THE FLAT IN BATH  by Jayne Leitch
C. 2001

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Mistah Kurtz--he dead.
                                   A penny for the Old Guy
                                                                --T.S. Eliot
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     The flat in Bath comes fully furnished, but with empty bookshelves and no electricity.
His new landlord apologises profusely--and sleepily--on the other end of the line while
informing him that it is quite impossible to have the power turned on at this hour, but he
will put in a call to the company first thing in the morning, if Giles is willing to wait...?

     Giles is willing.  Darkness and empty bookshelves seem somehow deeply appropriate.

     What strikes him most, of course, is the utter absence of immaturity in this place.  It's
an older building, quaint in its way, with doorframes Giles has to stoop to walk through
and typically draughty British windows.  The decor tends toward lush colours, the
furniture toward worn-in overstuffing.  The item he is pleasantly surprised to find as he
explores is a rich mahogany desk, set just off the wall in the corner of the living room
where all the empty bookshelves are.  Beyond that, his surroundings are almost
amusingly unnoticable.

     Unimprinted.  There are no cola-can rings on the tables, no forgotten CDs or bits of
misplaced jewellery strewn across shelves or hidden under couch cushions.  His new
home is decidedly absent of the young-people clutter Giles had long ago accepted as
permanent in his living space.

     He wonders how much of that clutter managed to make its way into the boxes that
haven't arrived yet, and where he'll put it once it's unpacked.  Or whether he'll just send it
back to Willow or Xander or Dawn or whoever it truly belongs to.

     He wonders if he'll find anything of Buffy's as he unpacks.  Then he wonders if the
apartment comes with a fully furnished liquor cabinet.

     Without electricity, the brightest room is the living room, with large windows facing
the street and allowing the weak glow of the streetlamps to paint the room in layers of
shadows that at least give texture to the dark.

     Giles sits at the mahogany desk with a glass of whiskey and looks at the empty
bookshelves.  He could, theoretically, start filling them up with the few tomes he has in
his carryon luggage, but theoretical seems an awful distance from practical this evening.
And with all the travel and altitude changes and switch from Pacific to Atlantic, his hand
is acting up.  It seems easier just to sit and swallow and stare.

     And swear.  Because Goddammit, this is the beginning of his Life, and he has no right
to wallow.  Maybe for an hour on the plane, his hand wrapped around the silly rubber
monster while his eyes scanned the shaky writing on the card, but not here.  Not here,
because here is where he is going to pick himself up, dust himself off and...

     Sit in the dark and drink.  Because he never was very good at letting things go.

     He curls his fingers around the glass, and feels the ache flare into dull pain along the
bones of his fingers.  Everyone he knows had been fascinated by the web of scars coiling
around his hand at one time or another; he used to catch Willow staring some nights as
they poured over books under bright desktop lights, and he knows that Xander used
handshakes to hide the quick tracery of his fingertips over the lines.  Spike, during that
truly awful time they'd spent as flatmates, always seemed to know when the pain was at
its worst...

     ...Giles recalls for a moment an evening when he had been massaging the knuckles
and hollows around which the scars twisted and flexed, only to have his good hand batted
away by Spike, whose cool fingers pulled sharply and pressed harshly just long enough to
soothe before he sighed--*sighed*--and went back to the television...

     ...And Angel never touched his hands.  They hadn't spent time together after his return
from hell, not as casually as they had before, but when impending apocalypses forced
them into the same library space, the way Angel avoided all physical contact was almost
pathetic.  There had been a moment when, in passing a book between them, Angel's
fingers had grazed his own, and Giles had felt the vampire freeze in shock; it lasted
barely an instant before the book was duly passed, but Angel hadn't come within arm's
reach for the rest of the night.

     The scars troubled Dawn; her eyes would follow his hand when he moved it to clean
his glasses or pick up a book, and they would cloud over with sympathy whenever he
favoured it.  Olivia, though...

     ...Giles pictures the look that washed over her face when she discovered the blemishes
that hadn't been there the last time they'd made love, the mild stiffness that had to be
flexed out before he could do anything delicate; she had fixed questioning dark eyes on
his own, then brought his hand to her lips and kissed and sucked and licked the fault lines
without waiting for an answer...

     ...And Buffy had noticed them once, in the library a few days after returning to
Sunnydale.  She had looked to where he was pointing something out--a picture of a
demon, perhaps, he couldn't remember--and been thrown into a brief silence before
blinking back tears and resuming the conversation, never seeming to notice again.

     The flat is getting colder as the night draws on; Giles swallows his whiskey for the
burn down his throat and goes to dig a pullover out of his bag.  The damp of seaside air
and cold of encroaching autumn is seeping into his fingers, and he fumbles with the
zipper.

     The physical markings of his time as an active--and inactive--Watcher are spread over
his body, landmarks he can point to as proving the battles happened, souveniers that
prove he was there.  He doesn't know how many scars must be buried under his hair by
now; possibly enough to rival the number on his hand, considering his tendency towards
head wounds.  There is a discoloured, jagged crescent on his right thigh where a S'Ovrik
bit him; Wesley had been panicking, and his resultant attempt at the antidote hadn't held
long enough to heal the mark completely.  He's getting closer to a bad back and worse
knees.  His hands are deeply calloused from whittling stakes and swinging
weapons--callouses other Watchers will sniff at when he visits Headquarters in a few
days, because the roughest things a Watcher should handle without gloves are the pages
of his books.  He wonders if anyone will listen when he explains how he had to fight with
everyone else after Buffy died--how he wanted to fight with everyone else long
before--then acknowledges that he doesn't think anyone will care enough even to ask.

     He goes to stand at the window and stares out at the people walking through the
evening, blissfully unaware of what might be hiding in those bushes, around that corner.
He reminds himself that Bath is nowhere near a hellmouth, and sighs.  He goes to refill
his glass, then returns to the window.

     Giles knows what the Council thinks of him, and firmly believes that they only think it
because they don't know what really goes on between the Watcher and the Slayer and the
demons they battle.  He imagines the looks on the faces he'll pass at Headquarters, the
widened eyes from the younger set impressed by his time in the field, and the
disapprovingly pursed lips of the elders that will attempt to impress upon him that
*finally* his abandonment of propriety has led to the loss of his Slayer.  If he had stayed
true to tradition, kept Buffy isolated from friends and dating and school--he purses his
own lips against his glass--Buffy would have died much sooner, and he would have made
his return trip years before now.   But then, they would no doubt remind him, at least it
wouldn't have been his fault.

     His eyes lose focus, and Giles remembers a night a few days after the First Slayer
incident.  They had all gone patrolling that night, looking for demons who managed to
escape the destruction of the Initiative; their group was much larger than usual, because
Anya tagged along after Xander, Willow brought Tara, and Spike was hanging around
trying to make nice so they wouldn't kill him for working with Adam.  And Dawn...Giles
blinks, and reminds himself that Dawn hadn't actually existed that night, despite the fact
that he clearly remembers the sound of Buffy's voice as she complained to Riley
about...nail polish and a skirt, he thinks.  Something Dawn had spilled on one of Buffy's
skirts.  He shakes his head.

     They made a huge group, wandering through various cemetaries and secluded alleys
and quiet streets, but for some reason they never split into teams.  The couples held hands
and spoke quietly to one another, the occasional quip made them laugh much louder than
they should have--and together they killed five demons.  Afterwards, they returned to his
house--all of them--and he let them rummage through his kitchen for food, sprawl on his
furniture, and watch his television until they fell asleep.  Most of them had still been
there the next morning when he came downstairs for tea, and he'd watched them sleep
while he waited for the kettle to boil.

     Giles blinks, and the sun-drenched image of his old home, full of entirely comfortable
bodies and the gentle sounds of deep slumber, is replaced by the new one, cold and
empty and silent.  He turns away from the window and finds a chair in the darkness,
settles himself into it and flexes his hand.  He compares that night to one from this past
summer, early August, he thinks it was, when all of them had gone patrolling
together--minus one couple but plus one robot--and killed two vampires.  They'd retired
to the Summers house that night, empty because Dawn was sleeping over at a friend's,
and there had been lounging, and laughing, and rummaging for food.  He had watched
while Willow plugged her laptop into the Buffy-Bot and began another series of endless
"fine-tunings" of various programmes.  He had taken a cup of cocoa when Tara brought
the tray in from the kitchen, he had listened to Anya and Xander argue over something on
the news, and he had gamely played a hand of blackjack with Spike until the vampire
couldn't take it anymore and escaped to his crypt.  And soon Xander and Anya said their
goodbyes, and Willow unplugged the robot and sent it upstairs to recharge, and Tara
smiled sleepily at him and wished him goodnight before following Willow up to what
had been Joyce's room.

     Giles remembers taking his empty mug to the kitchen and rinsing it in the sink before
checking that the back door was locked and turning out the lights.  He recalls listening
for a moment at the bottom of the stairs, and starting up them when it became clear that
the girls had turned in for the night.  He closes his eyes, and sees how the Buffy-Bot
looked as he stared in at it from the door to Buffy's old room: plugged into its battery,
motionless, eyes open and staring at nothing.  He had watched the steady blink of its
indicator light for a while before moving to the bed and sitting carefully beside the prone
body.  Reaching out, he had brushed one of his scarred fingers over the bare latex skin of
its arm, from the limp curve of its elbow all the way over its shoulder and throat and lips
and nose and eyelashes to its hair.

     And he had smoothed the silky strands from her forehead, leaned down, and planted a
gentle kiss just above her right eye, just the way the kind of man he wished he'd been
when she was alive would have done.  Then he had stood up, walked out of the room,
and secured the rest of the house before going back to his home, alone and silent.

     Giles opens his eyes and frowns into the dark.  He reminds himself that Buffy is dead,
that the rest of them are an ocean and most of a continent away, and that he needs to
change his watch now that he's crossed a number of time zones.  He tries to do so, and
discovers that the fingers of his scarred hand have stiffened into almost total uselessness;
he curses once, absently, and takes another mouthful of whiskey.  The watch can wait
until later, when he has heat and lights and, with any luck, dexterity.

     He does the math in his head and realizes how late--early, actually--it is.  He pushes
himself out of the chair, groaning softly as his legs creak in protest, and turns to find the
bedroom, despite being thoroughly on Sunnydale night patrol time and not nearly tired
yet.

     The sight of the empty bookshelves stops him.  He traces their lines and angles and
shadows with his eyes, and realizes that he hasn't let anything go yet, anything at all.
That he misses the life he distanced himself from all summer, that he misses his full
living room and Willow's eyes and Xander's smile and Dawn's laugh and Buffy's--and
Buffy.  Knows that he's been missing them all for months now.

     He turns away from the shelves and settles himself back into the chair, pulling his
sweater closer around him.  This is his Life, darkness and empty bookshelves, and Giles
is willing to live it if he must.

     And then the telephone rings.

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Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
                         Life is very long
                                                      --T.S. Eliot
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End.

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