Verge
(Never Tear Us Apart series #1)
by GylzGirl



Disc: Characters owned by Joss, WB, Mutant Enemy (Grr, Argh), Kuzui, Fox, etc. Not I. Excerpts taken directly from WTTH, owned by same said, not me people. I call dibs on the actual story.
Spoilers: Thru Helpless
Rating: Ooh, um PG I'd say
Type: Angst? You're soaking in it! (aka, "Aww, I need a hug.")
Author's Note: Thanks to WorstWitch, Kazza, and Meawan for beta help and pointers.
Written: 1999

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Giles leaned forward on his sofa and poured himself a glass from the Scotch bottle sitting on his coffee table. He stared into the glass blankly, looking past it and over the last few hours, months, years and trying not to lose control, again. A Watcher was supposed to train his Slayer, support her, observe her. He wasn't to protect. He wasn't to interfere. He wasn't to become attached. Most certainly, he wasn't supposed to love her.

Giles did love Buffy though. He tried to pinpoint when it had happened. When he'd gone so terribly wrong. He smiled. Only the decrepit, pretentious Council could classify love as being wrong.

He'd come to Sunnydale feeling so out of place, waiting eagerly for his Slayer, determined not to let his excited anticipation endear him to his charge. It wouldn't be appropriate. "Is anybody here?" The first words he'd heard out of her mouth. Giles had been engrossed in cataloging another shipment of his demonology texts in the cage when he'd heard her voice. He was supposed to have been given notice from the Council as soon as she'd enrolled at the school. They had, of course, dropped the ball on that one, as they always seemed to manage where Buffy was concerned.

Even not expecting her for a few days yet, he knew she was his Slayer the second he'd heard her. He'd touched her shoulder lightly. Giles had trained most of his life for this moment. It was almost dream-like reaching for her. She'd spun to face him.

She was so young. He'd prepared himself for that, or at least he thought he had. "Anybody's here." She smiled fleetingly. It was infectious, full of light and the brightness of day. She was so unlike what he'd imagined.

"Can I help you?" Would she know him as instantly as he'd known her?

"I was looking for some...well...books. I'm new." Was it possible she didn't know? Could he have been wrong?

"Miss Summers?" He asked to confirm and to give him a focus to stop his completely un-Watcherlike, gentle grin.

"Good call." She seemed perplexed, surprised. "Guess I'm the only new kid huh?"

"I'm Mr. Giles." Yes, your Watcher. Do you know me yet? "The librarian." Don't scare her off Rupert. "I was told you were coming." Look we might as well get this over with.

"Great. So um, I'm gonna need Perspectives on Twentieth Century..."

"I know what you're after." He could feel his giddy smile as his excitement got the better of him after all. He sat the ancient "Vampyr" text on the counter with an ominous thud.

She looked up at him with fear, vulnerability. "That's not what I'm looking for."

How was this girl possibly a warrior, a Slayer, when she was afraid of a simple book? "Are you sure?"

"I'm way sure."

"My mistake." It was his turn to be confused. Had he gotten the name wrong? Was the Council mistaken thinking this girl was the Chosen One? Was he? "So what is it you sa..." He'd let her words deny his instincts, let her out of his sight for just a second, and she was gone.

As he watched her disappear out the door, the sound of her boots echoing down the hall, Giles felt...incredibly rejected. It was worse than anything he'd ever known. Worse than when Michelle Agnew, his senior school crush, had turned him down because she didn't date "layabouts in leather jackets." Worse than what he'd imagined his father feeling when he'd dropped out of Oxford. Worse than how he felt when he returned to his family, guilt-ridden already from the Eyghon affair, and his father refused to even see him for a month and a half. This was almost shattering. He didn't know who he was without his destiny. He'd retreated to the comforting safety of his books, to regroup, to plan a strategy. 'She has to come back sometime,' Giles had decided, 'and I will be ready.'

He wasn't ready for her to reappear scarcely two hours later. Her stride was confident and assured, every bit the Slayer, as she questioned him about a murdered boy found in the locker room; murdered by vampires. He'd wondered what else she'd expected. The more she talked, the more Giles could see her as just another teenage girl. But she wasn't, she was the Slayer. He fell back on the tried and true weapon of the Watcher, lecture. She'd seemed to respond to that, but skillfully tried to steer him off the topic of demonic activity. He caught it and attempted to bring her back to the subject at hand. "A-a Slayer slays, a Watcher..."

"Watches?"

"Yes. No!" As his frustration grew, his stammer increased. "He-he trains her, he-he-he prepares her..."

"Prepares me for what? For getting kicked out of school? For losing all of my friends? For having to spend all of my time fighting for my life and never getting to tell anyone because I might endanger them? Go ahead! Prepare me."

Those last two words stole Giles' entire verbal arsenal away. The truth was, she was just a teenage girl. She just happened to also be the Slayer. She'd seen more than any 16-year-old should have had to, more than he had his whole life, and he'd seen a lot. He knew in that moment he was on his own. Rulebooks and the like were not going to help him with this girl. He was going to have to improvise.

The trouble with the improvisation was, once he had started, he'd never stopped. Giles smiled at that memory. Maybe that was where he had gone wrong. True, he didn't love Buffy yet then, but he felt for her. He wanted to help her, wanted to protect her. He'd already broken several Watcher tenets by feeling that much. So what did it matter if he went further?

If the Council had known he'd tried to give his life for hers the night of the Spring Fling, he'd have been removed from duty long ago. He loved her by then. When Giles recognized that, it scared him. He'd snapped back into Watcher mode. 'That's it Buffy. Go out and meet your destiny. Be a good girl, go and die.'

Buffy had stood before him, stripped emotionally naked, crying, raging. She looked to him to find some way, *any* way to save her. He found the way. He'd loaded a weapon bag almost too heavy to carry and readied himself to face the Master in Buffy's place. She caught him, tried to talk him out of it. He'd seen something in her eyes then, pride and if he'd dared to believe it, love. However Giles hadn't had long to ponder it at the time. Buffy delivered a blinding cross to his chin, and he was out cold, dreaming of indecorous scenarios featuring Jenny Calendar.

Ah Jenny. His poor lovely Jenny. Fate was, to be sure, a Bitch Goddess of the first magnitude. Fate had seen fit to deny those who would predict her quirky nature that night and give his Slayer back to him. Then it gave him Jenny. That Giles had her to take his mind into brighter thoughts than vampires and the Hellmouth was miracle enough. That she returned his affections was beyond the level of hope he thought he possessed. Everything was going perfect. No fights, well not any that didn't end up in fervent kisses to make up, and then, Eyghon.

How Giles had detested himself. She wouldn't even look at him. It took weeks, and a very painful arrow wound to the back, to get her into his arms again. And he swore he'd never let her go. He supposed he'd kept that promise after all. It had been a year since he found her and still her blank eyes staring out in his candlelit room, haunted him.

Looking back, he could analyze it logically. He'd felt betrayed. He could have forgiven that he supposed. However, her actions, or rather her inaction, had helped to hurt his Slayer. That he could not forgive. Even knowing it cost them being together the last few weeks of her life, even after she was interred in the earth of Sunnydale Cemetery, he had not forgiven her. It took him betraying his Slayer himself before he could let that last resentment go.

The Test. Yes. The madness that was the Slayer Test was definitely a mistake. Giles had tried to reason himself into it. It was tradition, protocol. It hadn't worked. It was Ripper who had talked him into it. It was a little well-deserved payback, sanctioned no less. Buffy's lover had killed Jenny and tortured him for hours. He'd been through hell for that girl. How did she show him her trust? She ran away for three months, not letting Giles even know if she was alive or dead. When she came back, he tried to forgive. Before he had the chance, he found that she'd been hiding Angel's resurrection from him as well. That had almost broken him. What exactly did he have to do to have her choose him over Angel, just once?

"Go on Giles," Ripper taunted him, "stick that needle in her arm. Make her as weak as she's made you. Crying every night into your pillows like a child. You've let this girl wrap you around her finger, and she's made a fool out of you in return. Get some of your own back." As happened every time he let Ripper talk him into something, he regretted it.

Giles had made the decision to void the test before it was too late. He'd confessed, his own emotions getting the better of him. She stood before him, crying, raging, and suddenly he was two years in the past telling Buffy of the Codex's prediction that she was to die. Except this time, it wasn't the Master. This time Giles himself was the big bad menace in the dark, and he hated himself for that.

Giles had gone after her, to protect her, give his life for her, anything she'd allow him to do. That act of compassion had cost him his position as her Watcher. Too late, he was bound to this girl by bonds stronger than any label could attest to. If Buffy would still have him. He tended to her wound, tears welling up in her eyes, pain, so much pain. Giles wanted to hold her so much. No. He had done enough. She had tentatively put her hands on his shoulders and when he didn't back away, she embraced him. He wanted to cry, but that was a selfishness he didn't deserve. He hugged her back, tightly. It was for her. Only for her, just as everything was.

The new Watcher would be arriving soon. It was okay. Buffy would still listen to him. Wouldn't she? He could handle this. His vision returned to the glass in his hand. Yes. When things got truly bleak, wasn't this always how he handled things.

Ripper scoffed at him. "Look at you Mate. Just look at this. You hate the booze. You hate me. But...when push comes to shove you'd be unable to cope without either of us wouldn't you?"

"THAT'S NOT TRUE!" Giles hurled the glass at his fireplace with all the force he could muster. It exploded with the impact, the liquid running down the brick.

"Ooh, isn't it? Buffy barely listened to a word you said when you were her Watcher. Now you're just some stuffy English prat who she can't even scrub away."

"If she wanted me to go, sh-she'd tell me to!" He yelled into the empty room.

"Would she? Would she risk it? Maybe she's afraid of upsetting you. You do handle crisis so well. Maybe she doesn't want to anger you. After all, last time she did, you stuck a needle in her, didn't ya?"

"No!" Giles' hands were over his ears.

"She's afraid of you Mate."

"NO!" He grabbed the neck of the Scotch bottle and flung it, shattering against the kitchen counter. "Shut the hell up! You don't know what you're talking about!" Ripper laughed maniacally in the back of his mind. "Shut-up!" Giles went to his liquor cabinet and pulled the doors open wide. "I! Don't! Need! This!" Each word punctuated by him throwing another bottle against the wall, glass and alcohol spraying the room.

Soon the cabinet was empty, but the laughter continued. He stumbled to the mirror on the wall, looking his reflection in the eye. "And I don't need you! You bastard." He punched the glass. It burst into shards, cutting crimson crisscrosses into his fist. Giles pulled open the shirt he wore, buttons spraying to the floor to mingle with the glass. He tugged the fabric down off his arms and bent to retrieve a jagged piece of the glass. He curled his bicep, looking with disgust at the black swirled brand on the cream colored skin there. "No more of you." He sliced the edge of the mirror piece across the Mark of Eyghon over and over again until his blood obscured the tattoo completely. The pain brought him to his knees. Giles winced as his legs landed in yet more glass, blood now pooling on his floor. He dropped the shard which had also cut into the palm and fingers of the assaulting hand.

Giles sat staring at his hands, tears of fear and pain on his face. He was bleeding. He hurt all over. It was fairly clear he had done it to himself. And he couldn't remember doing it. He couldn't even remember why. Some inner sense of self-preservation stood him on shaky legs and marched him out his front door.

He drove slowly, turns becoming difficult as the wheel became slick with his blood. Giles staggered into the emergency room. The young blonde nurse looked up from behind the counter and her eyes went wide. "My God, Mr. Giles! What's happened to you now?!" She raced around the corner with a wheelchair, barely in time as he collapsed into it.

His head lulled back as he fought against unconsciousness from the blood loss. His hand roved up the arm of the nurse. "Buffy? Buffy...I'm so sorry!" He burst into tears, sobbing pitifully, and then he passed out.

He slipped in and out of consciousness for hours. When Giles finally awoke with a clear head, it was in a hospital room lit only by a dim florescent light. A figure sat silhouetted in an uncomfortable looking chair, just at his side. He blinked to clear his vision and found Buffy watching him. "Giles?" He could tell by her voice that she had been crying.

"Buffy, I-I'm sorry I worried you. I w-was moving a m-mirror and it slipped. Made a terrible mess of myself I'm afraid."

"Yes, that's what the nurse told me. But..."

"Yes?"

"I...I saw the apartment."

"Oh."

"What happened?"

"I...don't know." His voice was quiet and afraid. "I don't remember."

"Were you drinking?"

He could lie here. Make it easier on himself. Would she even believe the truth? "No. I never made it that far."

"Oh. Then why?"

"I DON'T KNOW!!! I already told you!" He could feel the tears coming. "Dammit! Dammit!" He rolled to his side, putting his back to her, and wept copiously.

Buffy stood, crying now herself and reached a trembling hand for his shoulder. When he didn't pull away at her touch, she moved her arms around him and hugged as hard as she could. It was almost as if she was trying to pull his pain inside and take it onto herself. Giles leaned back into her. She placed her tear-dampened cheek against atop his own and made soothing sounds, like a mother hushing her baby, until he quieted down some. "I love you Giles," she whispered to him. "Whatever this is, I'll help you get through it. I promise." He cried himself to sleep as Buffy rocked him in her arms.