The night after she sent the Watchers back to England, Buffy crumbled.
It was strange, maybe, and more than a little annoying, that Quentin was the one to push her over the edge with that little, "Glory is a god," revelation. Buffy had managed hit after hit from the universe: Dawn being the Key, her mother's tumor, Riley leaving. But as she sat up that night, turning that fact over in her head – Glory is a god, Glory is a god – she felt powerless.
How quickly her victory over the Council had faded into intangible memory.
She sat with the fear until she couldn't sit with it anymore. She cried, silently, so that her mother and Dawn wouldn't wake on the floor above. She hoped that she would manage to cry herself to sleep on her sofa, but at 3am, she found that she was all cried out, and wide awake, too.
In an instance of pure selfishness – perhaps the only selfish thing she'd done in months – Buffy left. She put down the weight of the world and went to ask someone else to hold it for her, just for an hour or two.
His living room light was still on as she neared his house, and it did not strike Buffy as a surprise. Her arrival startled him, though; he opened the door to her, and his eyes widened tentatively. "Buffy, is everything alright?"
"Giles…" Buffy murmured, not sure where she wanted to go from there. But she found that she couldn't go any further, anyway.
Buffy crumbled in Giles' doorway, and he held her there for an eternity, through long, breathless sobs.
"Let's go inside," he said at last, his tone low and gentle as Buffy's breathing began to slow.
She saw an open bottle of whiskey and a near-empty glass on his coffee table as he sat her on his sofa, and she knew at once that Giles, too, was wrestling with the events of the Council's visit.
He said nothing of that, though, too busy fetching her a glass of water and a blanket. Too busy sitting down across from her and tentatively asking again, "Is everything alright, Buffy? Besides…"
Besides everything.
"I haven't slept in at least a week," Buffy admitted, her eyes glassy as she looked at him. "Not really, not for more than 20 minutes at a time. I think my body's forgotten how."
"Oh, Buffy…" he breathed. And his eyes were so warm, so loving and so Giles in exactly the way she had needed. "What can I do?"
"Honestly, Giles, I… was hoping that I could just…" An alarm in her brain was going off, a combination of shyness and of certainty that she needed to be strong enough to carry through this all alone. Somehow, though, she found the strength to say, "I need my Watcher to hold me and tell me it'll all be okay."
And his expression was almost enough to get her crying again.
Giles sat on his sofa, and it was only in that precise moment that Buffy could allow herself to show the vulnerability necessary to crawl into his lap and tuck her head into the space between his shoulder and his neck.
But it said something, that Giles went with it at once. He wrapped his arm around her, smoothed his free hand over her hair gently.
It was a matter of moments before Buffy found herself getting drowsy.
"When Dawn and I…" She swallowed and tried again. "When I was younger, any time I had a nightmare, my dad would sit up with me and hold me until I fell asleep again. I always made him promise to stay with me even if I fell asleep, but then I'd wake up back in my bed."
"Maybe this will be a nightmare, too," Giles offered, his voice low, his breath on her cheek.
She didn't answer.
It wasn't a nightmare, but when Buffy woke some hours later, Giles' arms were still around her.