No More Farewells - Chapter 6
The stage lights were bright and even though he couldn't see out into the audience, Giles felt Buffy's gaze upon him and he placed his notes on the podium before him, perusing the first couple lines and taking a deep breath.
"Good evening," he began before turning his attention to the director of the museum. "Thank you, Doctor Michaud, for your hospitality. It is an absolute honor to be here this evening." Directing his attention back to the audience he continued, "My name is Rupert Giles and I am the director of collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum. I must first apologize that my colleague Doctor Maynard is not available to give her talk this evening. She asked me to convey her regrets and she looks forward to presenting her latest paper at the symposium at the Rijksmuseum in the spring. Now that the formalities are out of the way, let's begin, shall we?"
Giles pressed the button to advance the slide to the title page Preserving and Safeguarding Artefacts: Determining Importance and Advancing the Narrative. Once again he stared down at his notes, unsure of the words on the page. They seemed to make sense alone in his office, and Sir John had certainly given his stamp of approval, but now it all seemed rather dry and impersonal. He didn't see himself reflected back in his work, and he knew of at least one audience member he was trying to impress - and really, at that moment, her opinion of him was the only one that mattered to him.
Turning his notes over, Giles gripped the sides of the podium with both hands and began, "An artifact isn't just an object from a time past that we find and then put on display in a museum for a moment of consumption for the casual consumer. No. Every artifact has a story: from the inception of design to its manufacture, to its eventual intended or unintended use, to the archaeologist finding it in some ancient rubbish heap or an individual finding it upon cleaning out their gran's attic upon her death. More often than not, we tend to look at the purpose of the artifact, what niche it filled, how it was manufactured. If the artifact should be mostly or all intact, then it most likely becomes a coveted museum piece, gawked at by the millions of annual visitors who come through our respective doors… and forgotten by us until it is time for a cleaning or another academic wants to bring it out for study or the exhibit is finished. But, for the most part we have forgotten it and moved on to the next piece. For that is our job: to improve upon our collections."
He took a drink of water from the glass provided to him by the support staff. "But what if I told you we could improve upon our collections in other ways? Since my early days sifting through dirt on archaeological dig sites and more recently since coming to the Victoria and Albert, I have found myself looking at a piece and wondering what its real story is. What it might have meant to the person who owned it. Why did they purchase it? Was it a gift given to them by someone they loved? Was it passed down to a family member upon that person's death? The questions go on and on. And as I wander the halls of the V&A, I often find children asking such questions as well, wanting to know more about something that catches their eye. Adults mostly admire the piece and move to the next, but the children ask the questions to which there are seemingly no answers. Nothing on the placards other than what the object is, the materials it is made from, the culture from which it came, and a date to put it into historical context. Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to supply a story or two? To answer those questions? Not just for the children, but to provide a narrative for everyone and make the story and the people of that era come alive?
"So the question then becomes, how do we determine which artifacts are significant to go on display? What sort of value does an artifact's narrative bring to not only us, the academic community, but to the curious child or the adult who might've just walked by, admiring its functionality or its beauty?" He stopped to advance to the next slide and clear his throat.
Buffy sat back in her seat, listening to Giles' rich voice as he continued. Honestly, he could have been reading the phone book for all she cared, she was just happy to be there in his presence after the frenzied negotiations earlier. Lord knows she had sat through enough of his lectures over the years zoning in and out depending on the subject as a smile crept up onto her face when she remembered the one lecture he had to give unable to utter a single sound when the Gentlemen had come to town. That had been an interesting lecture! Of course, she and Xander used to tease him mercilessly about his lack of brevity back in the day, especially during their high school years, but sitting there in the darkened auditorium, listening to him and watching him on stage looking drop dead gorgeous in that immaculate suit, she decided he could be as long-winded as he wanted to be. He was in his element, and he was clearly enjoying himself and engaging with his audience.
Admittedly, it had irked her that he had pursued the role at the V&A instead of coming to work for her. It had felt like yet another rejection, and a way to continue distancing himself from her, but it was clear now, that that was not the case. He was a natural up on the podium talking about something that deeply mattered to him, and sharing his experiences and thoughts on the subject at hand.
Buffy was pulled from her musings when his tone changed, becoming more serious, as he addressed the issue of preservation and how to go about determining the value of a broken artifact. When she looked up, she noticed he was staring in her direction, almost as if he was speaking directly to her.
"As a conservator, you might think one of the pieces is so damaged that the two no longer fit together or perhaps they never fit together in the first place. So you wonder, is it even worth it? Am I adding so much filler that I am creating more issues for the future? You can't successfully force two broken pieces together. Sometimes they are damaged beyond repair.
"And sometimes the damage might be such that you have to fabricate something new in order to fit those pieces back together and rebuild. And occasionally, in the process, you discover something different, something new, thus changing the narrative. In fact, it must change. The artifact becomes more than what it was before." He then shifted his focus to the screen and advanced to the next slide.
His voice changed again to that of excitement. "For example, we may have created a new preservation technique, or the piece may be the only existing example of a previously undiscovered mode of manufacture and without rebuilding it, we may never have known how that particular artifact was made and what technologies peoples of bygone era may have had. And thus the narrative determines the immense value not only for us, but for the museum visitor as well, which will no doubt spark the imagination of some youngster who will perhaps one day discover the next prehistoric village or an armor making technique we hadn't previously known about."
Shaking her head, Buffy couldn't but help wonder if Giles had been asking her those questions. That there was a metaphor there. Of course, she could be reading more into it, inserting their fractured relationship into his lecture since it had been in the forefront of her mind for the better part of a year. But if his intention had been to provoke a dialogue with her, it sounded as if he were struggling with the same questions she was since he had showed back up in her life as they tried to figure out who they were to one another in their post Sunnydale world.
And maybe they were beyond repair. Certainly she had thought so and she had all but given up on the idea of them being together until Giles had made his impassioned plea before she left for California to visit her father and sister. Was their relationship to end up in the historical rubbish heap that was her love life? Was it something that he was now considering?
Her throat constricted as she thought of the possibility of letting him go and she swallowed desperately trying to clear the emotional panic that gripped her in that moment. They could be friends, couldn't they? She was here for him now. But her feelings were getting in the way. Just sitting behind him earlier had invoked such a strong need to be with him.
She certainly wasn't friends with Angel. He was an ally now, someone with a shared past that she could look back on with a sense of peace, even though he'd always held onto hope that one day they would be together. That was clear when he had visited her with the amulet right before the final battle with the First. Despite initially being pleased at his presence, she'd found that she had outgrown him. His jealousy and sense of entitlement to her had gotten on her nerves. Unfortunately, she hadn't been entirely honest with him, and had allowed him to continue to believe in a someday, mostly because she really hadn't believed that she would survive the coming battle.
But the kind of love she felt for Giles was different to the one she had shared with Angel. It wasn't a desperate, angsty, all-consuming, forbidden, first love kind of love. It was the forever kind of love: mature, forgiving - almost to a fault, ever bright, and one which, given a chance, would continue to grow. She didn't want to get lost in him and when he kissed her, she didn't want to die. Instead, she wanted to live life and all its moments with him in the open, under the sun… and the stars.
But things had to change. Every encounter since she had left Giles' home back in the winter had ended in disaster, even though both had tried to fix things between them. Both had taken steps to put the past behind them unsuccessfully. So the question he'd posed was, should they give up and let go or should they work together to mend their relationship and find happiness together?
And knowing what her answer to that was, the question Buffy had to ask herself was could she trust herself enough to trust him with her heart?
The applause snapped her from her internal debate before she had a chance to really explore that question in her mind. She watched him scoop up his unused notes and exit the stage as several of his fellow academic types came to greet him. Since Giles had been the keynote speaker, the conference was officially over, though the director of the Louvre would give a closing speech in the reception hall when everyone had a glass of champagne in their hands.
As Giles was unable to break away from his colleagues, Buffy stood up and made her way down to the stage to meet him.