General Lawrence Higgins had questions, questions that needed answers and there was only one man who could answer those questions.
"Rupert Giles Is here, Sir." His aide reported.
"Show him in, please."
"Yes, Sir." A moment later Rupert was being motioned into a chair.
"I have some questions, Mr. Giles, I hope you can answer them."
"I will do my best."
"You're aware of the Global War on Terror that's currently happening?"
"I've become aware of it, yes. I wasn't. I never watch television and even though I was in England several times over the last couple of years, I didn't hear about it then either."
"You don't pay much attention to the world outside Sunnydale, do you?"
"Guarding the Hellmouth and guiding my Slayer took precedence, I'm afraid."
"And yet you had two Slayers to guide and ignored the existence of one of them. You even allowed Buffy to attempt to control Faith when that accident happened. In looking at your record as a Watcher and the way you treated both Slayers, it appears you spoiled one and forgot the other exists. But there's an issue with that theory."
"An issue?"
"Well, multiple issues, but let's start with you allowing a child to be involved with a male considerably older than her. And that's before we even get to the issue of him being a vampire, her natural enemy. Why allow it?"
"She was adamant and I felt she'd probably sneak around to see him anyway, besides allowing her to see him made her more willing to do her job."
"Her job, as though that's all that matters."
"Being the Slayer is a Sacred Calling, the will of the gods, it's her job to safe guard humanity."
"If that's true, why ignore the fact that there were two of them? Why not support them both? Why concentrate on Miss Summers?"
"Buffy was my Slayer, I was only temporarily Faith's Watcher. Sooner or later another would be assigned to her."
"So why bother getting close to her, right? Finding her a safe place to live, make sure she had food to eat and an education because it would eventually be someone else's responsibility anyway."
"You could say that, a bit cold blooded, but I didn't know it would take them so long to actually send another Watcher."
"We recently discovered that Buffy's father had been hit with a memory charm, possibly right around her birthday. Her eighteenth birthday, to be precise. An interesting time for it to happen, given that travesty of a tradition you Watchers call the Cruciementum."
"A tradition I was reluctant to participate in." Giles pointed out.
"Hmm, yes, you apparently risked your job to warn her and then were fired. Miss Summers reported during the debriefing that Quentin Travers reportedly said, she passed and you failed. A test for both of you? Why test you?"
"I never considered the possibility I was being tested."
"You should have, after all your record as a Watcher is horrible. You allowed your Slayer to fraternize with the enemy, a vampire. You allowed her to be in a relationship with him. And let's not forget he was under a curse, a curse you supposedly never researched. One she broke and then found herself unable or unwilling to do anything about him for months while he killed. I find that very interesting."
"Why? She loved Angel, destroying the monster wearing his face would be very difficult for anyone, let alone a teenager."
"But you had options, there was another Slayer, Kendra Young, which you already knew about. Yet you didn't call her Watcher and request her assistance with that matter."
"It never occured to me, it was Buffy's responsibility."
"Buffy's responsibility, someone severely compromised by her emotional attachment to the monster you say it was her responsibility to deal with. One who played psychological games that made it harder and harder for her to function. That fact alone should have necessitated calling in another to deal with the situation. And let's also note that your lover was killed during that mess and Miss Summers was left with the guilt of not being able to destroy the monster wearing her lover's face for killing your lover."
"Buffy had a lot to deal with, I did not wish to burden her further."
"Again, interesting. She was very dependant on you, especially after the Cruciementum. You got fired for trying to protect her, but you should have been fired over the whole Angel/Angelus mess."
"The Council must not have felt it warranted me being fired."
"Again, interesting. They don't fire you over allowing your Slayer to fraternize with the enemy, but they fired Wesley Wyndham-Price for Faith apparently going rogue and joining the Mayor, also an enemy. Both girls were severely compromised, Buffy by her feelings for the cursed vampire and the psychological games he played and Faith by the unaddressed trauma she experienced before coming to Sunnydale, being abandoned and ignored by you and receiving no help from you over an accident."
"She lied about Buffy being to blame, all I knew was she claimed Buffy killed him."
"Yet you assured Buffy it was an accident. One the Watchers Council attempted to illegally arrest Faith over. While doing absolutely nothing about Buffy and her involvement with a vampire and the fallout from that involvement. Are you aware of the fact that Corporal Harris has a naturally occuring psychic ability?" The General asked, in an apparent non sequitur.
Giles was startled. "No, I wasn't. What does that have to do with our conversation?"
"He's a precognitive, when he's awake it manifests as a feeling of knowing, when he's asleep he has occasional precognitive dreams. When he was briefing me on Sunnydale and your group before we went to Sunnydale, he told me Miss Young's Watcher was a psychic himself, one who had a vision or whatever that told him there was a problem in Sunnydale and he sent Miss Young to help."
"Yes, that I'm aware of."
"What you're not aware of is that Corporal Harris told me you didn't report the Angel/Angelus situation. Our investigation of the Watchers Council has found something very interesting, so I asked him how he knew that. He said, he just knew. One of his precognitive insights, it seems."
"I don't understand."
"Yes, you do. The Watchers Council keeps the reports made by the Watchers in a library far from their main headquarters, the one that was bombed. Under the North Atlantic treaty England has joined us in fighting the Global War, that bombing was investigated as a terrorist attack. We found the reports you made to the Council in their library. You never reported anything about Angel to them. Let alone Angelus or Buffy's inability to handle the situation. Which is no doubt why they didn't attempt to arrest her as they did Faith. Were you protecting Buffy? No, that theory doesn't work because you allowed her to be involved with Angel in the first place. Her natural enemy. A vampire under a curse, far too old for her, who played psychological games. And we found something else in that library. Tell me, Mr. Giles, what is Twilight?"