Rating: Up to PG-13, maybe R for disturbing content. (and I'm telling you it's just gonna get worse from here out; trips down memory lane with Wes & Roger are not equal to chocolate & puppies).
Disclaimers: Not mine
Thanks: Still working beta-less due to my time constraints, but inlovewithnight and stoney321 gave comments on an earlier draft, and crazydiamondsue & erinpoetchica listen to me rant about this fairly constantly.

V. Something about Watchers and Libraries

February 1999

This was the moment.

From the time Wesley was a boy, he had watched silent, dark-coated men come through the doors of the library, speak in low voices, slip away late at night. The men had weighty matters to discuss, and the boy knew better than to intrude.

Yet that knowledge didn't always stop him. Wesley might let a dozen visitors come and go without crossing their paths, even if he had something very important to ask his father. And then the thirteenth time, for no definable reason, it would be too much. Wesley would knock and -- in answer to his father's weary "What exactly is it that can't wait?" – step around the edge of the door. The old reading lamp cast a light that never quite reached the threshold, and so Wesley would stand outside its halo and mumble the slenderest pretext of a question. Roger would quickly dispose of Wesley's inquiry – "I'll look at it later," or "Get some money from Ashoka" or if he was truly at a loss, "Ask your mother."

But Wesley kept coming back. The smallest glimpse of what went on here, the smell of old whiskey and the creak of old leather, were enough to balance the sting of his father's quick dismissal. Because as Wesley stood there, he could imagine a day when he would sit at the table as an equal.

And this was the moment. Wesley was twenty-nine years old, he would be leaving for assignment in Sunnydale the next morning, and he had finally earned an invitation to share his father's "new bottle of old Scotch." He barely even tasted the whiskey. He was so giddy with the newness of everything, bursting with eagerness to do real fieldwork. And as they drained the last of the old Lagavulin, his father reached into a drawer and said, "There's something I want you to take with you."

"Thank you, Father, but I can't --" he began. He assumed that Roger was going for another bottle, and that smelling like an Argyll distillery might not convey the same air of authority in a public high school library in Southern California that it did within these hallowed walls.

"Don't be absurd," Roger said, "You can and you will." From the drawer, he produced a picture frame and slid it, face down, across the table. Wesley turned it over to see the image of a face he knew well. The dark eyes and pigtails, the insolent smile. "You know who this is, of course?"

"Your slayer," Wesley answered. "Ngaire Nagati." He gave the first name its correct pronunciation, 'Nye-ree,' without the false glottal stop that tempted some novices, meaning this as a gentle corrective to the biases the older generation. Somehow, even when they could speak a dozen languages and read fifty more, the Watchers of his father's age could rarely overcome the Englishman's basic assumption that foreigners only gave themselves such silly names for the sake of being difficult.

"Mina," his father said. "Her name was Mina," and Wesley read more into his look. He read, Don't be such a prat around Rupert Giles, son, because he won't indulge you the way your own flesh and blood does . The true genius of his father's cutting remarks was that after a while, they didn't even need to be spoken for Wesley to hear them.

Hastily, the son looked at the photograph and asked, with forced cheeriness, "Who is that handsome young man?" Because Wesley had never seen this particular picture before. It was the same girl with almost the same smile. Based on her clothes and the landscape where she stood – a cluster of small houses, maybe a fishing village, whatever the hell that was – it must have been taken on the same day. But here a young man stood by her side, recognizably Wesley's father, but in a guise that the son had never seen. Tan and in the prime of life, his hair full and slightly windblown, Roger stood with one hand on the girl's shoulder and smiled down at her. A handsome, cocky, world-beater of a man, aglow with pride in his charge. He had never once turned that smile on Wesley.

Roger lifted the picture and brought it close to his eyes. In the dim glow of the lamp, he studied his younger self as if he were taking Wesley's question seriously, and also wanted to know who the man in the picture was. "He is handsome, isn't he? ." He looked away and set the frame down. "Take this, Wesley. Study it. "

His father's older eyes bore into him as he looked at the picture, wondering what he was supposed to see. What was the clue that, as always, he was missing? Lamely, he finally said, "She's pretty."

"The girl is very pretty," he agreed. "He's handsome, and she's pretty. And they're both very happy." Roger reached into the drawer for another bottle. "Vampires were unknown in New Zealand until the early part of the nineteenth century. As you must be aware, they face certain difficulties of travel that make outposts in such remote regions impractical. But once a population establishes itself, it can become amazingly resilient. And vampires so vicious and single-minded can spread their poison like an epidemic. There was a colony in Christchurch like that. We called them the Virus. The Council had a plan to strike at the nerve center. Eradicate the threat in New Zealand once and for all."

Wesley nodded, listening to his father, hoping to glean some practical advice from a man who had been so long in the field. But when Roger set a third glass of Scotch in front of Wesley, he simply asked, "What is the procedure when you come upon a corpse with severe neck wounds and dramatic loss of blood?"

The pop quiz by way of non sequitur was classic Roger; Wesley felt torn between annoyance that the question was so basic, and pleasure at knowing the correct answer. "First, ascertain from physical evidence whether the death was in fact the result of a vampire attack. If so, take steps to discover whether the body was drained of blood -- a strong indicator that the killer may have attempted to sire the victim. If the body is in fact drained, or if this cannot be determined, take precautions by dismembering the body."

"Dismembering," Roger repeated, staring into his glass. "Such a bloodless bloody word." He swirled the whiskey and raised it to his mouth, but set it down again without drinking. "There was nothing wrong with the plan. There was certainly nothing wrong with Mina. She fought her way through to the center of the nest. The Council's elite red beret division had them flanked." He shook his head. "She made it look so easy, son. You could forget there was only one of her. It was just a little bit of bad timing. She went a little bit too fast, and she fought her way to the center of the nest before the Berets had a chance to catch up. By the time I got to the scene it was all over."

"Dear God," Wesley stammered. "I'm so sorry."

Roger spread his hands and poured another glass. "There was nothing to be done. And so the happy young man cut off the pretty girl's head, and severed her limbs. And last of all, we cut out her heart and drove a stake through it. Then we started a fire and burned all the pieces. Do you know what burning human flesh smells like, son?"

"Father," Wesley repeated. He felt the urge to reach over and touch the man's hand, wondered exactly what the thing was between them that told him he couldn't. "I didn't know. I mean, of course I knew. But. . . Not the details. That's a tragic story."

"You had no reason to know the details," Roger answered. "Ninety nine point nine nine nine percent of the membership of the Watchers' Council sleeps better at night by not knowing the details. And you're wrong about one thing." He trained his eyes on Wesley's and said quietly. "It is not a tragic story. It is a story of phenomenal, almost miraculous success. A region so remote, vampires so vicious, with weapons technology and communication what they were in that day. Lasting two and a half years was nothing short of amazing."

"Of course I didn't mean you weren't successful. Only the way it ended . . ."

"The way it ended was the way it ends. Slayers die. That's what they do. They kill and they die. If a Watcher is lucky, he'll still be standing to pick up the pieces. The only way that doesn't happen is if you die first. These two girls in Sunnydale have each outlived one watcher. The odds are against that happening again. Why do you look at me like that? This should be nothing that you don't know."

It was true, he had known this intellectually. The chances of burying one of these pretty, vibrant, insolent girls was high; the chance of having to be the one to cut up her body and throw it in the furnace was an incidental risk. "Of course I know." Wesley said. "I suppose that it's just a matter of the proper psychological preparation."

"I am forced to agree. Despite all the theory and even the practical training, the Watcher's Council does very little to prepare active Watchers, psychologically. In fact, I've been saying it so long and so loud that when your name came up, I half suspected Quentin Travers of having a little fun at my expense."

Wesley felt the heat in his face rise, wondered how he could not have known to expect the same old thing. "I suppose it's quite beyond your comprehension to consider that my appointment could be a result of my qualifications."

Roger blinked at him. "Really son, it's not always about you."

"Actually, Father, this is about me. It's my job and my life on the line."

"Hmmm," Roger answered. "I suppose you could look at it like that." He shrugged. "The Council moves in mysterious ways. I just know that Quentin Travers said to me, 'Please be sure to see that your son receives suitable psychological preparation.' And I agreed. I agreed that anything less would be a dereliction of my sacred duties. I'm here to tell you that you need to be prepared. You can't look on this as a lark or an adventure. You must take your sacred duties to heart every day"

"To thine own self be true, the apparel oft proclaims the man, neither a borrower nor a lender be. I think I've heard this one." The fine Scotch now tasted bitter in his mouth. He just wanted the meeting to be over so he could go to bed and wake up in the morning and go to America. "Father, I know I can do this. I want to do whatever is best to help these girls."

"If you remember one thing, remember this." He steepled his fingers and looked over them at Wesley. "Those aren't girls."

"Really? Because I've seen the pictures and they look remarkably like girls."

"Which is precisely the trouble. That is exactly the kind of weakness that has caused the problems in Sunnydale. Rupert Giles decided to be a father to a couple of poor orphans. A father and a friend. And at that moment he became useless as a Watcher." Roger leaned over the table and stared intently at his son. "Quentin Travers likes to blow a lot of smoke about the Slayer being an instrument of the council. Like it's a sword. Or a garden rake. Or, I don't know – a kazoo."

"It?" Wesley repeated.

"Buffy Summers or Mina Nagati may be a human being. But the Slayer is a primal force. It lives in the body of a girl, just as a vampire inhabits its host. And it may be a difficult thing for the girl, because she doesn't even know she's gone. But when that calling comes, it doesn't empower the girl so much as it kills her and puts something in her place." He shook his head. "Whenever a girl becomes a Slayer, she's been killed. What the Watcher is in charge of is how long it takes her to die."

"Well," Wesley looked down at his hands. "You've certainly turned this mission into a cheerful prospect."

"What I have done is acquainted you with the facts. Now you take those facts, you go to America, and you do your job. Treat those Slayers like the soldiers they are. Go home at night and try to eat that bloody Kraut cooking of Nathalie's, then take her to bed and do whatever you need to do to feel better and get back on the job the next day."

"Nathalie," Wesley repeated. "Funny, I was sure I'd mentioned it. Nathalie decided to stay in London for the next little while and finish her degree." This was probably true. Of course, Wesley hadn't been able to get a good sense of Nathalie's future plans during their most recent conversation. She was too busy putting all her things in boxes and swearing at him in German. That had been six months ago, and he hadn't quite gotten around to telling his parents.

"I see," said Roger, clearly not fooled. "There are girls in California. I've heard that a man with an English accent can, what is the expression? Write his own ticket. Just try not to talk quite so much. And try to stand up straight, I don't see how a woman can abide a man with poor posture."

"Father, please. It's one thing to give me advice about council business, but I believe I can handle my own personal life."

December 2003

Wesley watched his father pour the Scotch into two glasses, maybe the same ones they had used that day five years ago. He looked at the man's careworn face, and tried to imagine how much differently he, himself, must appear.

"And so, son," Roger said, setting the drink in front of him. "When will we be meeting the young woman in your life?"

Oh yes, Wes thought. The more things bloody change, indeed.

TBC