One Fell Swoop
A/N: This was written for Darkest Night 2017, a darkfic themed exchange, for May to the prompt that Giles was chosen as Buffy's watcher because the Watcher's Council thought Giles was incompetent and sent him in hopes of being rid of the untrained Buffy more quickly and hopefully him, too.
His family were watchers. Over generations, by tradition, it had simply become what they did. Sure, many had other occupations outside the council. However, by the time Rupert Giles was christened, the ultimate loyalty of anyone of his name was expected to fall to the watchers. Not just to take a place among the council's members, but to take a place among their elite.
It was taken as given by everyone but Rupert himself. As he'd aged out of childhood, turning into a youth with his own opinions and dreams, he started to strain against the contradictory expectations of his family. Still, he held on and mostly toed their line until Oxford. That was his breaking point, when the grueling schedule of study convinced him unequivocally he did not want to be watcher. That, as a point of fact, he would quite happily settle for anything else, thank you very much. So he'd done what any unreasonable disaffected young man would do and tried his best to make sure the watchers wouldn't want him.
First he dropped out of school and ran away to London. Then he started working the kinds of magics the Watchers really didn't approve of. It was all little things at first, but his breaching of the rules he'd been taught about personal gain and doing harm became less and less innocuous as time wore on. He had a fair natural aptitude for magics and he exploited it shamelessly. He even threw in on the occasional spot of petty crime when he was bored, just to change things up a bit. He started hanging out with others of similarly low ambitions, most especially devotee of chaos Ethan Rayne, who had a real gift for encouraging the worst out of him. By the time the group of them turned to summoning demons for kicks, he was so high on the feeling of thumbing his nose at his destined obligations, well, he'd been bloody stupid, that was the important point.
When he'd come off what was essentially a magic bender ending in manslaughter, he'd been ashamed and afraid of his own aptitude for folly. More to the point, he'd been perfectly willing to crawl back to his family and the Watcher's Council. Despite all his efforts at rebellion, they'd accepted him back with little comment. His relief mostly outweighed his dismay that what he'd done mattered so little to those he was trying to appall.
Which did not mean he'd entirely regained his former status, not by a long shot. Although he was technically fully accepted back into the arms of the Watcher's Council, his unsanctioned extracurriculars with dark magic and undesirables had left him pretty low in the hierarchy. Giles found himself frequently snubbed, if not actively shunned, by his family themselves as much as anyone else. He was never invited to the retreats, and most of the time they didn't even bother to tell him who the current slayer was.
After he finished his degree, he spent more time actually working as a curator than associating with the council. By that point, he had little contact with the watchers at all beyond the rare exchange where his father or Quinton Travers made a point of rubbing in that his readmission to Oxford and the watchers had been done on their sufferance. They didn't explicitly ask him to grovel, that was all implied. It was a far cry from what had originally been expected of him.
So he'd been quite surprised when he was told to bring his affairs into order and move to Sunnydale California to become the latest slayer's new watcher. He'd been surprised, but not actively suspicious. Not until he'd returned to the family home to store a few things away and overheard his father and Travers Sr. angrily discussing it by sheer chance.
"The girl has no training at all! The council knows about Sunnydale. It's barely worth the effort of sending a representative; she'll be dead within six months, a year at most. Let someone already on that side of the world handle it. You cannot possibly expect me to go along with you throwing away a member of my family, such as he is, so very pointlessly." His father's voice isn't raised, but the anger in it is clear. For a moment, Giles actually thinks the man is standing up for him – before the conversation continues on.
"Mr. Giles, there's no need for such dramatics. You know as well as I do the Watcher's Coucil can support only so much dead weight on our resources. Your son is being given an opportunity to prove he deserves to remain among our number and perhaps regain some of your family's lost standing. If he actually possesses any of the potential we once saw in him, he will be fine, I'm sure," Travers' smug tone belies the assurance. "If not, of course your family will be appropriately compensated."
"That isn't the point, Travers. I should have been consulted before such a decision was made about the resources of my own family! At the very least his aptitude for magics is quite likely to breed true and in another generation could easily redeem our line. My family's combined years of service should have granted at least some consideration to our interests, despite my son's personal failings."
There had been a long sigh, and Travers had finally responded with a conciliatory, "Your family does have other bloodlines. Still, I am not an unreasonable man, and perhaps you may have something of a point. Should we discuss further terms?"
"Yes, I think perhaps we should."
At that point, one or the other of them closed the door to his father's study, effectively shutting off his ability to hear the rest of the conversation without resorting to more deliberate eavesdropping. As his orders don't subsequently change in the days that follow, he can only conclude Travers made some sufficient concession to his father. It surprises him less that his father is willing to write him off than it probably should, though it does make him a little angry. He has certainly made mistakes and has things to atone for, but he's hardly completely useless. Acting like sending him to train a slayer is a death sentence is downright insulting.
His last rebellion had seen him slinking back home looking for forgiveness, metaphorical tail between his legs. This, however, is different. If he couldn't escape their expectations through undermining them, perhaps instead he should aim to exceed them. If it also happens to piss them off more effectively, well, all the better. He'll go to California and he'll train this slayer, and he'll do a good enough job of it to keep them both alive long enough to spite Travers and his father. A couple of years is a good long run for a girl after she's been called.
Perhaps it will be easier than they seem to think. Very few watchers actually end up in charge of an active slayer, so it's not like either of them have any personal experience at having such a charge. In addition to his excellent understanding of magics and aptitude for them, he has had years of the best field and weapons training his name and the council can provide. He is plenty prepared for this. Furthermore, after the way they dismissed his own worth, Giles isn't terribly inclined to take their assessment of his slayer as particularly valid either.
Of course, when her immediate reaction is to run away from him, and her second is to insist she's retired because the life of a slayer is secretive, miserable, and short? Well, he's still determined, but keeping them both alive may very well be just as hard as the council had presumed. If for no other reason than because her actually knowing how bad it is makes him all the more determined to beat the odds for her. Unfortunately, everything the council ever taught him about slayers cautioned against the danger of getting personally attached like that.