Disclaimer: Buffy The Vampire Slayer and it's 'verse belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. I'm just taking the characters out to play.
Giles reached for his tea cup and scowled when his hand trembled against the china, rattling the cup in the saucer.
"Damn it," he swore quietly to himself.
Being knocked out and concussed what seemed like a millions times was taking a toll. He was happy that his mental capacity still remained sharp, but for how long, he wondered. His memory was already fading bit by bit.
He had managed to keep his condition a secret, with the help of Olivia, for a long time. But when his speech unexpectedly started to slur, he was forced to admit to Buffy and Willow that he was in the early stages of Parkinson's. They had bawled and wailed and blamed themselves for not protecting him better all those years ago in Sunnydale, until Olivia had told them in no uncertain terms that Giles was fine.
He grinned Ripperishly to himself when he remembered the girls' blushes at his wife's rather graphic explanation of just how fine he was.
Now, a year later, and five years after Sunnydale had sunk into the collapsed Hellmouth, he was struggling with a tea cup. The grin faded.
He looked across his dimly lit study at the photo of the four of them, Buffy, Willow, Xander and Giles, all beaming at the camera in the bright California sunlight. He tried to remember which diverted Apocalypse it had been after, or even who had taken the picture. He sighed. Probably didn't matter.
He knew it wasn't the memory problems or the Parkinson's that made him feel that those three children were his. He had been Buffy's Watcher for so long, had seen her and the Scoobies turn into adults. Truly, he felt like their father most of the time. And he had been there more often than any of their fathers.
Looking at Buffy's smile in the photo, he frowned to himself. She was so sad, so much of the time, now. The beautiful golden Slayer had turned into a lovely woman, and he was incredibly proud of her. But her eyes were shadowed and tired. She worked at the Slayer's Academy, raised her sister…and was lonely, he thought. Her friends scattered to the winds. Dawn and Giles were all she had left. And even Dawn was gone now, off to college at Oxford.
He had heard from Dawn that Spike and Angel had appeared on the doorstep of the girls' London home late one night, beaten, bloodied and "stinking of whiskey," according to the younger Summers. They had demanded that Buffy choose one of them. They had gone through Hell in L.A., they deserved to have the battle for her heart put to rest.
Dawn had laughed when she described Buffy looking from one staggering vampire to the other, kissing each one on the forehead, then telling them to leave. "They never even got invited in," Dawn said, chuckling. "She talked to them on the doorstep."
Giles felt sorry for the two vampires, and had sternly chastised Dawn for laughing, but he was glad that Buffy had not chosen to be with either of them. She deserved someone alive. She deserved to be alive, not trapped in the stuffy old Academy trying to teach new Slayers and Watchers.
The phone rang. Giles took a deep breath and scooped up the receiver with little trembling.
"Yes?" he asked. He frowned at the slurring 's'.
"Giles, I know it's hard to talk sometimes, so just listen, okay?" said a familiar breathless voice on the other end.
So he did. And he found himself smiling again.
"It's a bloody brilliant idea," he said, slurring a bit on the 's' again. "Call her right now."
He hung up the phone, and smiled across the room at Buffy's picture.
Maybe this would bring the girl he considered his daughter back to life.