Here's all you need to know from Comic canon:
(1) Buffy and Xander live in a castle in Scotland, organizing Slayers.
(2) Willow is on a journey for magical knowledge that takes her odd places
(3) Giles recruited Faith, in secret, to help him take down a rogue Slayer. Buffy and Faith had a pretty nasty altercation about it. The mission was ultimately successful but Buffy is *furious* with both of them. Buffy and Giles have not spoken since it happened.
Also, I've set Giles's home base in London, though he has the "estate" in Bath.
Buffy closed her umbrella and shook the droplets onto the mat outside the door. She
was just far enough under the awning that she didn't need it for the moment. She pressed the buzzer again, more firmly than the first time, as though that would make it somehow buzzier.
The door swung wide and standing behind it was the last person she had expected (hoped) to see.
"Hey B. You lost?"
Buffy glared. "Seriously? What, do you like, live here now?"
Faith grinned, dark eyes flashing. "Well, you know, me 'n' Giles got our own thing going. Since you kinda dumped us both."
"I did no such thing. To 'dump' you, I'd have to have taken you on in the first place," Buffy replied snidely, sidestepping the brunette and placing her umbrella in the stand near the doorway.
"Fine. You and me were never a thing but you know Giles needs a slayer in his life to keep things exciting." She drew out the last word in an obscene implication, eyebrows twitching upward.
Everything inside Buffy suddenly went cold and she knew it had nothing to do with the rain. "Don't be gross."
"What? Don't think your stuffy old Watcher would wanna get down with a girl like me?" Faith's eyes narrowed but her grin spread wider. "Think we can't make like bunnies every night?"
Buffy scoffed loudly, arms crossing over her chest to hide the unexpected tremor in her hands. It wasn't true. Probably wasn't. This was just Faith being Faith and trying to rile her up, she reminded herself. Though why this was the tack she chose was anyone's guess. And why it was working so well was something Buffy wasn't really ready to think about just now.
"People of London probably think we brought the earthquakes back with us from Cali," Faith taunted, stretching her arms over her head and arching her back like a cat. Even in her sweater and jeans, she was a deeply sensuous creature.
The kind of woman that any man might find irresistible, Buffy thought. Even a sensible, stuffy Englishman. Her lips flattened into a thin line.
"Faith." Giles appeared in the hallway, drying his hands with a red and white striped dish towel. His eyes were on Buffy though he addressed the other girl, his tone stern, "Enough."
Faith visibly deflated for a brief moment. She recovered quickly, rolling her eyes at the older man. "Just having a lil fun with your honor roll kid."
"I don't appreciate it." He met and held Faith's gaze, a meaningful look passing between them.
Faith looked away first, stuffing her hands into her pockets. "She can't take a joke so fuck me, right?" she muttered.
Giles frowned and opened his mouth as though to speak again but Faith waved him off with one hand.
"Whatever, I was just headed out to patrol and then hit a few clubs. Not necessarily in that order."
Giles nodded, his face softening. "You had two glasses of wine at dinner."
Faith's eyes darted to Buffy and returned to Giles. "I know," she said in voice so low that Buffy could just barely make out the words. She and Giles again seemed to wordlessly communicate, quick flashes of reciprocal expressions across each of their faces. Faith smiled at last, an unfamiliar softness in her gaze. "I'll be careful." She drew an X over her breast with one fingertip. "Cross my heart."
Heart in her throat, Buffy watched her former watcher and former… ally(? Nemesis? Frenemy?) interacting with such ease, almost a kind of intimacy. Bile churned in her stomach as that last word crossed her mind.
With a wan smile and a weary air, Giles bid Faith farewell.
Faith inclined her head once at Buffy before bounding out the front door, coatless, hatless, seemingly mindless of the rain.
Left alone in the shadowy entrance way, Buffy and Giles studied one another for a long moment. He seemed apprehensive, his adam's apple bobbing and eyes traveling restlessly over her face. Good, she thought. He doesn't deserve to feel all cozy with me after that display. She immediately regretted the bitter taste that notion left and grimaced without intending to.
"We were… just having some supper," Giles gestured toward the door, his voice gentle, almost apologetic.
"Feeding the needy? How charitable," she observed, dryly.
He cleared his throat, looking down at the towel he'd been absentmindedly twisting in both hands. "You know the two of you are really very -"
"Keep going with that observation and I will make you eat that dish towel."
"Proving my point," he shot back, a half smile quirking one corner of his mouth.
Buffy made a sound of distaste at having walked into that particular trap. "Yeah well, we'll talk when my body count has wracked up a bit higher." She knew she'd hit home when a look of pain crossed his countenance. She wished her perfectly aimed jab wasn't followed by an internal stab of regret but, hey, no one can have it all.
"I can, uh, see we've dispensed with the pleasantries. So, what brought you to my door after all this… time? Not that I'm not delighted." He took a cautious step toward her, flipping the towel over one shoulder.
For the first time, Buffy noticed that he wasn't wearing a sweater or a suit. Instead, he was standing there in a wrinkled t-shirt bearing the logo for a band she didn't recognize. There were a few holes at the shoulder and near the hem. Beneath that, he was in a loose pair of flannel pajama pants and dark colored slippers, no socks. For Giles, it felt practically like nudity. She swallowed and looked away, taking in the dark mahogany paneling of the hallway.
"Sorry to have dropped in on bonding time with your new pet slayer but I had something important to tell you." She checked his face for a reaction but this time his expression remained neutral.
"I do have a phone. Not that you've noticed in the last year."
Buffy gave a short, humorless laugh. "Do we really want to go there, Mr. Cat's in the Cradle?"
Giles flinched, hands spread in front of him, palms out. "Fair enough." He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, which was a bit longer than she had remembered. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
Now it was time to focus. She'd come all this way for a reason, after all. Faith had been a major distraction but she couldn't let personal feelings about that whole mess get in the way. Buffy took a deep breath and said it out loud. "I think you're going to die."
He blinked at her three times in rapid succession. "Oh." He scratched his jaw, fingers rasping over day old stubble. "I suppose you ought to stay for awhile and talk, then. Can I take your coat?"
Buffy's brows knit together. "You seem really shook up about this."
"To be fair, I may have finished the bottle of wine Faith opened." He shrugged. "And I suppose a few apocalypses later, it takes a bit longer for the existential dread to really kick in."
Wordlessly, she handed him her raincoat, already half drip-dried in the time she'd been wearing it, and he hung it up in a closet near the door. Standing closer now, she could smell his cologne and the lingering spices from whatever he'd been cooking, something with lots of garlic. She could also see a certain tired glassiness to his eyes that hadn't been immediately apparent. He looked thinner than she remembered, too, his face more angular.
He turned back toward her, forcing her to pretend she hadn't been so focused on his appearance. "I should say… I do appreciate you coming in person."
The tightness she'd been carrying in her chest since before she even got on the train to London slightly eased. She allowed herself the smallest of smiles. "There are very few people I'd shirk Slayer duties for. Lucky you - you're still on the list."
A look of fondness suffused his tired face. "I am… humbled." He lifted a hand and hesitantly curled his fingers around her forearm. "Truly." There wasn't even a hint of the sarcasm or cynicism she'd have expected to accompany such a declaration. His touch was warm and reassuring.
For just the moment, the years and the pain and the lies and secrets all fell away. Buffy realized exactly why her first instinct had been to come to London. Despite the anger she felt, Giles was still too important to lose for good. She'd needed to be here, to see him and to know that he was still solid and real. She gripped his arm in return and gave it an affectionate squeeze.
His thumb swiped over her shoulder joint and an unexpected little frisson of pleasure followed in its wake. She dropped her hand away quickly and he followed suit, clearly oblivious to her odd reaction.
"Ehm, would you like some pie while you tell me exactly how doomed I am?" He pointed back down the hallway to where she could see the lights on in another room.
"Ooh Pie! What kind?"
"Gooseberry. I made it myself. It's not bad, actually."
"What a ringing endorsement. Lead the way, Chef." She bumped her shoulder against his upper arm as she walked past him and into the hall.
Buffy had to admit, Giles may have been understating it. The pie was surprisingly delicious and she had two servings while she slowly filled him in on her recent dreams of his demise.
They always started the same way, back home in Sunnydale, patrolling among the tombstones. He was lecturing her on something Ancient and Very Boring and she was providing very helpful sassy commentary.
("So far it just sounds like a memory," he'd interjected, grinning.
She'd stuck out her tongue at him before continuing.)
In the dream, she always tripped over something - she was never sure what - but Giles had come to her side to help her back up. They'd straighten up and then he'd turn to look at something off to the side. Suddenly, some invisible force seemed to take him captive. His eyes would go wide with terror, his lips white as they formed words of protest. He'd be pulled away, his feet scrabbling against the stones. She'd run after him, arms outstretched, but he'd be whisked away further and faster. Soon they'd no longer be in the graveyard at all but running through some unfamiliar emptiness that made her stomach turn, even in the dreamstate. The world around them grew darker as Giles was pulled back and he stopped struggling against his invisible assailant, going limp in its unseeable grasp. Her legs would start to weaken and her lungs would burn. She'd call after him but she could run no more and would slump to the ground.
In some versions of the dream, she almost caught up to him but her fingers slid through his as though one or both of them had become a ghost. But she never fully caught up to him before she was too exhausted to keep trying. She woke with her heart racing, clutching at sweat-soaked blankets. The dream had come every single night for almost a week before she decided it was time to act.
With Willow off on another magical walkabout, Buffy had consulted with another local wicca of her acquaintance but they could not give her much more information. Wary of her dreams' tendency to be occasionally prophetic, Buffy decided now was not the time to second guess. It also wasn't the time to start spreading the word and cause a potential crisis in Slayer-world, so she opted for stealth - at least until they knew there was an actual reason to panic. She had told Xander she was off on a personal errand, sworn the Wicca to secrecy, and hopped the train to Merry Old.
Giles was quiet for several moments after she finished speaking. There was a slanted line running down his forehead that became more prominent when he was troubled and it was making a very distinct appearance now. He was studying his hands, turning the fork over and over in them, looking deep in thought.
It was funny, Buffy realized, how little she had previously noticed his tendency to touch objects around him, fiddle, keep his hands busy. She wondered idly if that had been why he picked up guitar as a boy. She could almost picture it, all gangly limbs and nervous energy, wrapping those large, dexterous hands around the neck of a guitar, strumming forth something beautiful. Willow had told her that Giles playing guitar was decidedly "hot" but back then she hadn't been able to imagine that concept anywhere in the vicinity of her Watcher.
Maybe she'd ask him to play while she was in town. Providing death wasn't imminent. She wondered what he'd think of the request.
"And the dream has been the same every time?" He asked, dropping the fork onto the table.
She tore her eyes from his hands, face feeling slightly flushed for some reason. "Yeah, except for the times I've tried to touch you and you went all ghosty. That has only happened the last 2 times. The ones before that, I never caught up with you at all."
"So it has progressed in some way. Or regressed. Or," he took off his glasses and rubbed the heels of his palms against his eyes, "fucked if I know."
Buffy frowned. "That's not the most encouraging thing to hear."
Giles lowered his hands and looked at her. "I'm afraid I'm no Jungian expert." At her lifted eyebrow, he clarified, "dream interpretation. Not that there seems to be much room for symbolism in the whole 'getting swept away and turned into a ghost' motif." He took a long breath. "Do you remember anything else? Any smells, sounds? Devil may well be in the details for all we know."
"Mm, devil not so likely, not even a whiff of brimstone."
"Well, thank God for small miracles."
Buffy offered a forlorn smile. "I don't remember any sounds except the talking and that sort of 'whoosh' noise when you're getting, um, taken away."
There was actually one small detail she'd left out but she just couldn't bring herself to tell him. In the dreams, he hadn't just helped her up when she stumbled - he'd held her. Not like a child but like a woman. Like he'd hold a lover. She'd looked up at him in the dream and known with utter certainty that she wanted to kiss him. But then he had looked away, released the embrace. And that was always when the trouble started.
"And what am I talking about? Maybe there's something in that."
Buffy pulled a face, trying not to think about Dream Giles and the unnerving heat between them. "Uh, I'd probably have better luck remembering an actual lecture you gave from those days."
"God I really was a useless pratt, wasn't I?"
The grit in his tone took her entirely by surprise and she turned in her chair to face him fully. "You were doing your job. With all the books and teachings and stuff. I was just, you know, a teenager."
"As you had every right to be," he replied quietly, holding her gaze briefly before looking away, but not before she caught hint of a deep sorrow lurking just below the surface. He began to gather their empty dishes and rise to his feet when she stopped him with a hand on his arm. He paused before allowing her to pull him back into his chair.
"We both had our roles to play, important save-the-world kinda shit that needed doing. And you were the one who got me through it all. I couldn't have been the Slayer I am today without you. So, just stop it with whatever maudlin self pity thing you've got going."
"The slayer you are today is my greatest pride and joy," he insisted. "Becoming your watcher was probably the only thing I've managed to get right in all my time on earth." He looked at her earnestly, eyes wide. "Please never doubt that. No matter how else we may have… differed over the years." He sighed. "But neither can I, in good conscience, take credit where it is not due. It was hardly my influence that made you the frankly rather magnificent woman you've become."
Buffy's head was reeling. They'd had a lot of open and surprisingly honest conversations in the past but this was a side of Giles she was not used to seeing. He'd managed to maintain an air of confidence and self assuredness, even when things went horribly sideways. It was one of his most annoying qualities, really. Self flagellation was an odd color on him.
"I don't think I understand you right now", she admitted, at last.
"You'd be in good company. I'm not really sure I understand myself at the moment." He scrubbed a hand over his face. "I should like to go to bed. I'll try not to die before we get the chance to do some research tomorrow." He stood. "I'll make up the guest room?"
Buffy hesitated. "I mean, I could get a hotel room if that would be—"
"Buffy, I'm offering. I'd be quite happy to have you here."
The offer was genuine and while hotels had their perks, it was getting late to find a decent one in the area. She agreed to stay.