A/N I am done with the Initiative and pointing out how stupid, not to mention, illegal the whole thing was. It doesn't happen in this au. Glory will though.

A pounding on his door early one morning had Rupert Giles scowling and reluctantly crawling out of his comfortable bed. He grabbed a robe and practically stomped down the stairs. It was too early for visitors. He yanked open the door and saw a man he didn't recognize standing there.

"Something I can help you with?" The man lifted the sleeve of his long sleeved shirt and showed Giles a tattoo. Giles swung his door open and motioned the man in.

"You're from the Council of Watchers." Giles said, once he'd closed the door. "Why would you be coming here? Immortals tend to avoid the Hellmouth."

"My name is Allen Jackman, I was assigned to an immortal named Evanson. Idiot made the mistake of challenging McCleod. But it's what happened during their match that brings me here. A newby wondered into their match. He caught a piece of the quickening. McCleod has taken him on as his student. I'm now assigned to him."

"What does that have to do with me?"

"You know him. Do you know what your little Slayer brat's been up to lately?"

"If you're referring to Buffy, she stopped the Mayor when he Ascended to become an Olvican demon."

"With a whole lot of help, like she usually gets. Did you know she kicked the boy out of your group? The day after he led the students against the Mayor. As I understand it, that's the third time his contribution made it possible to stop the demon in question. Shaming that vampire you let her be involved with into showing him the way to the Master's lair and reviving her with CPR, coming up with the idea for a rocket launcher of all things against the Judge, not to mention, stealing it and then convincing his classmates to fight, creating the battle plan and everything else involved in that battle. And he was the only who actually tried to help Faith Lahaine when she accidentally killed a person."

"That's not true, Buffy and Angel tried to help her, she was too far gone by then."

"Their idea of helping was to chain her to a wall and convince her she was evil for accidentally killing a human Summers threw at her in the midst of battle. How exactly is that supposed to help anyone?"

"You're sure that's what they did?"

"Yes, and we're still confused as to why you never told her yourself, that it was an accident. As I understand it, you told Summers it was an accident, but not Lahaine? Why?"

"She was blaming Buffy, she was unstable."

"She was unstable because you weren't doing your job. She saw her first Watcher killed and you never bothered to help her deal with it. You left her in a place cockroaches thrive in. No wonder she went looking for help somewhere else. And then Summers tried to feed her to a vampire. Just how many people is Summers responsible for being dead?"

"What does this have do with Xander?'

"Alexander Harris is immortal. He activated without knowing it. And it is relevant to our conversation. I remember a report about an op Summers put together to try to prove Lehaine had gone rogue, one that involved using the boy as bait without telling him."

"Well, we thought it would be more authentic - ."

"It was a stupid idea and it got him killed."

"How? And why didn't he say anything?"

"Why didn't you figure it out? The boy reported the fact that, that cowardly vampire had knocked him unconscious and left him in the street, at night, in vamp central. He didn't survive and he didn't know it. No wonder you were fired in disgrace. You've dropped the ball so many times. Letting that vampire be involved with the Slayer, not investigating his claims of a curse or the curse itself. Not calling in Ms. Young when Summers proved unable and unwilling to do anything about Angelus while he killed over a hundred people. You let her get away with so much and you act like she's some prize. She's accomplished nothing without help and you give her all the credit. That boy has gone out almost night since he found out vampires exist and fights. Why didn't you ever give him some sort of instruction? And you're letting the other one study Magic without oversight. That's a disaster waiting to happen and you should damn well know it. One more screw up on your watch, Rupert Giles."

"Where is Xander now?"

"Learning to survive. And no longer your concern, not that I actually think you had any concern for him. If you were going to allow the Slayer to have friends and support other then the Council, then it was your responsibility to make sure they were safe. You failed. McCleod'll take care of the boy, you know his rep, he's very protective of people, especially his students. He'll teach him what you failed to teach him. He'll make sure the boy knows what he needs to know to survive. Just thought you might have cared enough to want to know."