Rupert Giles had been ten years old when his father informed him of his Destiny, capital D. He was to follow in his father's and grandmother's footsteps and become a Watcher. He was no more given a choice than Buffy Summers had been.

And like Buffy, he'd questioned and objected and ultimately rebelled. He'd gone against his family's teachings and beliefs and dropped out of college. He'd joined a band, a rock band, he'd done drugs and black Magic and together with others, he'd summoned a demon. Invited it to possess his body and enjoyed the high the experience gave him.

Until Eyghon took Randall whole and destroyed him from the inside out and turned on them. They'd been forced to destroy what was left of Randall to save themselves.

In the wake of that tragedy he'd returned to the Watchers Council and done everything asked of him. He'd finished college, taken the job they gave him and never questioned them again. His rebellion had cost a friend his life and he deeply regretted it.

When he first met Buffy Summers he'd questioned her attitude, her commitment. She'd told him to do the job himself. He'd responded that a Slayer, Slays and a Watcher...Watches? she'd said sarcastically.

His rebuttal had been that a Watcher guides, teaches and her anger and pain at all she'd lost because of being Chosen had left him floundering. She'd tried to live a normal life, tried out for cheerleading, something she'd once excelled at and he'd rebuked her and called it a cult and said it was beneath her as the Chosen One.

Now Jenny accused him of sounding like a brainwashed fanatic in a cult and maybe he did. Maybe he was. He'd never met a Slayer before being assigned as Buffy Summers Watcher and he'd had expectations. Expectations created by the teachings of the Council and his father.

No one knew for sure when exactly the Slayer had first been created and the Council had no control over who was Called but the Council maintained the Potentials and the Slayer were their responsibility and their weapon to use.

Over the next few days he silently observed Buffy and her friends and became aware of something he'd never realized before. Buffy seemed like a bright, energetic young woman, you had to look closely to see the shadows in her eyes, the pain, the anger. You could catch a glimpse of it when she thought no one was watching her. Than she didn't look so bright and energetic, instead she looked old and worn and bowed by a weight her slim shoulders struggled to bear.

He also noticed that both Xander and Cordelia seemed to know when that weight was crushing her and both had strategies they'd use to pull her out from the funk before she sank too deep.

He remembered the conversation the group had had when they'd realized Ted had accessed their private information. Cordelia had mentioned her mother was sick, something he hadn't known. No reason he should really, she wasn't his charge and had only recently joined the group following becoming involved with Xander. Oz had stated his parents were dead and he lived with his Aunt, Uncle and cousin, again he was not Rupert Giles' responsibility and had only recently joined as well, after becoming involved with Willow.

Willow, who'd been Buffy's friend from day one; she never mentioned her parents or the fact that they often left her alone. Something that obviously bothered her enough to discuss it with the school counselor.

But it was Xander's comment that struck him. When did Xander get emancipated? He wasn't even seventeen, what reason could be sufficient to anyone agreeing to a boy that young being emancipated? What reason was listed on his paperwork? How had he, Rupert Giles, not known that people who'd worked with his Slayer for nearly a year were in troubled family situations?

He'd told Willow he was very observant but he'd missed the fact that Buffy's relationship with Angel was illegal on multiple levels and against Council policy. Excusable because he hadn't known Magic and thrall had been used on him.

But where was his observational skills when it came to the group of young people who'd made themselves into a support group for his Slayer? Obviously he'd missed quite a bit. What else had he missed? Besides the fact that his Slayer was in emotional pain and children had seen it and he hadn't? A Watcher who was seemingly too blind to see much, wasn't much of a Watcher at all.

Weapons, living or not, felt no pain, emotional or otherwise; human beings did.

Therefore the conclusion to be reached was that the Slayer was human and had needs and fears and pain and he had absolutely no clue how to deal with these facts. After all, he'd been taught she was a weapon and all he had to do was deploy her against vampires and other demons.

Apparently it took the total destruction of the vampires for him to understand that.

Which brought him to another thought, if it occured to someone to use Magic to create a weapon to deploy against vampires, why hadn't it, at some point, occurred to anyone to use Magic to directly destroy the vampires?

Aside from a comic book writer.