred vision as the paramedics had pushed the gurney through A&E. Buffy tells him that he died twice that first night. That his heart had stopped once in the ambulance, and again in the ICU.

She is sat beside him now, Buffy. Keeping vigil, leaving only to eat and to shower, her hazel eyes sunken and haunted. He watches as she reaches into the handbag at her side, drawing from it a sheaf of crisp, white paper.

“What’s this?” he asks, his hands shaking as they reach for the proffered papers.

“A death certificate.” He watches as she swallows roughly. “Yours, to be specific. Plus all the paperwork you’ll need to start again.”

“Why?”

“I’ve been thinking. No more Council. No more Slayers.” Her eyes drop to her hands. “No more Rupert Giles. If that’s what you want.”

Air rushes from his lungs, the breath knocked out of him. “Buffy, I…”

She smiles thinly at him. “A fresh start.”

He stares down at the papers in his lap. A strange sort of relief begins to wash over him. A fresh start. No more Watchers. No more Slayers. No more guilt. Rupert Giles dies, just like he should have done a decade ago. This is a death from which he will not return.

“And what about you?” he asks carefully.

“Whatever you want,” she replies.

He takes a long look at the woman beside him. The one he’d loved once, and possibly still did. He looks at the mess of her hair, the creases her clothing holds, the drawn look of her face. His heart twists in his chest.

“Stay,” he says softly. “I’d like you to stay.”

Faith died in the spring. Giles in November.



Ψ | ψ

The rain falls often here. When Buffy wakes, uncurls her stiff limbs as she rights herself in her chair, she can hear the soft pitter patter of it against the window pane. It is the first day of winter and the rain falls in icy sheets, soaking into the waiting ground where it drains into the rivers and lakes and, eventually, the sea, washing away all in its path.

How did the saying go?

In every life a little rain must fall.

For some, she thinks, more so than others.

She looks over at the man sleeping in the bed beside her chair. There are bruises beneath his eyes and a slight rattle to his steady breathing. He is fragile. Broken, but healing. And it’s going to take time, but they have a wealth of it, here, together.

There are a million and one things she has left to say. Her mind is full of words. For a moment, she considers waking him. But to tell him what?

That she’s sorry about Faith? Sorry about the book, too? And how she’ll never forgive herself for being just that little bit too late? Just that little bit too unobservant, both now and before?

Or that she loves him, and always has, one way or another?

These are words he doesn’t need to hear. Not yet. Maybe not ever. After all, he’s not the man he used to be.

So, instead she listens to the rain, her hand in his, and thinks that maybe it’s a metaphor. That maybe, just maybe, this is the life they were meant to lead. The people they were meant to be.



Ω | ω

For the first time in eleven years, Mr. Edmund Fairweather of 32 Vicarage Road, Oxfordshire, is a peace. At his bedside, on an uncomfortable plastic chair nestled between the monitors and the machines, Ms. Buffy Summers sips her tea, watching.

He is twenty-three, she thirty-six. And there are no more lies left to tell.

Elsewhere, in a churchyard on the outskirts of the city, stands the headstone of one Mr. Rupert Giles, 1956 - 2017. The grave is empty, home to nothing but the ghosts of a life long past.

These two facts are not unconnected.

Today is a Monday and it is the end. An epilogue, of a sort.

One where they all lived, though not always happily. Which, all things considered, was enough.



***

Footnotes:

[1] Translation: Pergamum

[2] Greek Mythology 101:
- The Lethe is a river that flows through the underworld. Any who drink from its waters experience forgetfulness and oblivion.
- Charon (meaning ‘of keen gaze’) is the name of the ferryman that rows the souls of the dead across the rivers Styx and Acheron (the former sometimes referred to as ‘the inescapable wave’). In Greek antiquity, the dead were sometimes buried with a coin, known as Charon’s obol, which served as the ferryman’s payment (or bribe).
- The Hysminai are the Greek personifications of battle.

[3] A Barghest is a fictional beast found in English folklore. It takes the form of a monstrous black dog, and is often considered an omen of death. It is also said that any wound left by a Barghest never truly heals. Like many mythical creatures, they are unable to cross flowing waters, such as rivers and streams.