Chapter 5

"So, that's the update for today. Not gonna be walkin' any time soon, but I should be out of the big casts and in a wheelchair in a week, two tops." Spike looked up from the speakerphone on his bedside table and smiled at Willow. "Red's the big hero of LA, again."

"Yay, Willow!" Dawn cheered through the phone, Andrew echoing her, and Spike chuckled at the witch and her splotchy blush.

"Seriously, Willow, that's amazing. Thank you so much." Buffy's voice carried over the other two muttering in the background. "I think that's a load off all of our minds. Especially since it's going to take me longer to get out of here than we thought."

"What, why?" Willow jumped in, happy to have something to talk about that took attention away from her. "I thought we all agreed that it wasn't a good plan to have so many Slayers near the Immortal after that portal spell. Why would you have to stay longer? I thought Giles agreed we should be moving people around and making the Rome facility smaller and with experienced Slayers only?"

Buffy snorted, and Andrew could be heard muttering something in the background that they couldn't understand in LA. "Yeah, Giles said that while you and I were on the phone with him, he said it when I saw him in Rome before he left. Then he got back to England and suddenly the orders changed. Alan ordered me to send Marlene to Bath instead of leaving her here, and then yesterday he sent me a new Watcher. Like, a REALLY new Watcher, one who was not even out of the academy when the old guard got blown up, who's never been in the field. I don't want to leave this guy alone in charge of Slayers, never mind the unstable position in Rome right now. So, now I've got to track down Giles and sort this out. Who knows how long that will take."

Willow and Spike frowned at one another. "Andrew, mate, what did Giles say before he sent you off with the new Watcher?" Spike asked, wondering what the hell Rupert was thinking. Willow was convinced that something about the portal spell was weird and wanted the entire Council operation out of Rome until they could do an intensive study of the Immortal's powers. Spike didn't like the idea of anyone with Marco's ambiguous morals and oozy charms around a bunch of teenage girls, but he was inclined to think a few adult Slayers in Rome wasn't the end of the world…As long as none of them were Buffy or Dawn.

"Giles wouldn't see me." Andrew chirped through the phone, his voice rising in pitch. "It was so weird, I was in a meeting with him for almost a whole afternoon and evening, and he never said anything about a change of plans about Rome, or sending me to Italy, or anything like that. Then I get a call from Alan saying Giles wants me to bring Jake here and stay in Rome after Buffy and Dawn go. No warning, just 'hey, move to Italy' on two days notice. I just moved back to England! I had a date planned for tonight on the West End, I was going to take my weekend off in London to spend with…" He ran out of steam, and sighed. "Anyway, no weekend off for me. And I tried to ask Giles, what the hell, you know? I couldn't get near him. I called and didn't get an answer, then Alan was everywhere I looked for Giles, kind of blocking the way. Usually if I'm being annoying he has the courtesy to tell me, not just send a lackey to run interference."

"That doesn't sound like Giles at all." Willow said.

"What do you mean, it sounds exactly like Giles." Buffy interjected. "I was hoping after we had a good talk and really got some things straight…And then he realized how badly those research Watchers he sent here were doing pulling their own weight…Well, I thought it might get better, but I'm really not surprised that it didn't after all."

"I mean, I can see Giles being distracted and forgetting to tell someone in Bath there was a change of plans, but us, from Sunnydale?" Willow still sounded skeptical. "He's always been straight with us."

"Honest, sure, but not really respectful of our feelings." Buffy countered. "If someone told him something that made him change his mind, I'm totally not surprised that he changed the order and never bothered to tell us about it. He's always ordering me around and reminding me that it's my responsibility…"

"Well," Spike spoke up hesitantly. He really didn't want to drive a wedge between Buffy and Giles, but he'd had more than enough of the way Rupert fathered her one minute and wanted her to be the general the next minute, then accused her of neglecting her duty the second she stepped out of line. Then again, if they kept up this poor communication or manipulation or whatever it was, Buffy was going to be miserable. "Aren't you supposed to be the co-head of the Council, luv? He's the head Watcher, and you're the head Slayer, right? Seems you should be working on better coordination. Start up a weekly meeting with you and him, then one with the Slayers that he sits in on, then one with the Watchers that you sit in on…"

"You want me to set myself up to sit through three boring meetings a week?" Buffy sounded confused and a bit annoyed.

"I'm just saying, you're all over the world and you never talk to one another, or at least not on a regular basis. How are you supposed to keep everyone on the same page? You're just asking Giles or one of his more ambitious sidekicks in Merry Ol' to decide giving the Slayers any kind of power is a failed experiment, and then you lose what little control you've got.

"If there's one thing I'm noticing here as Jezebel gets the school set up, she's constantly in everyone's business, keeping tabs on what we're all up to and what we want to be doing. Then she can pull a Slayer off patrol rotation if they have a test, or reassign a Watcher, or what have you. Right now you're moving people around, and I imagine that's something you're going to have to deal with over and over again. Sending the younger girls who don't have families all to train in Bath because it's quiet and there was already a Council property and Giles' house…All of that sounds great for now. But they're going to grow up; then what? How do you know what's going on there if you don't keep an eye on the Watchers? Then, if you're working on keeping the Slayers near their families or somewhere they want to move to…How do you know who goes where, if you're not talking to the team they're training with? Do you want input, or do you want some Watcher to decide they should just give orders?"

"I get what you're trying to say, Spike, but you're forgetting that we're trying to end the division between Watchers and Slayers." Andrew piped up, sounding calmer. "Why should we have three meetings a week to connect, when we could put everyone on one call and get it over with?"

"And who do you imagine will be in charge of that call, Andrew? Giles or Buffy?"

"Err, I don't know, it depends on what's getting talked about." Andrew acknowledged. "Are we talking about patrolling, or who isn't doing well in training, or what the coven's seers are seeing…"

"They should be talking about all of it, at least once a week." Spike responded. "But maybe the only people who need to be in all those conversations are Buffy and Giles. Maybe not, I don't know. I don't even know if that's the best way to handle it. I do know that e-mails and one-off phone conversations aren't working, you all seem frustrated and out of sorts."

"Well, that's true enough." Buffy said. "I'm incredibly frustrated and out of sorts when I talk to Giles…Or don't talk to him, which is most of the time. I mostly just get e-mails, and half the time they don't even sound like him. When I do actually talk to him I don't think he's read any of the reports I've sent him, and I just have to tell him everything again, and he yells at me for not telling him sooner…" She took a deep breath, trying to calm down.

"See, and you like the Watcher, you want to get along with him, and it's still barely possible to keep in touch the way things are going." Spike said. "I don't always agree with Rupes, and certainly not with how he burdens you, but you wanna hear what he has to say, you want his guidance. You're not getting what you want or need from him right now, luv. And if the two of you are supposed to be running this organization…You've got a lot of problems coming if you can't get this straightened out."

Buffy moaned faintly. "I hate it when you're right, you know?"

"I know, luv. I'll try not to be so damn useful in the future."

"Don't you dare." Buffy suddenly sounded much more serious. "If I can't count on Giles right now, I need you to keep telling me when I'm being an idiot."

They all chuckled, some of the tension released. Willow was opening her mouth to speak again when there was a knock at the door. "Come in!" Spike yelled.

Jezebel popped her head around the corner of the door. "Hey, you busy?"

"Hi, Jezzie," Buffy called.

"Oh, hey, Buffy." Jez looked around. "Do you mind if I butt in? I mean, I was gonna ask Spike and Willow some stuff, but since you're kind of here, too…"

"We were actually just talking about Council stuff." Willow spoke up. "So, if you have more Council stuff to bring up, you may as well add it in."

"Yeah," Buffy added, "I have one of the Watchers from Bath who's also from Sunnydale here with me, so it's kind of a friend-slash-work call."

"Oh, cool." Jezzie looked hesitant, but at Spike's raised eyebrow she pulled up a chair near Willow and plunged ahead. "So…You know about Chas, right? He was a classmate of Merry's at the Watcher's Academy. I don't know if you guys know his story. It's kind of long, but I think you should know the background. His Potential's first Watcher retired, and they sent him out barely trained. I think he finished his practicum in the field. Which Merry always thought was weird, but then she wasn't fully trained either, so what'd she know. They didn't allow anyone to keep in touch, which to be fair was generally the practice. Watchers of Potentials or Slayers were never supposed to be conferring. If you had a couple of friends and built a little network, you'd better keep that private. You were better off as a field Watcher making friends with a bunch of researchers, because you could at least talk to them, no one was going to try to stop you.

"The thing is, in his case his friends couldn't even keep in touch with him on the DL. The Council changed his contact info as soon as he got it, and they moved him and Carolyn a few times before they finally settled them in San Francisco. When he first got here he didn't want to talk much, but I finally got him to relax a bit." She took a deep breath. "He told me…They were pressuring him to take Car as a mate. He's been with her since she was 9, they've developed a sibling relationship. They really, really don't feel that way about one another. He was basically blowing HQ off and hoping they didn't reassign him, had been for years. He relaxed after the Council was destroyed, figured whatever happened next at least he didn't need to sweat that anymore. However, last week someone from Bath called and asked him when they were going to do the ceremony, and said if they didn't, he should send Carolyn to Bath for them to find her someone else."

Spike's heart plummeted. He'd assumed the Potential/Slayer mating program that had been in force when he was young had been long abandoned. There were certainly already Council members objecting to it in his day.

"That's awful." Willow looked as horrified as he felt, which made Spike feel better.

"It's bullshit, is what it is." Buffy piped up. "Neither of them has parents or siblings, right? Am I remembering that right?"

Jezebel sighed. "No, you're right. Car was given up to the Council by her parents, and Chas' Mom died in the HQ explosion. His Dad was killed when he was in college, I forget by what. They're both only children."

"So, he's going to watch out for her, and help her make a good decision when she finds a mate." Buffy continued. "Who better to help guide you on a big step like that than your family? That's the kind of thing that can't be decided by committee. Who you love, who you marry or mate with. It's the kind of thing that, even if the Council was doing it before, we need to stop right away." Buffy groaned faintly, realizing that Spike was 100% right. She needed to get on the same page with Giles, and make sure they stayed that way. "Hey, Wills…As in, both of you?"

Everyone chuckled, breaking the tension. "Yeah, Buffy?" Willow spoke.

"I think we're going to need an intervention. I'll need to know as soon as possible how fast you guys can make it to England."

Dawn had snuck out of the room as soon as the conversation turned to Council stuff. Unless someone made it her problem, she really didn't care to be involved. She was enjoying being a kid and being out of the loop now, probably more than she'd enjoyed forcing her way into the Scooby group in Sunnydale and being a part of the action. Besides, Buffy or Andrew would clue her in later.

Her phone vibrated again in her pocket, and she smiled now that no one could see. She hadn't told Andrew who the new boyfriend was, because she was pretty sure he'd tell Buffy, and Buffy could be really prickly about who Dawn dated. Unless it was super casual and she didn't care if the guy got chased off, or it was super serious and she wanted Buffy's approval, there was no good reason to get Buffy in her business.

The phone vibrated again, and she rolled her eyes. "Okay, that's excessive." She told the phone as she pulled it from her pocket. "I told you I was having dinner with my sister and Andrew, why would you text me four times?"

Shaking her head, she flipped the phone open and looked at the messages. At least they were all in Italian, so she was covered if Buffy saw them. After a quick review of the messages Dawn wasn't sure if she wanted to call and yell at him, answer the most recent text and ignore the nearly frantic tone, or just let him stew until morning. After a few minutes' consideration, she went with the text option.

"La cena è andata bene, ho appena finito di mangiare e parlare con Spike. Non posso chiamarti, però, sono ancora tutti qui." Dinner went well, just finished eating and talking with Spike. I can't call you, though, everyone is still here. Almost as soon as Dawn sent her message, her phone rang. Oh, crap. "You idiot." Dawn whispered. "I told you we couldn't talk tonight. If Buffy hears me talking to you I'm gonna be screwed."

"Pensavo mi stessi parlando in italiano così non lo saprebbe?" I thought you were speaking to me in Italian so she wouldn't know? Marco sighed. "Not that I agree with you about hiding from your sister. I think the Sineya would be more understanding than you would imagine, if she thought your happiness was at stake."

"Sei incredibilmente pieno di te stesso se pensi di essere parte integrante della mia felicità." You are incredibly full of yourself if you think you're integral to my happiness. Dawn played like she didn't care about his reaction, but she was pleased when her response earned a chuckle. "I'll talk to you tomorrow. Ciao."

"Ciao, mio caro." The Immortal chuckled. He did love a challenge. "Sweet dreams."