Giles-y drabbles
I'm writing a bunch of drabbles for the Fan 100. Here are the ones that are Giles-y in nature. Few of them are actually 100 words in length, I go over most of the time. #99 is exclusive to livejournal - it has not been posted anywhere else, They are all PG tops. Buffy-related stuff is the property of Joss Whedon and associates, not me.
Years
For the first time in weeks, Giles relaxed. He was back at Oxford again, and at last he felt like he was truly at home.
When he was at Council Headquarters, Giles worked hard to suppress the urge to lash out against the Watchers’ scrutiny and veiled derision, to question their methods and practices. That could only lead to more scrutiny and derision, and a greater urge lash out, and he had no right to feel that way, not after what he’d done. Whatever else they were, the Council was on the side of good, and Giles had to make himself a part of that. It was simply going to take a lot of effort. As for his family home, that was the same as ever, only… colder.
The university was where Giles felt he belonged. It was old, and solid, constant. He could lose himself in the world of academia, in the lecture halls and libraries. At first he had been afraid that he had forgotten too much to be able to complete his degree. After all, so much had happened in the intervening years. But soon after he stepped onto campus, Giles felt it all coming back to him.1688, the Glorious Revolution makes William of Orange Britain's constitutional monarch; 1713-1714, the Peace of Utrcht-Rastadt ends the Nine Years War. The more he remembered, the better able he was to immerse himself in his studies, so that he was almost able to forget the other life he had at the Council, forget the other world he belonged to, with its demons and slayers and darkness. Almost.
1455-1485, Wars of the Roses (In the Balkans, several towns are wiped out by an order of vampires, which concurrently increases the numbers of the order and its reach. Twenty-three Slayers are Called in rapid succession before the order is defeated)
1588, British defeat the Spanish Armada (A demonic cult in Ankara nearly succeeds in raining hellfire down on earth. The Slayer who stopped them is found by the cult’s survivors. She is tortured, and killed, and her body is desecrated)
1648, the Treaty of Westphalia ends the Thirty Years War (After four years and seven months in action, the longest lived Slayer to date is killed)
Orange
“Does he do this a lot?”
“Sure. Every day the earth rotates backward and the skies turn orange.”
Of course, the sky turns orange every evening when the sun sets, but Willow wasn’t going to start bickering over something like that with Xander, not at a time like this. Anyways, she was busy thinking of sunsets and Giles singing, and Giles singing to her, at sunset, and vaguely hoping that Tara wouldn’t be jealous - after all, Giles was a man (funny how she hadstopped noticing that for a while) and Willow wasn’t into that kind of thing anymore, not mostly anyways.
Children
After the incident in the park, Giles and Jenny got back together. They would take things slow, it was agreed, but there was no denying that there was a new sense of committment there on both their parts. After all, you don't give your boyfriend another chance after a demon he raised almost killed you because you want a casual relationship. Jenny knew that commitment was there, but avoided thinking about it, not wanting to consider what it meant for her as a child of the Kalderash.
Giles, on the other hand, thought about it a lot. For the first time since he met her, when he thought about Jenny Giles found his mind racing in fast-forward, to Valentine's Day, summer vacation, their one-year anniversary, meeting the friends she talked about often, and the family she spoke of not at all but who must exist somewhere, changes in living arrangements, their second anniversary, elaborate fantasies about taking time off to visit England with her, third anniversary. And when Buffy and her friends came into the library with eggs for an assignment for family studies, or whatever it was they were calling home ec theses days, Giles found himself thinking about children -- not slayers, and not teenagers filling his library with noise and chaos, but... a baby, with Jenny's eyes and his nose, who would keep them up at night, cost loads of money, accellerate the pace at which his hair was greying, call him "father". He had never found one idea so terrifying and so charming at the same time.
But Giles was getting ahead of himself. They were taking things slow, after all; and circumstances on the Hellmouth usually conspired to interrupt dates and ensure that they take things even slower. He filed his thoughts away at the back of his brain, to be returned to at a later date, when they could be discussed with Jenny. At least until after their first anniversary; possibly during their trip to England. They had time.
Dream
"After Jenny was killed, I had dreams that she was s-still alive, that I saved her..."
It's one of those rare moments when Giles says or does something that makes Buffy suddenly realize that he is... human - no, she knows he's human, of course, thinks of him as more than just an encyclopedia with arms, although she calls him that often enough - ... breakable. Buffy never considered the possibility that Giles has dreams - he is knowledge, logic, reason, not things that go with dreaming. And what he dreams about... Buffy knows that he... was? is? ... in love - strange thought, though hadn't he told her he was? In another moment, at the time surrounded by many others, when he had been fragile, breakable, breaking even; a scary time, spent not knowing how to hold him together, when other things were falling apart, but he had held together somehow anyways - and she not only knows that he has regrets, but she also has a gnawing sense that she is the cause of several of them, a sense made worse by him never telling her as much. But even though she knows these things, to be reminded of them is a shock. Because though Buffy realizes that Giles is breakable, she doesn't want to accept it. He isn't supposed to be that way, so she denies it, forgets it, ignores it. And here he is reminding her, showing her the chips and fractures, and it hurts to think about it, just makes things so much harder, and how can she ask this of him? How can she tell Giles that Angel is back when she's afraid of him breaking? Better to lie. It was never anything more than a dream.
Years
For the first time in weeks, Giles relaxed. He was back at Oxford again, and at last he felt like he was truly at home.
When he was at Council Headquarters, Giles worked hard to suppress the urge to lash out against the Watchers’ scrutiny and veiled derision, to question their methods and practices. That could only lead to more scrutiny and derision, and a greater urge lash out, and he had no right to feel that way, not after what he’d done. Whatever else they were, the Council was on the side of good, and Giles had to make himself a part of that. It was simply going to take a lot of effort. As for his family home, that was the same as ever, only… colder.
The university was where Giles felt he belonged. It was old, and solid, constant. He could lose himself in the world of academia, in the lecture halls and libraries. At first he had been afraid that he had forgotten too much to be able to complete his degree. After all, so much had happened in the intervening years. But soon after he stepped onto campus, Giles felt it all coming back to him.1688, the Glorious Revolution makes William of Orange Britain's constitutional monarch; 1713-1714, the Peace of Utrcht-Rastadt ends the Nine Years War. The more he remembered, the better able he was to immerse himself in his studies, so that he was almost able to forget the other life he had at the Council, forget the other world he belonged to, with its demons and slayers and darkness. Almost.
1455-1485, Wars of the Roses (In the Balkans, several towns are wiped out by an order of vampires, which concurrently increases the numbers of the order and its reach. Twenty-three Slayers are Called in rapid succession before the order is defeated)
1588, British defeat the Spanish Armada (A demonic cult in Ankara nearly succeeds in raining hellfire down on earth. The Slayer who stopped them is found by the cult’s survivors. She is tortured, and killed, and her body is desecrated)
1648, the Treaty of Westphalia ends the Thirty Years War (After four years and seven months in action, the longest lived Slayer to date is killed)
Orange
“Does he do this a lot?”
“Sure. Every day the earth rotates backward and the skies turn orange.”
Of course, the sky turns orange every evening when the sun sets, but Willow wasn’t going to start bickering over something like that with Xander, not at a time like this. Anyways, she was busy thinking of sunsets and Giles singing, and Giles singing to her, at sunset, and vaguely hoping that Tara wouldn’t be jealous - after all, Giles was a man (funny how she hadstopped noticing that for a while) and Willow wasn’t into that kind of thing anymore, not mostly anyways.
Children
After the incident in the park, Giles and Jenny got back together. They would take things slow, it was agreed, but there was no denying that there was a new sense of committment there on both their parts. After all, you don't give your boyfriend another chance after a demon he raised almost killed you because you want a casual relationship. Jenny knew that commitment was there, but avoided thinking about it, not wanting to consider what it meant for her as a child of the Kalderash.
Giles, on the other hand, thought about it a lot. For the first time since he met her, when he thought about Jenny Giles found his mind racing in fast-forward, to Valentine's Day, summer vacation, their one-year anniversary, meeting the friends she talked about often, and the family she spoke of not at all but who must exist somewhere, changes in living arrangements, their second anniversary, elaborate fantasies about taking time off to visit England with her, third anniversary. And when Buffy and her friends came into the library with eggs for an assignment for family studies, or whatever it was they were calling home ec theses days, Giles found himself thinking about children -- not slayers, and not teenagers filling his library with noise and chaos, but... a baby, with Jenny's eyes and his nose, who would keep them up at night, cost loads of money, accellerate the pace at which his hair was greying, call him "father". He had never found one idea so terrifying and so charming at the same time.
But Giles was getting ahead of himself. They were taking things slow, after all; and circumstances on the Hellmouth usually conspired to interrupt dates and ensure that they take things even slower. He filed his thoughts away at the back of his brain, to be returned to at a later date, when they could be discussed with Jenny. At least until after their first anniversary; possibly during their trip to England. They had time.
Dream
"After Jenny was killed, I had dreams that she was s-still alive, that I saved her..."
It's one of those rare moments when Giles says or does something that makes Buffy suddenly realize that he is... human - no, she knows he's human, of course, thinks of him as more than just an encyclopedia with arms, although she calls him that often enough - ... breakable. Buffy never considered the possibility that Giles has dreams - he is knowledge, logic, reason, not things that go with dreaming. And what he dreams about... Buffy knows that he... was? is? ... in love - strange thought, though hadn't he told her he was? In another moment, at the time surrounded by many others, when he had been fragile, breakable, breaking even; a scary time, spent not knowing how to hold him together, when other things were falling apart, but he had held together somehow anyways - and she not only knows that he has regrets, but she also has a gnawing sense that she is the cause of several of them, a sense made worse by him never telling her as much. But even though she knows these things, to be reminded of them is a shock. Because though Buffy realizes that Giles is breakable, she doesn't want to accept it. He isn't supposed to be that way, so she denies it, forgets it, ignores it. And here he is reminding her, showing her the chips and fractures, and it hurts to think about it, just makes things so much harder, and how can she ask this of him? How can she tell Giles that Angel is back when she's afraid of him breaking? Better to lie. It was never anything more than a dream.