When Giles awoke, he was quite disconcerted. It took him several minutes to figure out why. More than being in a strange place, he was thrown off by the lack of sunshine; it bothered him that he had no idea how many hours he might have slept. Giles tried to imagine what it had been like for Buffy, how he would feel to live without the sun for over a decade. He shuddered, and then resolved to shake it off. He was refreshed, and that was what counted. Now he could start being of use.

He rubbed his face, and winced when he encountered stubble. Ah well, since he lacked both razor and water, there was no help for that. Grinning ruefully to himself, the Watcher wandered into the corridor and began retracing his steps from the night before.

Giles hadn't gone far when he heard the sound of running feet coming from behind him. He spun around in alarm, only to find himself facing a rather diminutive opponent: a boy of eight or nine years. The child had light brown skin and fine curly hair, with the trademark beauty that often seemed to accompany children of mixed parentage. Seeing that he had the stranger's attention, the boy smiled at him and asked, "Are you Giles?"

"Yes," Giles admitted cautiously.

"Me too," the boy responded incongruously. "I'm supposed to show you around. I bet you're hungry."

"I'm fine," Giles said firmly. "I would prefer it if you would just take me to Buffy, please."

"She said you'd say that," the boy grinned. "We'll stop by the food hall on the way to headquarters."

"Well, if you're sure it's on the way," Giles agreed reluctantly. The truth was that he was starved, but his hunger for food was inconsequential in comparison to his craving to see his Slayer. Now that it was morning (or afternoon, or whatever the hell it was), he had trouble believing that he had truly found her. He *needed* to see her again, if for no other reason than to settle his nervous stomach.

"Yep, totally on the way." The boy stared at him intently and Giles had to fight to keep from squirming underneath the lad's gaze. "So what's tweed?"

Giles had prepared himself for difficult or intrusive questions--after all, the boy had probably never met anyone from his parents' native dimension before--but this left him stumped. "I beg your pardon?"

"My mom told me that you always wear tweed, but she couldn't describe it to me very well. So I was wondering what you are wearing that is made out of tweed."

Startled, Giles looked down at himself. He was wearing a blue striped shirt, blue suspenders, and a red striped tie. He vaguely recalled taking off his jacket in the mission before he began his attempt to open the portal. "Um, nothing. I, I'm not wearing any tweed at the moment."

"Huh." The boy seemed disappointed, and Giles wondered whether he should apologize to the boy.

"I do have some clothes made out of tweed at home," he hastened to assure his young companion. "I'm just not wear–" Giles trailed out as the boy's earlier statement came into focus for him. "Your mum told you that I wear tweed? How would... Um, who is your mum?"

"Buffy." He knew who it was, of course he did, but he needed to hear it spoken aloud. The boy's intense hazel eyes were nearly unique; he had only seen the same shade once before, in the eyes of his Slayer. And yet, still, it was a shock. "I thought you would have guessed that when I told you my name."

Giles was still reeling from the knowledge that his young charge was a mother, so perhaps he wasn't at his sharpest at the moment, but that comment made absolutely no sense to him. "Uh, I don't... When did you tell me your name? What is your name?"

"Giles."

"Yes?"

The boy laughed. "No, that is my name. Giles Davis."

Giles was flabbergasted. "Buffy named you after me?" That couldn't be right. It wasn't right. She resented him for forcing her to face her destiny; she would never name her child after him. And yet, apparently, she had.

"She told me that her life just wasn't right without a Giles in it. My dad said that he wouldn't have let her name me Giles, except nobody ever uses their last name down here and he forgot what it was until I was a couple of weeks old."

"Your father..." Of course there was a father. Giles wondered what sort of complications the man would create. Would he try to prevent his Slayer from returning to the Hellmouth? And would Buffy balk at bringing her child into possible danger? Giles shook his head; these were fruitless avenues to pursue as long as they were still in hell. Besides, he wanted to learn more about his namesake. "Your father didn't approve of naming you after me?"

"Oh, he didn't mind that. He just minded the names Giles and Davis together. He said it sounded too much like a musician that he used to listen to with his grandmother. Have you ever heard of Miles Davis?"

Giles was feeling quite dazed. Young Giles appeared to have boundless enthusiasm and could, evidently, talk a mile a minute. "Um, yes. He's quite a talented artist. I have several of his albums, in fact."

"Cool! Can I listen to them sometime? I've never heard jazz, though my dad used to hum songs to me. Ooh, here we are. You're lucky you got here yesterday. Sabita is in the kitchen this week, and she makes the best bread of anybody. Do you like bread?"

Giles was dizzy from trying to keep up with the boy's rapid-fire conversation. He contented himself with a smile and a grateful nod for his breakfast. The boy didn't seem to notice his lack of participation in the conversation, but kept up his friendly chatter.

The portions seemed meager to Giles, particularly for a growing boy, but Buffy's son didn't seem to find them so. The boy's enthusiasm for his pitiful breakfast was entirely unfeigned, and Giles wondered uneasily how often he had received less ... or gone without altogether. The Watcher scanned the room, and noticed that everyone in the chamber had the stringy, malnourished look of the perpetually under-fed.

Last night, Giles had seen that a large number of people lived down here, but that fact hadn't really impinged upon his consciousness. He was willing to work on the rescue of Buffy's community because it was clear that she wouldn't come back without them, but he wasn't truly concerned with their welfare. His first and last priority had been the retrieval of his Slayer; nothing else mattered. Now he was sickened that he had felt that way. Looking around now, he saw human beings in desperate need of a new life. He needed to help these people because it was the right thing to do, not because Buffy wanted it. He turned to his namesake with a new determination and said, "Could you please take me to Buffy now? I have a lot of work to do."

The boy grinned contagiously at him in response, and Giles found himself laughing. It was the first time he had laughed in six months. It felt good.

~*~*~

When young Giles took him to his Buffy, he was thrown into the midst of chaos. His namesake gave him a quick grin, ran over to Buffy to give her a peck on the cheek, and then left without a word. Giles would have given a great deal to follow him. Everyone was yelling and working at cross-purposes, and Giles despaired of this rag-tag group actually accomplishing anything. He was as far wrong as it was possible to be, and all the credit belonged to his Slayer.

Buffy was an amazing administrator. She had an uncanny ability to quickly resolve disputes, to find people without purpose and give them tasks to do, and to keep track of a thousand small details in her head while she supervised the big picture. Two minutes in the midst of all that madness left Giles with no doubt whatsoever that Buffy would organize the removal of her people and their belongings in record time. She had been an extraordinary girl before she left Sunnydale, but she had grown into an absolutely unique woman. Giles wondered whether he had had anything to do with her transformation, and selfishly prayed that he had. He could look at the woman Buffy had grown into, and know for the first time in his life that he had truly made a difference.

Giles only had a few minutes to admire Buffy before she noticed his presence. "Giles! I'm so glad that you are here! I need somebody with your fighting ability to go out and start rounding up our deep patrols."

Giles wanted to help Buffy, he was desperate to help her, in fact, but he was loath to leave her side again so soon after finding her. "But I thought, that is you sai–"

"You thought that I would keep my promise to catch up with you today," Buffy finished for him. "I really wish I could, Giles, but I don't think you realize what a God-send you are to me. You are well trained and are considerably better nourished than any of my people. That makes you the equivalent of at least two of my best fighters, perhaps three. If you go out for me, that means more people can work on moving us out of here." Giles hesitated, flattered beyond reason at her assessment of his abilities. Before he could formulate a response, however, she completely unmanned him. She gave him a pout. "Please, Giles, I don't think you realize how much I need you."

And so he had accepted the dull sword she gave him and left on her mission. The irony of Buffy handing out assignments while he fought against them gave him a certain amount of wry amusement.

As Giles trudged along behind his two unpleasant companions, his thoughts lingered on that pout more than he would have liked. Although he would have sworn that it was impossible, Buffy's pouting abilities had improved tremendously over the years. When she had pouted at him as a teenager, it always flustered him, and left him feeling wrong-footed. The sight of a disheveled but mature Buffy pouting at him was an altogether different matter. It had a disquieting effect, one that he was disinclined to analyze at the moment. Or ever, he sternly amended, as he suddenly remembered that Buffy had a man in her life. A man who liked jazz, who had the seldom used and easily forgotten last name of Davis, and who presumably loved the mother of his child very much. She was Buffy: how could he not? Giles wondered whether Davis was in any way worthy of her.

That last thought brought Giles up short. He had no business whatsoever passing judgement on Davis, and he had even less call to think about his Slayer the way he had been a moment ago. She may be an adult now, and an extraordinarily beautiful woman, but she was no less off-limits to him than she had been when she was a child. She was in a committed relationship, and had at least one child. Moreover, he was still her Watcher; he still held a position of trust over her. He had never held any desire to violate that trust before, and he wasn't about to start now.

Hoping to distract himself, Giles let his thoughts wander towards his comrades. The mission had been entrusted to Tim, the leader of the group that had found him the night before. Tim made no effort to hide his dislike and distrust of Giles, though at least he didn't flaunt his suspicions. He simply didn't care enough about Giles to engage him in conversations, even hostile ones. Giles' other companion, Michelle spoke even less; apparently she had been rather badly traumatized by "the slavers" (whoever they were) before Buffy rescued her. He had rather hoped that he might learn more about Buffy's community during the course of this trip, but Tim and Michelle were formidable in their silence. Giles sighed and resigned himself to a long mission.