TITLE: Resurgence - Chapter 10: Familiar Strangers II - Midnight Conversations
AUTHOR: Sheri Steeves
FEEDBACK: Please! Post to list or send e-mail to sheristeeves at hotmail dot com. You know what to replace with what.
ARCHIVE/POSTED: alt.tv.buffy-v-slayer.creative, www.fanfiction.net/profile.php?userid=67481, and www.geocities.com/buffyafterdark. If anyone else wants it, just ask.
SPOILERS: Takes place after Season 5 - The Gift. Sort of AU.
RATING: PG
DISCLAIMER: Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy etc own all of this. I just want to borrow them for a while. Katherine & Tomas are wholly figments of my imagination. Joss can have them if I get Spike. Or Giles. Or Xander. I'm not picky.
SUMMARY: Giles learns that the ultimate price has been paid for a mistake made in his youth. Tomas discovers the mistakes, secrets, and betrayals that have shaped his life. Between them, a common enemy is found.
Resurgence
Chapter 10: Familiar Strangers II - Midnight Conversations
Alone in the kitchen, Giles filled the kettle. His hands shook as he set it on the stove and reached to turn on the burner under the kettle.
** I have a son. **
The newly discovered fact burned in his thoughts, overshadowing even the shocking revelations that had come to light this past evening. Half-formed questions and angry accusations randomly came to mind, each one disappearing as soon as he grasped it, only to be replaced by another. Taking a deep breath to try and quell his nervousness, Giles focused on setting out the teapot, gathering milk, sugar and lemon and the other niceties of an English tea, and arranging them neatly on the counter. The rest of the gang had left for home and what sleep they would get for the remainder of the night. Those that lived in the house on Revello Drive had made their way to their respective beds. Ms. Pierce, still under the effects of Tomas' sleep spell, had been covered with an afghan and left in the armchair.
The hushed tones of Tomas' conversation with the Council floated into the kitchen from the dining room, just loud enough to almost make out what was being said. With dismay, Giles realised his hands were still shaking as he set two cups on the counter. Gripping the edge of the counter tightly, he was staring unseeing out the kitchen window when he heard Tomas fold his cell phone shut with a click, followed by the sound of the younger man entering the kitchen. In the mirror the darkness made of the kitchen window their eyes met as Tomas stood hesitantly on the other side of the room. Across the island still cluttered with the remnants of the previous night's research, father and son stared at each other's reflection in the window, neither knowing quite where to start.
They both jumped at the shrill whistle of the kettle. Reaching for the madly screeching kettle, Giles was thankful for something to do to break the awkward moment. Pouring the boiling water into the teapot, he swished it around to warm the pot and then dumped the contents in the sink. Refilling the teapot, he added two teabags and set it on the counter to steep.
"My... ah...apologies for the mess..." Giles gestured for Tomas to sit as he shoved some papers aside, clearing a small area on the cluttered island.
"That's fine, really." Tomas pulled out a stool on the opposite side of the island, then continued. " Your Slayer's quite something."
'That's where you're wrong. " Giles chuckled ruefully. "Buffy is not my Slayer. If she is anyone's Slayer, she is her own. Always has been. I count myself fortunate that she comes to me for guidance. Sometimes she even listens to what I have to say." Giles paused for a moment, but anxious to fill the silence that threatened to come between them, he continued.
"That's why the Council has never been able to establish a hold over her, try as they might. It's also why she's the only Slayer to last this long. Her ability to grow, to change, and to adapt is her strength. The demon world is changing. The dogma of the Council is not. Therein lies its weakness' and its downfall." Giles trailed off awkwardly, aware that he was avoiding the issues at hand.
Silence fell after Giles' comments. Tomas regarded the man in front of him. He wasn't anything like he had been led to believe. He obviously cared deeply for the Slayer and her friends, as they cared for him in return. That he looked upon Buffy as a daughter was apparent in his defence of her, in his very tone of voice as he talked about her. Unbidden, a shard of envy, of jealously, pricked him. *He* was the son. *He* should be the one to bring those feelings of loyalty out. Deliberately, Tomas squashed those feelings. Those were the feelings of an immature little boy. He was an adult now. Coolly, he responded.
"We're not here to discuss your views on Council policy."
"No..., no, I suppose we're not." Giles answered, wondering what he had said that had angered the young man.
Silence fell between them again, shadowing the awkwardness of the situation. Tomas played with some dried herbs left on the table, picking off the small blossoms and crumbling them to dust between his fingers. Big secret agent guy he might be in the Council, but now, here, everything was completely different from what he could ever had imagined it would be. Face to face with the one man he had thought never to meet, a man he had thought dead for so long, he was suddenly wracked with nerves and feelings he had thought he was long past. At the sound of Mr. Giles - he couldn't call him father, not yet - clearing his throat, Tomas looked up. Blue eyes met blue eyes, each face a mirror altered only by time.
"Looking at you is like looking into the past. Like a… a picture come to life… " Giles' voice was shaky, betraying his emotional state despite the calm expression on his face. His hands only shook slightly as he placed two cups of tea and the milk, sugar and lemon in front of his son.
"It's quite odd from this end as well." Tomas set the herb down, sweeping the crumbled bits neatly in a pile beside the stripped branches.
"You must have a thousand questions… " Giles sat down across from his son, wrapping his hands around his own cup of tea, drawing what strength he could from its warmth and normalcy.
"I should...I did... but right now they all seem to be eluding me... " Tomas glanced up at Giles, then focused on adding lemon to his tea. It was easier to continue when he wasn't looking at his father.
" You have to understand... I didn't even know you existed - that you were alive, until recently."
"That makes two of us then..." Giles paused, taking a deep breath before continuing, "Your mother..."
"You knew my mother." Tomas interrupted, unable to keep the incredulity out of his voice. Glancing at his father, he saw the slightly bemused expression on his face. Of course Giles *knew* his mother. Realising he hadn't quite made himself clear, he continued.
"I mean... you remembered her. I could tell by your face when I said who I was."
"You seem surprised that I should. Oh, yes, I remember Tessa. I've never forgotten. I don't think I could forget her even if I tried."
"Then why did you leave her?" Tomas' voice was low, anguished. The voice of a man who had grown up watching his mother love a dead man his entire life. The voice of a man who had watched his mother steadfastly ignore the evidence of desertion presented to her time and time again. The voice of a boy forced to grow up too fast, a boy who longed for a father. He was asking for her, but his tone gave it away. He was really asking 'Why did you leave me?'
"Leave her? I never left her! I most certainly would not have left her if I knew she was pregnant. She left me!"
"That's not what..." Tomas paused, quickly catching himself before he let slip information better left unsaid, " what I was told."
Looking at the barely concealed anger on the face of his son, Giles realised this was getting them nowhere. He too, had caught the pause, the hint of a barely withheld name. Still more secrets. With a sigh, he removed his glasses, setting them down in front if him. Rubbing at the tension gathering behind his eyes, a tension born of the results of the day's events and revelations, as well as physical and emotion exhaustion, he realised the need to start this from another angle. Replacing his glasses, he looked back at Tomas.
"Accusations won't get us anywhere at this point. As much as we would like to, we can't change the past. Can we start with the fact that I did not even know you existed and that I would never have let Tessa leave if had known she was pregnant?"
"She DIDN'T leave you..."
"I'm afraid that's very much like what it seemed from my side of things at the time. I will admit it was a very conflicting time for me. I was dealing with the repercussions of some astoundingly bad decisions. Your mother was the best part of what was a painful and confusing period of my life. She is the only part of that mess that I care to remember. The rest of what happened affected the entire direction of my life. And I see now that it had bigger repercussions than I knew. There are two sides to every story. I would like to hear hers, if you are willing to tell me."
Tomas regarded the older man as he contemplated what he had asked him. Tomas knew what he had been told about Rupert Giles - both by the Council and by his mother. Looking at the man in front of him, Tomas thought back on Giles' actions today regarding the Slayer and his manner towards the others of this rag tag little group. And now, Giles had requested to hear his mother's side of the events, instead trying to refute what Tomas knew with his version of the long ago events. Tomas faced the truth of the growing realisation that his mother had been right about his father, and he had been wrong to believe what he had been told by certain Council members. He knew now that they had simply told him what he, as a rebellious, angry teenager, had wanted to hear. His suspicions of his mentor using him and his anger to further his cause, his own position in the Council, were perilously close to being proven to be true. Giles was not the only Watcher here to have his ideals and supports pulled out from under him. That was something he would deal with later, after all this, when he was back in England. Now, here in Sunnydale, he had a chance to finally put to rest the questions, secrets and lies that had always been a part of his life. Taking a deep breath, he started at the beginning.
"She told me you met in a magic shop."
"Yes. A small little place dealing with the occult that was tucked away in one of the seedier parts of London." Some of the tension left Giles' face as he recalled that long ago, happier time. " I used to go there for supplies. She was apprenticed to the owner. I actually stumbled onto the place quite by accident looking for another shop. But one look at Tessa... I was smitten. I'm afraid she thought me rather mad for a while." Catching Tomas' perplexed look, Giles smiled ruefully and explained. "I bought a rather large assortment of magical items and ingredients before I worked up the nerve to ask her out."
"She never knew what happened to you. The last time she saw you was the afternoon you told her about the coven you were part of. You told her that something had gone very, very wrong and that you were going to try and fix it that night. That was why you needed her to get the black arts grimoire and the ingredients from the shop. The grimoire and spell ingredients that weren't for sale. The ones kept locked in the back room." Watching his father's face, he saw no denial of the past events so far, just a twist of shame at the mention of the stolen items.
"You were supposed to meet the next day. It was her day off and you always spent the day together. You were going to tell her everything about the coven and the reason you needed the grimoire. She waited at the park all morning. She tried to ring you but only ever got a recorded message stating that the number was no longer in service. When she went to your flat, she found it empty. No trace of you, no sign that anyone had even lived there recently. The landlady would only tell her that you had left no forwarding address. She knew no names, no friends to try and contact. The next day she was fired from her job at the occult shop and her apprenticeship terminated due to theft. A month later she realised she was pregnant."
"Tell me the rest." Giles' voice was hoarse with emotions kept in check, but his expression showed only resolve to hear things to the end.
"There's not much left to tell. Except that you left behind a hell of a woman. She raised me by herself. Worked two, sometimes three jobs to support us, but she did it. And through all that, she never stopped loving you. You abandoned her, and she still believes in you." Tomas's voice showed the incredulity that he felt that his mother could still love this man after all she had been through. He paused here, glancing at his father, watching for a reaction to what he had said. A small measure of surprise and hope flashed across the older man's face as he realised that there may still be some small chance to make things right with his past. Giles said nothing though, knowing instinctively that Tomas wasn't finished, and that there was more to come.
"When I was sixteen, the Council approached me. They'd been watching me my entire life, waiting to see if I would follow my father's destiny. Seems that I had and they wanted me to train to be a Watcher. That was the first really big argument Mum and I ever had. She'd already lost you to the machinations of the Council, or so she believed, and didn't want to lose me as well. It was then that I found out that they had been sending her monthly stipends since the day I was born." Tomas watched the swift play of anger across Giles' face. The ferocity of it surprised him. As did his response. For the first time, Tomas could see where his father's nickname of The Ripper came from. The deadly calm of Giles' voice only enhanced the depth of his anger.
"They knew. All these years they've kept you from me. Just another pawn in their game. Blast them all. Blast them all to hell!" Giles abruptly stood. The legs of the stool he had been sitting on scraped roughly against the tile of the kitchen floor. Fighting to control his anger, to contain the Ripper, he whirled, hands grasping the side of the counter so hard the knuckles popped. His breathing ragged, he stared for long moments at his reflection framed in the darkness of the kitchen window.
Tomas waited for a moment to let his father's anger cool a bit before continuing. He was familiar with the type of anger Giles was struggling to control. He had inherited more than his looks from his father. When he heard the ragged breathing begin to slow, he looked at his father's reflection. As blue eyes met, Giles turned, leaning against the counter with his arms crossed as he nodded for Tomas to continue.
"Mum never spent a drop of it. She knew that the source of the money was also behind your disappearance. She kept it though, set it aside for me, in case something ever happened to her. She thought that my knowing about the Council and the hand she thought they played in your disappearance would dissuade me. It didn't." Tomas paused here again, finishing off the rest of his now cold tea with a grimace. Looking up he met his father's eyes again. It was time for the truth. No more lies, no more evasions.
"I accepted. Not because you were a Watcher. I joined because of the power they dangled in front of me like a carrot. They told me everything an angry sixteen-year old wants to hear. And I listened and believed. They knew I had inherited my mother's magical abilities, as well as your thirst for knowledge and the arcane arts. They told me everything about the father that abandoned me, how he rejected his destiny, scorned the Council and practised dark magics. How he lured my innocent mother into trusting him and then used her. They used my hatred of you to pull me to them. But despite the mounting evidence against you, the *proof* that I presented to Mum, she refused to believe anything the Council told me. Then I found out that you were not only alive, but also still working for the Council, and to top it off, a Watcher to the Slayer. After that, I didn't know what to believe."
Silence hung between the two men as Tomas sat watching his father. Expressions ranged across the older man's face. Anger, sorrow, shame, betrayal, hope. Much the same emotions that he was feeling now as well. Giles spoke, his voice tentative, his anger at the Council buried for now.
"Does she know that..."
"That you're still alive? That I found you?" Tomas interrupted, guessing correctly what his father was asking. "I couldn't tell her. Not until I found out if you were a complete wanker or if my mother's faith in you was justified."
"And... " Giles was afraid to hear the answer.
"The jury's still out on that one, as the American's say."
Giles nodded, approving of Tomas's protection of his mother. Turning from the boy, he took two glasses from the cupboard and a bottle of scotch from a cabinet. Setting them in front of them he poured himself a measure of the golden liquid. Moving the bottle over the other glass he looked to Tomas. At his nod, he poured the same amount for his son. Placing the bottle between them, Giles reached for his glass and took a large drink. Setting his glass down, he started to talk.
"I was twenty-one and studying history at Oxford. At night I was studying the occult with the Council. After two years, I hated it. I grew to loathe the never-ending, monotonous round of study, as well as the demands of the Council and how I must fulfil my destiny. At one point, I snapped, I...I just couldn't take it anymore. Escaping to London, I ran into Randall, Katherine's brother, and his friends. The youngest son and heir of an old and prestigious family, he was a spoiled bully who was used to getting his own way and having everything given to him. He knew I had been studying under the Council, since I had met him through Katherine. Recognising immediately that I could be of some amusement, that I could provide something new and different from the usual round of parties, drugs and alcohol, he introduced me around. It was about the worst sort of crowd that I could have fallen into. It wasn't long before we started practising some of the darker magics. Small stuff at first. Spells that gave feelings of pleasure or ways of getting things without working. We would go to the clubs and use the magics to get free drinks and have women fall all over us. I embraced that whole lifestyle. I had always done what was right, what I should do. Now I could do what I wanted to do, not what I had to do, or what I should do, or what I was told to do. I was very naive, and very, very stupid.
"It was during this period in my life that I met your mother. I fell in love with her at first sight. Once I worked up the nerve to ask her out, we spent nearly every day off after that together. She was pretty, and funny and she liked me. She laughed at my jokes. I never introduced her to the others. I didn't want her seeing that side of me. It was a side of myself I was already regretting I even had. One part of my life was everything I ever wanted, and the other part was spiralling out of control. Ethan and I..."
"Ethan Rayne? " Tomas interrupted him.
"Yes. Ethan Rayne. How did you know?"
"I've heard of him. Lucky guess. Keep going..."
"Ethan and I discovered The Mark of Eyghon. Are you familiar with that?" At Tomas' nod, Giles continued.
'We lost control far sooner than I, in the false confidence of youth, ever thought we could. Randall was taken by Eyghon, possessed completely. We thought we could exorcise the demon ourselves. That is why I had your mother steal the grimoire and the ingredients from the magic store. I didn't have time to tell her the whole story. I promised I would tell her everything when I returned the grimoire to her the next day. I know now that we were dealing with something that was far more powerful than anything we had ever dealt with before. But back then, I thought I could handle anything. Say a few words, an incantation or two, burn some herbs and the problem would be solved. It had always worked that way before. " Pausing, Giles tossed back the rest of his scotch and filled the glass again. Setting the bottle down with a thump, he took a deep breath before continuing.
"The magics I channelled that night were tremendous, more than I had ever tried to use before. I couldn't control it and it wasn't long before it quite overwhelmed me. It was a full two weeks before I woke up and found out what had happened. They weren't even sure at first if I would wake up. It was a month or more after that before I could get out of bed, the magic had burned up so much me.
"Once I was lucid, I discovered that the Council had come to our rescue. They have ways of monitoring magical use and controlling it, stopping it before it gets out of hand. Sort of like sending a SWAT team to a bomb scare. I remembered nothing after the feeling of raw, uncontrollable magic, of incredible, indescribable power. From what they told me, I tried to exorcise the demon from Randall. I failed. In failing, I killed him." Giles stopped, wanting to see his son's reaction to this piece of information. To his surprise, his expression was unchanged. No shock, no surprise, no reaction at all. Then Giles realised that what he was telling his son was information the young man had already known, in one version or another. And that this was not the information his son was really looking for. Dredging up those last, painful days in London, his memory of the exhaustion he felt and the fruitless search for Tessa, Giles struggled to put what he had been going through into words.
"As soon as I could, I went to the magic shop. The entire time I was recovering, it was the thought of her, seeing her, talking to her again that kept me going. I desperately needed to see Tessa myself, needed to hear her voice, to explain my actions myself.
"I thought I was going crazy when the proprietor denied knowing anyone by that name, denied ever having an apprentice. He even declared he had never seen me before, despite all the magical items and supplies I had purchased from him over the last few months. I'm afraid I rather made a scene. With room and board as part of her apprenticeship, the shop was my only link to Tessa. I pushed my way into the back rooms, convinced that she was there and he was hiding her from me. All I found was storage rooms and an empty room that could have been hers, but had been stripped bare. I refused to leave until he told me where Tessa was. The owner called the police and had me forcibly removed as I refused to believe him. The Council bailed me out the next day.
"The next time I looked, I couldn't even find the shop. Where the shop had been was one of those pretentious art deco coffee-houses so popular at the time. I checked and double-checked the street and the surrounding shops. Everything else was the same. The owner of the coffee house swore he had been in that location for several years, as did anyone else in the neighbouring shops - including the owner of the little all-night restaurant where your mother and I used to go to. No one remembered seeing a girl that fit your mother's description. I searched for weeks, down every side street, every back alley, all the little hidden shops, frantically trying to find the magic shop or it's owners again. Every time I saw that particular hair colour, my heart would jump, but it was never her. It's never been her. To this day, I've never found the shop or Tessa."
"The Council."
Giles knew what Tomas was stating with those quiet words. They echoed his own thoughts. For whatever reason, the Council had arranged things so that all of Giles' outside connections where broken, arranged it so that all he had left was the Council. With a sigh, he removed his glasses and set them on the island before him. Elbows on the island, head in his hands, he agreed with Tomas.
"It certainly seems to point to them. I know now for a fact that they have the power to do that sort of thing. Your mother was probably seen as a threat to their plans to keep me in the Council, an outside influence that would keep me from fulfilling my 'destiny'. Once they found out about you, you were just another pawn in their games of power. But I still don't understand how they found out about your mother in the first place."
"Ethan Rayne." Tomas took a small sip of the scotch as he waited for his father's reaction.
Giles' head shot up at the mention of his nemesis' name. His eyes narrowed as he demanded Tomas explain.
"He followed you one Sunday when you went to see Tessa. He knew all about her. It was also Ethan who contacted the Council about the exorcism."
"But why? How?"
"The Council was looking for you. They needed a weak link to provide them information about you and your activities. Ethan Rayne provided that link. In return, he would be sponsored into the Council."
"I knew he was interested in the magics. Almost unnaturally so. But who would sponsor him?"
"Quentin Travers sponsored him but it was found that his 'morals' were too flexible and he never officially completed his training." Tomas stressed the word officially, watching his father to make sure Giles understand the inflection.
"Meaning they make use if him when the job is too dirty for them to do themselves."
"That about covers it."
"And so we come full circle back to Travers. Secrets, betrayals and lies. My whole life has been built on them."
"As has mine." Tomas rotated the glass of scotch in front of him, watching the play of light in the liquid through the cut glass pattern.
"What are your plans now? "
"Regarding you or the Council?"
"Well, both really.
" I've arranged for Ms. Pierce to be retrieved in the morning. I'm to detail my report to my superior, and then I've requested some leave time. I've a lot of thinking to do in regards to the role the Council has played in my life, and in my mother's. I'll know in the morning if it is granted and then..." Tomas waited for a beat, still unsure of the decision he was about to make. Looking up, he searched his father's face for some clue as to which way to decide. The hope he saw there convinced him that this was the right decision.
"Then I'd like to spend some time in Sunnydale, if you'll let me."
"I can't think of anything I'd like better."
--tbc--
AUTHOR: Sheri Steeves
FEEDBACK: Please! Post to list or send e-mail to sheristeeves at hotmail dot com. You know what to replace with what.
ARCHIVE/POSTED: alt.tv.buffy-v-slayer.creative, www.fanfiction.net/profile.php?userid=67481, and www.geocities.com/buffyafterdark. If anyone else wants it, just ask.
SPOILERS: Takes place after Season 5 - The Gift. Sort of AU.
RATING: PG
DISCLAIMER: Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy etc own all of this. I just want to borrow them for a while. Katherine & Tomas are wholly figments of my imagination. Joss can have them if I get Spike. Or Giles. Or Xander. I'm not picky.
SUMMARY: Giles learns that the ultimate price has been paid for a mistake made in his youth. Tomas discovers the mistakes, secrets, and betrayals that have shaped his life. Between them, a common enemy is found.
Resurgence
Chapter 10: Familiar Strangers II - Midnight Conversations
Alone in the kitchen, Giles filled the kettle. His hands shook as he set it on the stove and reached to turn on the burner under the kettle.
** I have a son. **
The newly discovered fact burned in his thoughts, overshadowing even the shocking revelations that had come to light this past evening. Half-formed questions and angry accusations randomly came to mind, each one disappearing as soon as he grasped it, only to be replaced by another. Taking a deep breath to try and quell his nervousness, Giles focused on setting out the teapot, gathering milk, sugar and lemon and the other niceties of an English tea, and arranging them neatly on the counter. The rest of the gang had left for home and what sleep they would get for the remainder of the night. Those that lived in the house on Revello Drive had made their way to their respective beds. Ms. Pierce, still under the effects of Tomas' sleep spell, had been covered with an afghan and left in the armchair.
The hushed tones of Tomas' conversation with the Council floated into the kitchen from the dining room, just loud enough to almost make out what was being said. With dismay, Giles realised his hands were still shaking as he set two cups on the counter. Gripping the edge of the counter tightly, he was staring unseeing out the kitchen window when he heard Tomas fold his cell phone shut with a click, followed by the sound of the younger man entering the kitchen. In the mirror the darkness made of the kitchen window their eyes met as Tomas stood hesitantly on the other side of the room. Across the island still cluttered with the remnants of the previous night's research, father and son stared at each other's reflection in the window, neither knowing quite where to start.
They both jumped at the shrill whistle of the kettle. Reaching for the madly screeching kettle, Giles was thankful for something to do to break the awkward moment. Pouring the boiling water into the teapot, he swished it around to warm the pot and then dumped the contents in the sink. Refilling the teapot, he added two teabags and set it on the counter to steep.
"My... ah...apologies for the mess..." Giles gestured for Tomas to sit as he shoved some papers aside, clearing a small area on the cluttered island.
"That's fine, really." Tomas pulled out a stool on the opposite side of the island, then continued. " Your Slayer's quite something."
'That's where you're wrong. " Giles chuckled ruefully. "Buffy is not my Slayer. If she is anyone's Slayer, she is her own. Always has been. I count myself fortunate that she comes to me for guidance. Sometimes she even listens to what I have to say." Giles paused for a moment, but anxious to fill the silence that threatened to come between them, he continued.
"That's why the Council has never been able to establish a hold over her, try as they might. It's also why she's the only Slayer to last this long. Her ability to grow, to change, and to adapt is her strength. The demon world is changing. The dogma of the Council is not. Therein lies its weakness' and its downfall." Giles trailed off awkwardly, aware that he was avoiding the issues at hand.
Silence fell after Giles' comments. Tomas regarded the man in front of him. He wasn't anything like he had been led to believe. He obviously cared deeply for the Slayer and her friends, as they cared for him in return. That he looked upon Buffy as a daughter was apparent in his defence of her, in his very tone of voice as he talked about her. Unbidden, a shard of envy, of jealously, pricked him. *He* was the son. *He* should be the one to bring those feelings of loyalty out. Deliberately, Tomas squashed those feelings. Those were the feelings of an immature little boy. He was an adult now. Coolly, he responded.
"We're not here to discuss your views on Council policy."
"No..., no, I suppose we're not." Giles answered, wondering what he had said that had angered the young man.
Silence fell between them again, shadowing the awkwardness of the situation. Tomas played with some dried herbs left on the table, picking off the small blossoms and crumbling them to dust between his fingers. Big secret agent guy he might be in the Council, but now, here, everything was completely different from what he could ever had imagined it would be. Face to face with the one man he had thought never to meet, a man he had thought dead for so long, he was suddenly wracked with nerves and feelings he had thought he was long past. At the sound of Mr. Giles - he couldn't call him father, not yet - clearing his throat, Tomas looked up. Blue eyes met blue eyes, each face a mirror altered only by time.
"Looking at you is like looking into the past. Like a… a picture come to life… " Giles' voice was shaky, betraying his emotional state despite the calm expression on his face. His hands only shook slightly as he placed two cups of tea and the milk, sugar and lemon in front of his son.
"It's quite odd from this end as well." Tomas set the herb down, sweeping the crumbled bits neatly in a pile beside the stripped branches.
"You must have a thousand questions… " Giles sat down across from his son, wrapping his hands around his own cup of tea, drawing what strength he could from its warmth and normalcy.
"I should...I did... but right now they all seem to be eluding me... " Tomas glanced up at Giles, then focused on adding lemon to his tea. It was easier to continue when he wasn't looking at his father.
" You have to understand... I didn't even know you existed - that you were alive, until recently."
"That makes two of us then..." Giles paused, taking a deep breath before continuing, "Your mother..."
"You knew my mother." Tomas interrupted, unable to keep the incredulity out of his voice. Glancing at his father, he saw the slightly bemused expression on his face. Of course Giles *knew* his mother. Realising he hadn't quite made himself clear, he continued.
"I mean... you remembered her. I could tell by your face when I said who I was."
"You seem surprised that I should. Oh, yes, I remember Tessa. I've never forgotten. I don't think I could forget her even if I tried."
"Then why did you leave her?" Tomas' voice was low, anguished. The voice of a man who had grown up watching his mother love a dead man his entire life. The voice of a man who had watched his mother steadfastly ignore the evidence of desertion presented to her time and time again. The voice of a boy forced to grow up too fast, a boy who longed for a father. He was asking for her, but his tone gave it away. He was really asking 'Why did you leave me?'
"Leave her? I never left her! I most certainly would not have left her if I knew she was pregnant. She left me!"
"That's not what..." Tomas paused, quickly catching himself before he let slip information better left unsaid, " what I was told."
Looking at the barely concealed anger on the face of his son, Giles realised this was getting them nowhere. He too, had caught the pause, the hint of a barely withheld name. Still more secrets. With a sigh, he removed his glasses, setting them down in front if him. Rubbing at the tension gathering behind his eyes, a tension born of the results of the day's events and revelations, as well as physical and emotion exhaustion, he realised the need to start this from another angle. Replacing his glasses, he looked back at Tomas.
"Accusations won't get us anywhere at this point. As much as we would like to, we can't change the past. Can we start with the fact that I did not even know you existed and that I would never have let Tessa leave if had known she was pregnant?"
"She DIDN'T leave you..."
"I'm afraid that's very much like what it seemed from my side of things at the time. I will admit it was a very conflicting time for me. I was dealing with the repercussions of some astoundingly bad decisions. Your mother was the best part of what was a painful and confusing period of my life. She is the only part of that mess that I care to remember. The rest of what happened affected the entire direction of my life. And I see now that it had bigger repercussions than I knew. There are two sides to every story. I would like to hear hers, if you are willing to tell me."
Tomas regarded the older man as he contemplated what he had asked him. Tomas knew what he had been told about Rupert Giles - both by the Council and by his mother. Looking at the man in front of him, Tomas thought back on Giles' actions today regarding the Slayer and his manner towards the others of this rag tag little group. And now, Giles had requested to hear his mother's side of the events, instead trying to refute what Tomas knew with his version of the long ago events. Tomas faced the truth of the growing realisation that his mother had been right about his father, and he had been wrong to believe what he had been told by certain Council members. He knew now that they had simply told him what he, as a rebellious, angry teenager, had wanted to hear. His suspicions of his mentor using him and his anger to further his cause, his own position in the Council, were perilously close to being proven to be true. Giles was not the only Watcher here to have his ideals and supports pulled out from under him. That was something he would deal with later, after all this, when he was back in England. Now, here in Sunnydale, he had a chance to finally put to rest the questions, secrets and lies that had always been a part of his life. Taking a deep breath, he started at the beginning.
"She told me you met in a magic shop."
"Yes. A small little place dealing with the occult that was tucked away in one of the seedier parts of London." Some of the tension left Giles' face as he recalled that long ago, happier time. " I used to go there for supplies. She was apprenticed to the owner. I actually stumbled onto the place quite by accident looking for another shop. But one look at Tessa... I was smitten. I'm afraid she thought me rather mad for a while." Catching Tomas' perplexed look, Giles smiled ruefully and explained. "I bought a rather large assortment of magical items and ingredients before I worked up the nerve to ask her out."
"She never knew what happened to you. The last time she saw you was the afternoon you told her about the coven you were part of. You told her that something had gone very, very wrong and that you were going to try and fix it that night. That was why you needed her to get the black arts grimoire and the ingredients from the shop. The grimoire and spell ingredients that weren't for sale. The ones kept locked in the back room." Watching his father's face, he saw no denial of the past events so far, just a twist of shame at the mention of the stolen items.
"You were supposed to meet the next day. It was her day off and you always spent the day together. You were going to tell her everything about the coven and the reason you needed the grimoire. She waited at the park all morning. She tried to ring you but only ever got a recorded message stating that the number was no longer in service. When she went to your flat, she found it empty. No trace of you, no sign that anyone had even lived there recently. The landlady would only tell her that you had left no forwarding address. She knew no names, no friends to try and contact. The next day she was fired from her job at the occult shop and her apprenticeship terminated due to theft. A month later she realised she was pregnant."
"Tell me the rest." Giles' voice was hoarse with emotions kept in check, but his expression showed only resolve to hear things to the end.
"There's not much left to tell. Except that you left behind a hell of a woman. She raised me by herself. Worked two, sometimes three jobs to support us, but she did it. And through all that, she never stopped loving you. You abandoned her, and she still believes in you." Tomas's voice showed the incredulity that he felt that his mother could still love this man after all she had been through. He paused here, glancing at his father, watching for a reaction to what he had said. A small measure of surprise and hope flashed across the older man's face as he realised that there may still be some small chance to make things right with his past. Giles said nothing though, knowing instinctively that Tomas wasn't finished, and that there was more to come.
"When I was sixteen, the Council approached me. They'd been watching me my entire life, waiting to see if I would follow my father's destiny. Seems that I had and they wanted me to train to be a Watcher. That was the first really big argument Mum and I ever had. She'd already lost you to the machinations of the Council, or so she believed, and didn't want to lose me as well. It was then that I found out that they had been sending her monthly stipends since the day I was born." Tomas watched the swift play of anger across Giles' face. The ferocity of it surprised him. As did his response. For the first time, Tomas could see where his father's nickname of The Ripper came from. The deadly calm of Giles' voice only enhanced the depth of his anger.
"They knew. All these years they've kept you from me. Just another pawn in their game. Blast them all. Blast them all to hell!" Giles abruptly stood. The legs of the stool he had been sitting on scraped roughly against the tile of the kitchen floor. Fighting to control his anger, to contain the Ripper, he whirled, hands grasping the side of the counter so hard the knuckles popped. His breathing ragged, he stared for long moments at his reflection framed in the darkness of the kitchen window.
Tomas waited for a moment to let his father's anger cool a bit before continuing. He was familiar with the type of anger Giles was struggling to control. He had inherited more than his looks from his father. When he heard the ragged breathing begin to slow, he looked at his father's reflection. As blue eyes met, Giles turned, leaning against the counter with his arms crossed as he nodded for Tomas to continue.
"Mum never spent a drop of it. She knew that the source of the money was also behind your disappearance. She kept it though, set it aside for me, in case something ever happened to her. She thought that my knowing about the Council and the hand she thought they played in your disappearance would dissuade me. It didn't." Tomas paused here again, finishing off the rest of his now cold tea with a grimace. Looking up he met his father's eyes again. It was time for the truth. No more lies, no more evasions.
"I accepted. Not because you were a Watcher. I joined because of the power they dangled in front of me like a carrot. They told me everything an angry sixteen-year old wants to hear. And I listened and believed. They knew I had inherited my mother's magical abilities, as well as your thirst for knowledge and the arcane arts. They told me everything about the father that abandoned me, how he rejected his destiny, scorned the Council and practised dark magics. How he lured my innocent mother into trusting him and then used her. They used my hatred of you to pull me to them. But despite the mounting evidence against you, the *proof* that I presented to Mum, she refused to believe anything the Council told me. Then I found out that you were not only alive, but also still working for the Council, and to top it off, a Watcher to the Slayer. After that, I didn't know what to believe."
Silence hung between the two men as Tomas sat watching his father. Expressions ranged across the older man's face. Anger, sorrow, shame, betrayal, hope. Much the same emotions that he was feeling now as well. Giles spoke, his voice tentative, his anger at the Council buried for now.
"Does she know that..."
"That you're still alive? That I found you?" Tomas interrupted, guessing correctly what his father was asking. "I couldn't tell her. Not until I found out if you were a complete wanker or if my mother's faith in you was justified."
"And... " Giles was afraid to hear the answer.
"The jury's still out on that one, as the American's say."
Giles nodded, approving of Tomas's protection of his mother. Turning from the boy, he took two glasses from the cupboard and a bottle of scotch from a cabinet. Setting them in front of them he poured himself a measure of the golden liquid. Moving the bottle over the other glass he looked to Tomas. At his nod, he poured the same amount for his son. Placing the bottle between them, Giles reached for his glass and took a large drink. Setting his glass down, he started to talk.
"I was twenty-one and studying history at Oxford. At night I was studying the occult with the Council. After two years, I hated it. I grew to loathe the never-ending, monotonous round of study, as well as the demands of the Council and how I must fulfil my destiny. At one point, I snapped, I...I just couldn't take it anymore. Escaping to London, I ran into Randall, Katherine's brother, and his friends. The youngest son and heir of an old and prestigious family, he was a spoiled bully who was used to getting his own way and having everything given to him. He knew I had been studying under the Council, since I had met him through Katherine. Recognising immediately that I could be of some amusement, that I could provide something new and different from the usual round of parties, drugs and alcohol, he introduced me around. It was about the worst sort of crowd that I could have fallen into. It wasn't long before we started practising some of the darker magics. Small stuff at first. Spells that gave feelings of pleasure or ways of getting things without working. We would go to the clubs and use the magics to get free drinks and have women fall all over us. I embraced that whole lifestyle. I had always done what was right, what I should do. Now I could do what I wanted to do, not what I had to do, or what I should do, or what I was told to do. I was very naive, and very, very stupid.
"It was during this period in my life that I met your mother. I fell in love with her at first sight. Once I worked up the nerve to ask her out, we spent nearly every day off after that together. She was pretty, and funny and she liked me. She laughed at my jokes. I never introduced her to the others. I didn't want her seeing that side of me. It was a side of myself I was already regretting I even had. One part of my life was everything I ever wanted, and the other part was spiralling out of control. Ethan and I..."
"Ethan Rayne? " Tomas interrupted him.
"Yes. Ethan Rayne. How did you know?"
"I've heard of him. Lucky guess. Keep going..."
"Ethan and I discovered The Mark of Eyghon. Are you familiar with that?" At Tomas' nod, Giles continued.
'We lost control far sooner than I, in the false confidence of youth, ever thought we could. Randall was taken by Eyghon, possessed completely. We thought we could exorcise the demon ourselves. That is why I had your mother steal the grimoire and the ingredients from the magic store. I didn't have time to tell her the whole story. I promised I would tell her everything when I returned the grimoire to her the next day. I know now that we were dealing with something that was far more powerful than anything we had ever dealt with before. But back then, I thought I could handle anything. Say a few words, an incantation or two, burn some herbs and the problem would be solved. It had always worked that way before. " Pausing, Giles tossed back the rest of his scotch and filled the glass again. Setting the bottle down with a thump, he took a deep breath before continuing.
"The magics I channelled that night were tremendous, more than I had ever tried to use before. I couldn't control it and it wasn't long before it quite overwhelmed me. It was a full two weeks before I woke up and found out what had happened. They weren't even sure at first if I would wake up. It was a month or more after that before I could get out of bed, the magic had burned up so much me.
"Once I was lucid, I discovered that the Council had come to our rescue. They have ways of monitoring magical use and controlling it, stopping it before it gets out of hand. Sort of like sending a SWAT team to a bomb scare. I remembered nothing after the feeling of raw, uncontrollable magic, of incredible, indescribable power. From what they told me, I tried to exorcise the demon from Randall. I failed. In failing, I killed him." Giles stopped, wanting to see his son's reaction to this piece of information. To his surprise, his expression was unchanged. No shock, no surprise, no reaction at all. Then Giles realised that what he was telling his son was information the young man had already known, in one version or another. And that this was not the information his son was really looking for. Dredging up those last, painful days in London, his memory of the exhaustion he felt and the fruitless search for Tessa, Giles struggled to put what he had been going through into words.
"As soon as I could, I went to the magic shop. The entire time I was recovering, it was the thought of her, seeing her, talking to her again that kept me going. I desperately needed to see Tessa myself, needed to hear her voice, to explain my actions myself.
"I thought I was going crazy when the proprietor denied knowing anyone by that name, denied ever having an apprentice. He even declared he had never seen me before, despite all the magical items and supplies I had purchased from him over the last few months. I'm afraid I rather made a scene. With room and board as part of her apprenticeship, the shop was my only link to Tessa. I pushed my way into the back rooms, convinced that she was there and he was hiding her from me. All I found was storage rooms and an empty room that could have been hers, but had been stripped bare. I refused to leave until he told me where Tessa was. The owner called the police and had me forcibly removed as I refused to believe him. The Council bailed me out the next day.
"The next time I looked, I couldn't even find the shop. Where the shop had been was one of those pretentious art deco coffee-houses so popular at the time. I checked and double-checked the street and the surrounding shops. Everything else was the same. The owner of the coffee house swore he had been in that location for several years, as did anyone else in the neighbouring shops - including the owner of the little all-night restaurant where your mother and I used to go to. No one remembered seeing a girl that fit your mother's description. I searched for weeks, down every side street, every back alley, all the little hidden shops, frantically trying to find the magic shop or it's owners again. Every time I saw that particular hair colour, my heart would jump, but it was never her. It's never been her. To this day, I've never found the shop or Tessa."
"The Council."
Giles knew what Tomas was stating with those quiet words. They echoed his own thoughts. For whatever reason, the Council had arranged things so that all of Giles' outside connections where broken, arranged it so that all he had left was the Council. With a sigh, he removed his glasses and set them on the island before him. Elbows on the island, head in his hands, he agreed with Tomas.
"It certainly seems to point to them. I know now for a fact that they have the power to do that sort of thing. Your mother was probably seen as a threat to their plans to keep me in the Council, an outside influence that would keep me from fulfilling my 'destiny'. Once they found out about you, you were just another pawn in their games of power. But I still don't understand how they found out about your mother in the first place."
"Ethan Rayne." Tomas took a small sip of the scotch as he waited for his father's reaction.
Giles' head shot up at the mention of his nemesis' name. His eyes narrowed as he demanded Tomas explain.
"He followed you one Sunday when you went to see Tessa. He knew all about her. It was also Ethan who contacted the Council about the exorcism."
"But why? How?"
"The Council was looking for you. They needed a weak link to provide them information about you and your activities. Ethan Rayne provided that link. In return, he would be sponsored into the Council."
"I knew he was interested in the magics. Almost unnaturally so. But who would sponsor him?"
"Quentin Travers sponsored him but it was found that his 'morals' were too flexible and he never officially completed his training." Tomas stressed the word officially, watching his father to make sure Giles understand the inflection.
"Meaning they make use if him when the job is too dirty for them to do themselves."
"That about covers it."
"And so we come full circle back to Travers. Secrets, betrayals and lies. My whole life has been built on them."
"As has mine." Tomas rotated the glass of scotch in front of him, watching the play of light in the liquid through the cut glass pattern.
"What are your plans now? "
"Regarding you or the Council?"
"Well, both really.
" I've arranged for Ms. Pierce to be retrieved in the morning. I'm to detail my report to my superior, and then I've requested some leave time. I've a lot of thinking to do in regards to the role the Council has played in my life, and in my mother's. I'll know in the morning if it is granted and then..." Tomas waited for a beat, still unsure of the decision he was about to make. Looking up, he searched his father's face for some clue as to which way to decide. The hope he saw there convinced him that this was the right decision.
"Then I'd like to spend some time in Sunnydale, if you'll let me."
"I can't think of anything I'd like better."
--tbc--