Get It Done: I haz done! Seasons Keep On Marching (Giles/Lilah, PG13)
So I invented a motivationathon at least partly on the strength of this plotbunny, which I knew I'd never write out without a deadline. And here it is. Poor Giles. He might have been happier to stay a 200 word plot outline. But I hope you enjoy!
Author Brutti ma buoni
Title Seasons Keep On Marching
Characters Rupert Giles, Lilah Morgan (eventually hint of Giles/Lilah)
Rating and warnings PG13, lashings of angst, musings on mortality tending to suicidal thinking
Words 7300
Summary Just before Chosen, someone offers Giles a choice. He tries to choose wisely. But taking anything from Wolfram & Hart has consequences, no matter how wisely you choose. More people than just Giles will share those consequences, for good or ill.
A/N This fic is part of the Get It Done minibang. It is accompanied by a fanmix by the lovely queenofthebobs, which gave me the title and much listening pleasure while I was editing.
They were very near the end now. Giles could feel the smack of it in the air, the approach of Apocalypse. On the breezes of warm late spring, doom always felt particularly inappropriate, but equally it felt inevitable thanks to years of conditioning. The year turned, the world was threatened once more. The Hellmouth would open, and his army of girls would fight, and die, and the year would continue to turn, but it was entirely possible that thereafter humanity would be at an end.
Having more than one girl - woman - in the fight did not make life simpler. His responsibilities were spread thinly, but he was responsible for them all the same. The last of the Watchers. (Give or take, but the three or four still alive hadn't bothered to come to Sunnydale for the end of the world, so Giles didn't consider them to be true Watchers any more.)
He was drinking what was probably the antepenultimate cup of tea of his life (a calculation based on assuming death would come tomorrow. He would sneak in a few more if he had a full night's sleep and another day to live), when a dry cough sounded at around the location of the kitchen table.
"Might I disturb you?" The words were polite, but the tone was not. Whoever this woman might be - and whyever she might have come to Sunnydale for the end of days - she was not a bumbling Watcher type.
She was extremely beautiful. Agelessly so, though she was probably not much past thirty. She'd still be that stunning in twenty years. Forty, very likely.
Or at least, she would be, if she wasn't already dead. But she was. Giles had met enough dead men walking to recognise it. He groped desperately for a cross, a stake, some holy water - dammit, they'd become sloppy about ordinary vampire attacks, amid all the ubervamp chaos, and… and she was indoors. Across a threshold. So, not a vampire. Did he have any silver for zombies?
The woman watched him with an ironic lift to one eyebrow. "Mr Giles? There's no need for alarm. I'm not a zombie. Or a vampire. I'm a lawyer."
Not wholly reassuring. But she wasn't on the attack. Giles paused, considering his options.
"I'm here to offer you a deal," said the woman. "On behalf of my employers. Wolfram and Hart. I believe you know of them?"
Less reassuring still, but Giles had little to do that evening except listen.
*
She was called Lilah Morgan. She had been Wesley's lover, and he had eventually beheaded her corpse. But he didn't remember that now, due to recent skulduggery on Angel's part.
She was, for a lawyer, unnervingly frank.
"I have a deal to offer you. But I don't fully understand it. I can give you this-" She passed Giles an envelope, which rattled. "It will help you win. Or so they tell me."
Giles's first instinct was to scoff. They were so unlikely to win, he knew, that his thoughts had trouble moving beyond the imminent Apocalypse. However, she seemed perfectly serious. Which meant that well-trained Watchers had to ask important questions. "And in exchange we…?"
One of Lilah's brows arched a little further. Not in sarcasm, apparently. "That I can't tell you. All I know is that the Senior Partners feel that it would be advantageous to the company to help your side to win. And that there's going to be a price to pay." She paused for a needless breath, regrouping. "But you knew that."
Giles considered throwing the envelope back at her head. But he could feel papers inside, and papers meant information. Information was precisely what they lacked at present; they were instead full of inspirational speeches and doom-ridden hope. Something a trifle more concrete would be overwhelmingly welcome.
Lilah Morgan waited while he opened the envelope, cast a quick glance over the papers to ensure they had at least some potential value, and while he gave a doubtful examination of a tacky piece of jewellery which nonetheless reeked of magical power. "It's an amulet," he said, at length. Banal, but true.
"Yes it is. A strengthening, cleaning amulet. Powerful, of course. To be worn by a champion," said Lilah in return. Her face screwed up in disdain. "If you can find one."
Well. That was interesting. Giles wouldn't have been even slightly surprised if she had indicated that she didn't think much of the breed of champions. But not to believe in them, despite all the work of Angel's gang... A trifle startling to Giles. Things must have been very problematic in Los Angeles, these past weeks. He'd suspected as much, from the broadcast networks, but it had never been the appropriate moment to investigate. And now there was no time.
So. Information and an amulet of unknown capacity. Not so very much on which to swear away one's soul. But it was a straw, and Giles grasped it, with abandon. There would be a reckoning, but it would be the day after tomorrow. And this way, they might live long enough to see it.
He held out his right hand, to seal the bargain. Lilah Morgan held out hers, with a spiked oath ring prominent on this inside of her long, elegant, very dead fingers.
Giles took her hand, shook it, and squeezed hard as the two ends of the spiked ring penetrated dead and living flesh, mingling their blood. She bled slow and sluggish, but more or less blood heat. If Giles hadn't known better, he would have thought she was a living being, not merely a wraith on a contract.
"It's a deal, Mr Giles," said Lilah Morgan. "We'll be in touch."
*
In the whirlwind of the Hellmouth expedition, there was no time for deep analysis. Giles truly didn't expect them to win, even with their extensive planning. And yet, somehow, they did. It was glorious.
Only afterwards did he start seriously to worry about that deal. Wolfram and Hart was not an entity known for its magnanimity. When they didn't come calling, Giles began to wonder.
Were they, perhaps, not going to exact a price from him directly? Had they been sufficiently pleased by the outcome of that Apolcalyptic plan being foiled that they didn't need to take further payment?
Giles knew of course of Wolfram and Hart's prophecy division; their expectation of a very specific, Wolfram-and-Hart-centric Apocalypse. But he doubted that they would have bothered to suborn him simply to prevent another, non-canonical, Apocalypse. From what the Council had gleaned of the available firepower of the lawyers when truly roused, it seemed unlikely that they would have required the services of the Slayers simply to close one Hellmouth.
So. Something else.
Two somethings had resulted from Wolfram and Hart's help. Two specific somethings that their intervention had changed. Spike was dead. And the Slayers had been called en masse.
Perhaps a third should be added: Rupert Giles had sold his soul to Wolfram and Hart. Or the soul of the Slayers and Watchers, perhaps. He was not the man that he had been before Lilah Morgan came to call. He should, perhaps- no, certainly- have calculated that into the bargain. Too late, now.
One of those three things, then. One of those was most likely what Wolfram and Hart had wanted.
The brain of Rupert Giles was an analytical one. He was more than capable of continuing to fret at a problem while the immediate aftermath of the fall of Sunnydale played out. Simple organisational and administrative tasks went by; homes were found for the known Slayers; new Watchers recruited; the Sunnydale gang spread across the globe seeking further new Slayers.
And Giles thought.
In reverse order, he eventually decided, the probabilities were:
1. His own corruption. For sure, a traitor in the heart of the Slayer movement would be a tool with some potential for an evilly-minded organisation. But he had made no promise of conformity. He could, he believed, argue his way out of any post-act requirements that Wolfram and Hart might choose to attempt to implement. And besides, Giles was only one man. False modesty was to be deprecated, but one Giles was not sufficient to change a great deal.
2. Spike's death. Important, in its way, for sure, and it had certainly knocked the stuffing out of Buffy for a good while. And yet, Spike was only one man too. (Besides, Giles eventually got word that the vampire had returned from the very dead. And putting Spike out of action for a few months really didn't seem significant enough to be worth Wolfram and Hart's while.)
3. He didn't want to believe it. But it seemed entirely probable that the evil Wolfram and Hart might gain from their good deed was the creation of multiple Slayers.
Giles chewed over these conclusions for months. Long enough for Angel's gang to rise and fall within the portals of Wolfram and Hart Los Angeles. Long enough for another mini-apocalypse thanks to the Black Thorn; crushed thanks to Slayer support. Long enough to make up his mind. It took some time.
He went to Los Angeles almost four years after the fall of Sunnydale.
*
“I’m here to speak with Lilah Morgan.”
The receptionist looked blank. Mostly, they did, in Giles’s experience, at least in organisations as powerful as this. Having expressions was risky. But this was a specific blankness, an artifice. So he was not in the least surprised when she said, “I’m sorry sir. There’s no one of that name employed by Wolfram and Hart Los Angeles.”
Which was an interesting piece of phraseology, however one looked at it. Of more immediate import, however, Giles was able to brandish her business card. “Ms Morgan told me to get in touch if I needed anything.”
The receptionist’s blankness took on a new quality. This time, no affected lack of knowledge. No indeed. Carefully masked terror, more like. Or perhaps revulsion. Difficult to qualify it precisely without knowing what made this greeting robot tick, when she was not at Wolfram and Hart’s mercy. Of course, in all probability, that didn’t arise. The contractual arrangements at this company allowed little latitude to employees. Past or present, as he would doubtless see soon.
“Of course, sir. Perhaps you could take a seat?” Giles made a move towards the adjacent violently-uncomfortable-looking tubular steel chairs, set among pot plants and magazines in a parody of corporate hospitality so extreme that it almost made him chuckle. “No, sir. Not there,” said the receptionist, with an edge to her tone. “Here.”
“Here” was through a door. A steel door, reinforced, bounded by detectors of various kinds. Metal, of course, and probably an explosives sniffer too, since Wolfram and Hart had plenty of enemies of a purely human nature, more than able to take their revenge in pedestrian yet effective guise. Plus a vampire detector, of course. Angel was still out there, somewhere not too far away, presumably still bent on vengeance. Some kind of glamour-negator, he suspected too, and probably other wards he was insufficiently expert to identify. The Council had never had this kind of hardware for its basic apartments.
The room where they kept him was quite unlike the glossy exterior waiting room. No magazines, no glass. Grey predominated. Seating was fixed, rather firmly. This was a room which expected trouble. Though doubtless they phrased it differently. Client relations management perhaps.
Giles suddenly wondered whether he would get out alive. It would be inelegant, simply to gut him in a waiting room, but given the decor in this drab space, presumably Evil Inc didn’t always worry overmuch about style.
Lilah Morgan entered through the door Giles had also come in by. She looked much as when he had last seen her, years before. Much as? Identical, to the scarf at her throat, concealing her severed neck. She also looked startled, deep down, underneath the gloss.
“I’m sorry,” said Giles, reflexively. “Did I come at a bad time?”
She didn’t speak her response to his fatuous pleasantry. A relief. Giles wasn’t certain what dead Wolfram and Hart employees got up to in between meetings, but he had a strong sense that he didn’t want to discover. And that any break would be a welcome one.
“You worked it out, then?” Lilah’s brow arched, familiar and scathing.
“It’s the Slayers,” he responded, simply.
“Well... duh.” That was unexpected. A crack in the corporate facade, a curl of crimson lip in genuine if scornful amusement. Perhaps that was what had attracted Wesley’s attention. “But what?”
“I... was hoping you might help me to discover that,” he admitted. Giles had had more than enough time attempting to puzzle this one out, without notable progress. Why, precisely, would Wolfram and Hart want to increase the Slayer population several hundredfold?
The brows stayed up; the shoulders rose to join them, elegantly indifferent. “If you really want, Mr Giles. Though I’m fairly certain it won’t be an answer you like.”
*
The bowels of Wolfram and Hart were an unexpected place. Giles had heard rumours of the wonders of the library, the prophecy room, the sophisticated electronics. No one had thought to mention the records store. It looked, as all well-run record stores did, utterly tedious. Filing cabinets to eternity and beyond, with cheap neon lighting unflattering to the complexion of even the living. In the merciless light, Lilah’s lips looked blue, even under the perfect gloss covering. Giles tried not to stare.
“Good afternoon,” said the perky woman at the desk. “I’m Files and Records. How can I help?”
Lilah was brusque. “Everything you have on Sunnydale 2003. The Slayer awakening spell. New Slayers called.” The woman in charge of the records opened her mouth, but Lilah spoke before she could. “Just tell us where the files are. We don’t know what we’re looking for.” The woman’s eyes clicked and spun. “Bay seventy-four. Cabinet 120 onwards.”
Rupert Giles genuinely enjoyed research. Lilah Morgan was a brilliant investigative attorney. It still took them three days to get through the mass of information and conclude that they had little to go on. It wasn't a wholly unpleasant experience, strange to report. Giles enjoyed the professionalism of Lilah's approach, and even more the few signs of its fraying, as she progressively removed shoes, jacket and eventually the neckerchief that concealed her wound.
It appeared that she had no autonomy over her own clothing. It was the same suit, both times they met. The same white top, against which the bloody gash at her neck was quite obscene. Remarkable. It troubled Giles increasingly as the days passed. Familiarity did not breed comfort with the mechanics of the undead.
He eventually realised that he was staring, but Lilah’s head was tilted back against the nearest bank of metal cabinets, and her eyes were closed. Perhaps she didn't get much chance to rest, during whatever alternative to real life she underwent on a normal day. Wolfram and Hart had plenty of pocket dimensions where time would pass differently for the no-longer-human. No doubt they got good value for their investment in Lilah Morgan.
His own head was rolling back, resting blissfully against the chilly metal of the cabinets directly opposite her. Perhaps just a little rest, here, in the belly of the beast.
He wasn't sure how long his pause lasted. Lilah was up and reading once more when his eyes opened, her neckerchief refastened and skirt pulled to a respectable straightness. She turned over a page, realised she was at the end of the file and called out, "Hey, you there." It had a raw sound, discourteous, where Giles had become accustomed to finesse. She was fraying, rather.
The woman who was known only as Files and Records appeared, smiling her eternally supportive smile. "How may I help you?"
"I can't find the next file. Where's the stuff on Slayers called after-" Lilah checked the label on the buff file. "July 2003?"
The woman-demon-filing construct's eyes flickered. "There are none."
"No files? Crap, did we finally go paperless?"
"No. Slayers, called, August 2003: none. September 2003: none. October 2003: none-"
"Could you give us the précis, please?" intervened Giles. He tried to swallow rising dread. Girls had been called after the spell; they'd been able to trace its ripple across the globe. His throat started to close, as the dread wouldn’t be swallowed, and Files and Records continued obediently.
"The last known Slayer called was Marie-Francoise de la Rue, of Réunion on 12 July 2003, shortly before the Slayer spell reached its antipode. No further Slayers have been called or will be called."
It had been almost four years. Even allowing for the impact of the spell sweeping up a whole generation of Slayers at once, there should have been new ones cropping up now. New girls on whom the potential was bestowed, reaching puberty and becoming eligible for Slayerhood.
He paused. "And identified Potential Slayers?"
Her eyes didn't flicker. "There are no identified Potential Slayers. The Slayer line is ending." He rather thought her incapable of a lie, given her functions. And something inside him, dully, said Yes. You knew there was a price. This was it.
Giles was neither especially proud nor remotely surprised that the first fully coherent thought he was capable of expressing turned out to be, “I need a drink.”
Lilah looked back steadily. Her brow was quirked, and her eyes held no especial sympathy. If there was an emotion visible, it was perhaps, I told you so. Which was fair. They had both known there would be consequences, back in time when the deal was first done. And here consequences were. Hardly the moment to expostulate.
“I need,” he expanded, “A gin the size of my head. With, perhaps, the faintest suggestion of tonic. Just for variety.” He paused, uncertain of his next step but unwilling to drink alone, facing his inadvertent betrayal of the whole Council and the Slayer line head on. “I don’t suppose your contract would permit you to accompany me?”
Lilah’s eyes flickered closed for a moment. He fleetingly wondered whether he had touched her emotions, but- “That would be acceptable.”
Imagine that. Imagine being a ferociously intelligent, independent woman, and having a leash in your head, permission sought behind your eyes, every time you stepped outside of a set pattern of service. Didn’t bear too much thought, he found. He suspected that she too needed a drink.
*
The bar was better than Giles had expected. Ancient prejudice had led him to assume that all bars in Los Angeles were both loud and brassy. This was quiet, subtle, presumably highly expensive and - given his guide - very likely demon-owned. However, they knew how to serve desperate men, and Giles got himself outside a couple of stiff G&Ts without a great deal of ado. Lilah was on her second martini by the time he looked up.
The low lighting flattered her, taking away the strain. Freshening her clothes, though it was still that same business suit, in which she was presumably clad for eternity unless her masters willed otherwise.
She tilted the glass slightly in his direction, a combination of fellowship and mockery which was becoming increasingly familiar. Her mouth curled at the corner again, and Giles stuck, hypnotised, as she lifted the olive from her glass and sank her teeth in. Bit, chewed, swallowed. Her throat bobbed, and somewhere under the scarf he assumed her wound gaped briefly open. Still watching, he felt a shiver of something wholly unsuitable as she wrapped her lips around the remainder of the fruit and slipped it off the cocktail stick.
It would simply not do. She might be very beautiful, but she was unquestionably the dead plaything of corporate evil.
Disturbingly, that wasn’t sufficient to take Giles’s mind off her mouth.
Or, indeed, the very fine thighs she was at that moment re-crossing. Which, in its deliberate seductiveness, rather did the trick of recalling his superego to active service. He coughed, self-consciously, and sought to reinforce the return to virtue.
“Do they let you out much?” As though she were a dog.
Her nose wrinkled at the bluntness. “Now and again.” Poised and neutral.
“For old clients?”
Her eyes flicked closed, then open once more, with a faint hint of pain. “You could put it that way.”
So they animated her on a mortal plane for Wesley too, Giles could assume. Perhaps others. Perhaps she did live, after a fashion.
He was startled when she volunteered more. “I live every day, you know. They don’t flip a switch and take me out of the box. I’m just... not always here.”
“They don’t let you change, though.” He waved down the length of her, from decapitation scar to increasingly scuffed high heels.
“No.” She turned her head, gestured for a waiter. “No, that they do not.”
“How do you bear it?”
She broke off to order more alcohol, before turning back to face him. “For an intelligent man, Mr Giles, you ask the stupidest of questions.” She took one small sip of her fresh martini, before devouring the olive as though it were a personal enemy. No seduction in that gesture.
He took the point.
*
After that third drink, they began to talk properly. About what they had done, between them, and what that might mean for the world. Oddly, Giles quite enjoyed laying it all out for a deadly enemy. It wasn’t as though there were a great deal of surprise to the whole thing; Lilah felt no obligation to give horrified interjections. And Wolfram and Hart knew rather more than he did. So he talked.
Lilah listened, toying occasionally with her glass, or her latest olive when the next in her procession of martinis arrived. She looked, mainly, quizzical. At no point whatsoever did she appear concerned for the fate of either the world or Wolfram and Hart’s evil plan. It was soothing. So different to the Slayer Council, with its furrowed brows, heroism and apparently unavoidable dead girls.
“Doesn’t it make life more difficult for Wolfram and Hart, though,” he reached, eventually. “All these additional Slayers? Surely it must affect you.”
“Of course,” she said, imperturbably. “Of course, it’s not easy right now, with hundreds of little Slayerbots taking out our operatives. We’re pulling back from all kinds of commitments. But we play the long game, you understand. One generation of tough trading, versus centuries of Slayer-free activity? You do the math.”
Even that loathed expression couldn’t detract from her point. Even before she dragged her finger very, very precisely along the line of her wounded throat. The Slayer line, the fate of the world... pretty much kaput, and within foreseeable lifetimes. Scarcely to be wondered that Wolfram and Hart thought it worth the candle.
Giles rather suspected that defeat was already visible in his eyes. Till Lilah said, “Unless you change it back.”
He was swallowing at the time, and regrettably the ensuing choking fit was prolonged. But, eventually, Giles collected himself sufficiently to speak. “It’s possible?”
“Sure,” said Lilah, smiling. “You can kill ‘em all.” She didn’t give him long to choke on that one. “Well, it might work. We aren’t certain. But a blood sacrifice that large might just do it... Except you won’t, of course. Probably not even if it were the one sure way. You may see the need for a sacrifice, but you won’t kill more than one at a time.” The look on her face was... comradely? He assumed, from that, that she was well aware of Ben, and Spike, and Dawn, and the other innocents he had been theoretically or proactively prepared to end for the sake of the world. But that wasn’t the true Giles. Necessity was a terrifying driver, as he knew well. Underneath, he was not a killer.
It perturbed him, at times, that he had to remind himself of that so frequently.
She leaned over, laid a precise, chilly hand on his knee. “Don’t worry, Rupert Giles. I know you wouldn’t kill all those innocents. But you could take their power away.”
Of course, it was always going to be that, if anything. Take the scythe and undo the magic. Make it one girl in all the world again, bearing all that burden. So it could be any of them, called abruptly from a sisterhood of strength, and plunged into a fight to the death alone. And then the next, and the next, as it always had been.
But at least it would continue. Theirs wouldn’t be the last protected generation. Humankind would still have someone to fight against the vampires, the demons, the forces of darkness. “I can’t imagine - it’s going to be a terribly difficult decision for us to make.” The prospect of the debates made him blench somewhat. Giles loved the Slayer Council. It was infinitely preferable to the dictatorial reign of Quentin Travers, and those like him. However, speed of decision-making was not its forte.
Lilah’s look bordered on contempt, with perhaps just a small side dish of sympathy. “Oh, Rupert... Really, Mr Giles, I thought you had been better schooled than that.” Oh, and a touch of derision. Don’t forget that, Rupert.
“Meaning what, precisely?” He sounded as wooden as ever a Travers might. Get thee behind me, Morgan.
“Meaning that this isn’t a democratic process, Rupert. All or nothing. If just one Slayer refused to give up her power, the undoing spell would fail. You need to take it now, secretly, so they don’t have a chance to fight back.”
Finally, Giles thought he’d seen through their plan, that Lilah had dropped a clue to the real agenda. “Just one Slayer keeping her power is a disaster? You mean, they will all lose their power? Well, won’t that be awfully handy for your lot?”
Lilah necked - an unfortunate verb, but an apt one - the remains of her last drink. “You’re absurd, Rupert Giles. They will all be unchosen, so one will be chosen again. And presto, the Slayer line is rebooted.”
“So Buffy gets called all over again. Marvellous. One girl-“
“Not necessarily Buffy,” said Lilah, and got up to leave.
She turned back, just before going out of sight. “I believe the Senior Partners have someone you could talk to about this. Just call.”
*
Obviously, painfully obviously, Rupert Giles didn’t believe everything he was told by Wolfram and Hart. He most certainly didn’t follow up their suggestions immediately. He had spent four years learning to share everything with the Slayer Council. He would not act unilaterally on a matter which intimately concerned the Slayer line.
He was not a killer.
But.
Sometimes, extraordinary measures were called for. So he had learned.
Every research path, every spellbook, every prophet and prophecy he could muster, all pointed in the same direction. No more Slayers.
On a dark day (in June, but literalness was not the point), he found a reason to visit the Berlin branch of Wolfram and Hart Once again, the receptionist denied all knowledge. Once again, the now-creased business card caused worry and respect and led him into the very secure waiting room. The décor was not more exciting than that in Los Angeles, regrettably.
It took rather longer for Lilah to appear this time. She did not look better rested. Giles tried not to pity her.
“Who do you want me to talk to?”
“I don’t know.” She flinched, as though the violence that darted through Giles’s mind had found physical expression. “But they will.”
They entered the lift, and she tapped in a code Giles couldn’t see. The control panel warped, shifted and a white button appeared. The lift dissolved around them.
Cautious discussions with Angel and colleagues had revealed the existence of the White Room to the Slayer Council, so this moment should perhaps have been less of a shock than it was. Giles stepped into disorienting blank white. There was something under his feet, though quite what he could not have described. Elsewhere, there was nothing.
“I hardly think that speaking with the Senior Partners’ liaison will suffice to convin-“ Lilah’s cold, cold finger stopped his words. He could feel her nail, lightly, pressing against his upper lip.
“Not the Senior Partners. Some people who know how you feel.”
Out of the blankness came a drumbeat. A throb, familiar and unknown all at once. Three men sat before him. Old - ancient - he rather thought. If he’d been parsing them for an anthropology test he would have used phrases like “sub-Saharan African origin” and “basic textile production”. But he was not. He knew full well who they were. They came from the Rift. They took a girl, and filled her with a sufficiency of demons to use as a tool to save humanity. And they saved humanity. But after they were done, there was barely a girl remaining.
“You’re the Shadowmen.”
“Is that what you call us? We are the Watchers.” Of course they were. “We watch the Slayers. We help the Slayers. But we also see beyond the Slayers, and we remember why they were created. We watch over the world.”
“And you ally with darkness. You filled a girl with demonic power, and used her till she dropped. And here you are, three men, in the heart of the triple evil of the Wolf, the Ram and the Hart. Give me one single reason why we should trust you?”
“Because you are not “we”. You are merely “I”. You know that not everything can be decided by those who are closest to the weapons. A wider view-“
They continued. It was familiar. The Watchers’ creed, learned at his father’s knee. Self-justification, self-aggrandisement. And he still wasn’t convinced that the coincidence of three Watchers and three evil beasts was merely coincidental. Buffy had never mentioned how many Shadowmen she had met.
The Watcher on the left noticed his suspicions. “Rupert Giles. Three is merely a number of significance. Like one. One girl in all the world. One man to make a deal to save the day. Is that not so?” He reached out a finger, and pressed it between Giles’s eyebrows. “Now, know.”
Giles saw. The fate of the world. Buffy refusing the spell which would have saved them, and choosing her own way. Choosing to make a choice for hundreds of others. Choosing to put an end to the Slayer line. And he saw the future. The rising tide of evil, the army of Slayers fighting, ageing, dwindling, dying. The last Slayer was over 100 years old when she died. Still good for her age, but unable to fight back the horde of vampires called by a Master in Chennai. India was the first to fall, but once a subcontinent of over a billion former humans has fallen to vampires, the world will not be far behind.
And so it was. The Slayer line ended. The human race ended. All quite simple, when you saw it play out.
Giles didn’t thank them. Who would? When his eyes opened, he was in his hotel. No sign of Lilah. But a note, offering a deal that would allow him the spell. Save the world. At some personal cost, but when wasn’t that the case? After he had read it, it burned to fine ash where it lay. Showy, perhaps, but it left the furnishings untouched. Wolfram and Hart really did have extraordinary powers.
*
Seven months after that painful series of drinks with Lilah Morgan, three months after the Shadowmen, here Giles was, all avenues and alternatives exhausted. “You may very well groan, but it is audit time. And frankly, that gives me substantially greater pain than you. If I do the library and the select weapons, do you think we could detail some of the novices to help with the arsenal? Because I find myself somewhat daunted by the scale of the task.”
Dizzy with relief at being let off stocktaking, the inner circle agreed. Giles had been rather hoping they would spot his pretext and expel him forever. It would have seemed easier.
Stocktaking the library was simple. He was, after all, a half decent librarian, when events allowed him to be. Xander dropped by, nostalgic, after the first day, but predictably left when invited to join in the work. “You know how I love a jolly evening’s cataloguing, but I have girls to- to train. Yes. Much training is required.” His hasty exit almost collided with Willow’s equally nostalgic entrance. Giles tried not to project the tension he felt. Willow was far more likely to detect him, now or later in the process. She could well be the greatest danger to both the plan and to him personally.
She picked up a book. “Want some help? It’s kinda nice to see you librarian-ing again.” They exchanged fond smiles, and got to work.
After an hour or so, Giles threw out a casual, “Everything all right with you, Willow?” He expected to hear some feeling response relating to Kennedy and their apparently complex yet satisfying relationship. Instead, he got a frown.
“I... I’m not sure, Giles. There’s something hinky with the Slayer line.” Giles spluttered, convincingly startled.
“Good lord! Whatever can you mean? What does Buffy-“
Willow said, “I haven’t told them yet. But I think... I think maybe the spell is having consequences. Can we talk, properly, soon?”
Of course they could. Of course. And Giles could see how that would go. Willow finding out what the spell had done, and what the options were for undoing what should not have been done. Not telling the Slayers, any more than Giles had. And he and she, perhaps one or two select others... they would make together the choice that Giles now faced alone. Share the guilt; let Willow feel the pain he felt now. Let her know that her redemption had been the world’s destruction.
No.
How fortunate that he was already so far down the road of unilateral action, when he became quite, quite certain that he had no other choice.
*
The select weapons store was not easy to access. There was a certain amount of unpleasantness regarding verification of one’s identity, lack of enchantment and so forth. Sufficient at least to prevent any of the inner council from bothering Giles as he undertook his tedious task. The shadowcasters were in here, Kendra’s Mr Pointy, various one-use items against very particular enemies, and the scythe. It wasn’t terribly well protected, per se, but then to get at it one would have to fight one’s way through the headquarters of the Slayer Council and into the store, so perhaps it was unnecessary. The Council evidently had never considered betrayal by a trusted member of the inner elite. Giles certainly hadn’t, until now.
Giles’s stack of ledgers concealed an adequate, ready-to-be-glamoured substitute scythe. He put off replacing the true scythe until the last feasible point. Was he hoping to be stopped? Not precisely. And yet at many moments he would have welcomed it, and the fate of the world be damned.
Out of the secure areas, with the scythe in his bag, he was on the run already.
Wolfram and Hart London was far too distant in the circumstances, Giles felt, though the walk could not possibly have taken him more than half an hour.
He had tried to think of an alternative venue, but the deal he had been offered indicated that he needed Lilah Morgan for this, and it was the quickest way he knew to access her. As he crossed the threshold into evil, he promised every Watcher and Slayer who had gone before him that he would not let the scythe fall into the hands of evil. Even if it had to be destroyed to save it.
“I should like to speak with Lilah Morgan.”
Denial, business card as shibboleth, the security of a pretty-much-everything-proof waiting room. He knew the routine, now.
And, in due course, Lilah.
*
Lilah was pale, paler than ever, her lips almost bloodless, her hair starting to frost with grey. She had a new scarf at her throat. It showed traces of blood. Perhaps that explained her pallor, horribly.
“You have the spell?” They hadn’t given him the whole enchantment as part of the deal, retaining the power over his actions that had forced him to re-enter their portals.
“Yes. And you have the scythe. Every detector in this building is going nuts.” She smiled. “Good work, Rupert.” It stung.
A room had been prepared for the ritual. It was appropriately dark, grey walls, blood-streaked marble counter tops. A scatter of herbs and ritual objects was laid out, with a dish, and a knife. It looked ominous.
Lilah began to read out the full spell instructions. Complex, dark, but not impossible. Not with the excellent preparatory work of Wolfram and Hart, at least. And undoing was always simpler than doing.
She paused, suddenly, and laughed. “Oh, oh boy. I always wondered why they made me your liaison. Guess I was handy. You need the blood of a dead woman.”
Giles’s stomach heaved, empty of food for some hours now, but determinedly trying nonetheless to find a way to expel knowledge through physical revulsion. That taking power from living women should require a dead woman. And he had one handy.
He picked up the knife. “Where would you-“ He’d been assuming the arm, as one usually did for dark rituals.
But her mouth twisted, and she reached up to loosen the scarf. “Why make a new hole in this old hide, mmm?”
He’d seen her wound before. It looked almost unreal, insignificant, till she tilted up her chin, and the flesh gaped. She held the dish up to her jugular, and squeezed. The skin shifted, pallid and plastic, a world away from the living. Blood dripped, reluctant and slow, anything but arterial. She smiled at him, and spoke quite normally. That was, perhaps, the worst of it.
“You need, like, a quart of this stuff. I’ll be a while. You get going.”
Giles spoke, and burned, and cast and chanted, and all the while, Lilah bled for him, calmly, quietly. She joined in the incantations where required. Her face grew slowly paler. Even if he could have interrupted the casting to do so, it would have been tactless to enquire whether this would kill her. Presumably, she had little choice in the matter.
Finally, they were there. Lilah’s bowl of blood tipped over the scythe, dyeing it with gore. The burning herbs flared crimson. Giles felt himself flush dark too, banked fires scorching through him as the spell took effect.
And then it was done. One girl in all the world would be called tonight. She would fight, and die. She’d be supported by the former Slayers, and they would bury her. And perhaps one of them would be called next. Giles would see none of it. From the moment he’d secretly accepted Lilah’s offer in Sunnydale, he had been moving towards this moment, and away from the Slayers.
Lilah looked better now, as though the spell had reinvigorated her. Perhaps her employers were awarding her a performance bonus in rather fleshly form. Lips and nails were a blood-dark red once more. She reached out her left hand to Giles. It contained a new employment contract. “Welcome to the rest of your life, Rupert Giles.”
And so was completed the second half of the deal that Rupert Giles should never have made.
*
It was a splendidly appointed office. The furnishings, the technology, the reference works: all carefully designed and calculated for maximum utility and pleasure. There was however relatively little sign of pleasure on the face of its occupant. The head of Wolfram and Hart London wearily raised a brow, as his intercom buzzed insistently. “What is it?”
His closest associate said, “There’s something you will want to see immediately, Mr Giles.”
Giles sighed. There were always things. But Lilah was in general good at keeping them off his desk unless they really could not be avoided. He tried not to think about what damage she might be doing with the items which did not pass under his gaze. It had been a calculated risk when he requested her support in his new post. But he had reckoned someone might as well benefit from his stupidity. And he couldn’t bear the thought of her being locked away again once his deal was completed.
The thing was, once you made a deal with Wolfram and Hart, no matter how good your intent, further deals unravelled themselves irresistibly before you. And if they offered you a deal, there was probably some double jeopardy involved. Had this deal gone one way, the Slayer line would have been ended and Wolfram and Hart free to practice the evil they chose. As the deal had gone the other way, Wolfram and Hart had caused a painful split in the Slayer Council, gained a knowledgeable employee to head up a national office, and ended the Slayerhood of Buffy Summers. For the moment, at least. Giles tried sometimes to estimate which outcome they would have preferred; he suspected they were largely indifferent. Either spanner in the works of the white hats was welcome.
The second part of his deal had been the right thing to do, Giles was convinced. The Slayer line was too important to lose. He’d visited the Shadowmen once more, and seen the future of the human race unroll, long, long into the future. Young girls sacrificed themselves, alone, but the world kept on turning. Giles buried himself in whisky. Or gin. Or Lilah. As required.
Lilah slipped into the office with a slim file. Giles opened it. It did not take long to assimilate the contents. The Slayer was dead. She had lasted longer than her predecessor, at least. But that was no way to die. Not at sixteen.
He closed his eyes. “I wonder how soon the new Slayer will come calling.” They always did. He was, after all, the great traitor of the Slayer Council; the worm in the bud; the destroyer of the new age. And he had the scythe. Eyes opening once more, he contemplated it. Now dark and dulled, the blade hung on the opposite wall. Where Giles could keep an eye on it. Do Wolfram and Hart justice, they hadn’t tried to take it from him.
Lilah looked startlingly beautiful today. Power suited her. Of course it did. He’d known that when requesting her as his associate; a role she would relish. She bent over the desk, giving him a deliberate eyeful of cleavage. Probably with benign intent. She knew how the passing of Slayers distressed him. She’d experienced it often enough.
Yes. The new Slayer - who might be one of the old ones; might even be Faith or Buffy recalled to her lost destiny - she’d be on the doorstep before too long, with a plan to take him down. Rid the world of Rupert Giles, and reclaim the scythe.
Much good it would do her. The scythe was polluted now. No more a Slayer weapon, he suspected. And as for ridding the world of Rupert Giles...
Lilah was being professionally reassuring. “No need to worry. We’ve doubled the defences around you, as usual with a Calling. You’re quite safe.”
“Oh. Quite.” It wasn’t the reassurance Giles had been seeking. But he saw no reason to mention that. Someday, the new Slayer would rid the world of Rupert Giles, and his contract would be complete.
He could hardly wait.
***
Author Brutti ma buoni
Title Seasons Keep On Marching
Characters Rupert Giles, Lilah Morgan (eventually hint of Giles/Lilah)
Rating and warnings PG13, lashings of angst, musings on mortality tending to suicidal thinking
Words 7300
Summary Just before Chosen, someone offers Giles a choice. He tries to choose wisely. But taking anything from Wolfram & Hart has consequences, no matter how wisely you choose. More people than just Giles will share those consequences, for good or ill.
A/N This fic is part of the Get It Done minibang. It is accompanied by a fanmix by the lovely queenofthebobs, which gave me the title and much listening pleasure while I was editing.
They were very near the end now. Giles could feel the smack of it in the air, the approach of Apocalypse. On the breezes of warm late spring, doom always felt particularly inappropriate, but equally it felt inevitable thanks to years of conditioning. The year turned, the world was threatened once more. The Hellmouth would open, and his army of girls would fight, and die, and the year would continue to turn, but it was entirely possible that thereafter humanity would be at an end.
Having more than one girl - woman - in the fight did not make life simpler. His responsibilities were spread thinly, but he was responsible for them all the same. The last of the Watchers. (Give or take, but the three or four still alive hadn't bothered to come to Sunnydale for the end of the world, so Giles didn't consider them to be true Watchers any more.)
He was drinking what was probably the antepenultimate cup of tea of his life (a calculation based on assuming death would come tomorrow. He would sneak in a few more if he had a full night's sleep and another day to live), when a dry cough sounded at around the location of the kitchen table.
"Might I disturb you?" The words were polite, but the tone was not. Whoever this woman might be - and whyever she might have come to Sunnydale for the end of days - she was not a bumbling Watcher type.
She was extremely beautiful. Agelessly so, though she was probably not much past thirty. She'd still be that stunning in twenty years. Forty, very likely.
Or at least, she would be, if she wasn't already dead. But she was. Giles had met enough dead men walking to recognise it. He groped desperately for a cross, a stake, some holy water - dammit, they'd become sloppy about ordinary vampire attacks, amid all the ubervamp chaos, and… and she was indoors. Across a threshold. So, not a vampire. Did he have any silver for zombies?
The woman watched him with an ironic lift to one eyebrow. "Mr Giles? There's no need for alarm. I'm not a zombie. Or a vampire. I'm a lawyer."
Not wholly reassuring. But she wasn't on the attack. Giles paused, considering his options.
"I'm here to offer you a deal," said the woman. "On behalf of my employers. Wolfram and Hart. I believe you know of them?"
Less reassuring still, but Giles had little to do that evening except listen.
*
She was called Lilah Morgan. She had been Wesley's lover, and he had eventually beheaded her corpse. But he didn't remember that now, due to recent skulduggery on Angel's part.
She was, for a lawyer, unnervingly frank.
"I have a deal to offer you. But I don't fully understand it. I can give you this-" She passed Giles an envelope, which rattled. "It will help you win. Or so they tell me."
Giles's first instinct was to scoff. They were so unlikely to win, he knew, that his thoughts had trouble moving beyond the imminent Apocalypse. However, she seemed perfectly serious. Which meant that well-trained Watchers had to ask important questions. "And in exchange we…?"
One of Lilah's brows arched a little further. Not in sarcasm, apparently. "That I can't tell you. All I know is that the Senior Partners feel that it would be advantageous to the company to help your side to win. And that there's going to be a price to pay." She paused for a needless breath, regrouping. "But you knew that."
Giles considered throwing the envelope back at her head. But he could feel papers inside, and papers meant information. Information was precisely what they lacked at present; they were instead full of inspirational speeches and doom-ridden hope. Something a trifle more concrete would be overwhelmingly welcome.
Lilah Morgan waited while he opened the envelope, cast a quick glance over the papers to ensure they had at least some potential value, and while he gave a doubtful examination of a tacky piece of jewellery which nonetheless reeked of magical power. "It's an amulet," he said, at length. Banal, but true.
"Yes it is. A strengthening, cleaning amulet. Powerful, of course. To be worn by a champion," said Lilah in return. Her face screwed up in disdain. "If you can find one."
Well. That was interesting. Giles wouldn't have been even slightly surprised if she had indicated that she didn't think much of the breed of champions. But not to believe in them, despite all the work of Angel's gang... A trifle startling to Giles. Things must have been very problematic in Los Angeles, these past weeks. He'd suspected as much, from the broadcast networks, but it had never been the appropriate moment to investigate. And now there was no time.
So. Information and an amulet of unknown capacity. Not so very much on which to swear away one's soul. But it was a straw, and Giles grasped it, with abandon. There would be a reckoning, but it would be the day after tomorrow. And this way, they might live long enough to see it.
He held out his right hand, to seal the bargain. Lilah Morgan held out hers, with a spiked oath ring prominent on this inside of her long, elegant, very dead fingers.
Giles took her hand, shook it, and squeezed hard as the two ends of the spiked ring penetrated dead and living flesh, mingling their blood. She bled slow and sluggish, but more or less blood heat. If Giles hadn't known better, he would have thought she was a living being, not merely a wraith on a contract.
"It's a deal, Mr Giles," said Lilah Morgan. "We'll be in touch."
*
In the whirlwind of the Hellmouth expedition, there was no time for deep analysis. Giles truly didn't expect them to win, even with their extensive planning. And yet, somehow, they did. It was glorious.
Only afterwards did he start seriously to worry about that deal. Wolfram and Hart was not an entity known for its magnanimity. When they didn't come calling, Giles began to wonder.
Were they, perhaps, not going to exact a price from him directly? Had they been sufficiently pleased by the outcome of that Apolcalyptic plan being foiled that they didn't need to take further payment?
Giles knew of course of Wolfram and Hart's prophecy division; their expectation of a very specific, Wolfram-and-Hart-centric Apocalypse. But he doubted that they would have bothered to suborn him simply to prevent another, non-canonical, Apocalypse. From what the Council had gleaned of the available firepower of the lawyers when truly roused, it seemed unlikely that they would have required the services of the Slayers simply to close one Hellmouth.
So. Something else.
Two somethings had resulted from Wolfram and Hart's help. Two specific somethings that their intervention had changed. Spike was dead. And the Slayers had been called en masse.
Perhaps a third should be added: Rupert Giles had sold his soul to Wolfram and Hart. Or the soul of the Slayers and Watchers, perhaps. He was not the man that he had been before Lilah Morgan came to call. He should, perhaps- no, certainly- have calculated that into the bargain. Too late, now.
One of those three things, then. One of those was most likely what Wolfram and Hart had wanted.
The brain of Rupert Giles was an analytical one. He was more than capable of continuing to fret at a problem while the immediate aftermath of the fall of Sunnydale played out. Simple organisational and administrative tasks went by; homes were found for the known Slayers; new Watchers recruited; the Sunnydale gang spread across the globe seeking further new Slayers.
And Giles thought.
In reverse order, he eventually decided, the probabilities were:
1. His own corruption. For sure, a traitor in the heart of the Slayer movement would be a tool with some potential for an evilly-minded organisation. But he had made no promise of conformity. He could, he believed, argue his way out of any post-act requirements that Wolfram and Hart might choose to attempt to implement. And besides, Giles was only one man. False modesty was to be deprecated, but one Giles was not sufficient to change a great deal.
2. Spike's death. Important, in its way, for sure, and it had certainly knocked the stuffing out of Buffy for a good while. And yet, Spike was only one man too. (Besides, Giles eventually got word that the vampire had returned from the very dead. And putting Spike out of action for a few months really didn't seem significant enough to be worth Wolfram and Hart's while.)
3. He didn't want to believe it. But it seemed entirely probable that the evil Wolfram and Hart might gain from their good deed was the creation of multiple Slayers.
Giles chewed over these conclusions for months. Long enough for Angel's gang to rise and fall within the portals of Wolfram and Hart Los Angeles. Long enough for another mini-apocalypse thanks to the Black Thorn; crushed thanks to Slayer support. Long enough to make up his mind. It took some time.
He went to Los Angeles almost four years after the fall of Sunnydale.
*
“I’m here to speak with Lilah Morgan.”
The receptionist looked blank. Mostly, they did, in Giles’s experience, at least in organisations as powerful as this. Having expressions was risky. But this was a specific blankness, an artifice. So he was not in the least surprised when she said, “I’m sorry sir. There’s no one of that name employed by Wolfram and Hart Los Angeles.”
Which was an interesting piece of phraseology, however one looked at it. Of more immediate import, however, Giles was able to brandish her business card. “Ms Morgan told me to get in touch if I needed anything.”
The receptionist’s blankness took on a new quality. This time, no affected lack of knowledge. No indeed. Carefully masked terror, more like. Or perhaps revulsion. Difficult to qualify it precisely without knowing what made this greeting robot tick, when she was not at Wolfram and Hart’s mercy. Of course, in all probability, that didn’t arise. The contractual arrangements at this company allowed little latitude to employees. Past or present, as he would doubtless see soon.
“Of course, sir. Perhaps you could take a seat?” Giles made a move towards the adjacent violently-uncomfortable-looking tubular steel chairs, set among pot plants and magazines in a parody of corporate hospitality so extreme that it almost made him chuckle. “No, sir. Not there,” said the receptionist, with an edge to her tone. “Here.”
“Here” was through a door. A steel door, reinforced, bounded by detectors of various kinds. Metal, of course, and probably an explosives sniffer too, since Wolfram and Hart had plenty of enemies of a purely human nature, more than able to take their revenge in pedestrian yet effective guise. Plus a vampire detector, of course. Angel was still out there, somewhere not too far away, presumably still bent on vengeance. Some kind of glamour-negator, he suspected too, and probably other wards he was insufficiently expert to identify. The Council had never had this kind of hardware for its basic apartments.
The room where they kept him was quite unlike the glossy exterior waiting room. No magazines, no glass. Grey predominated. Seating was fixed, rather firmly. This was a room which expected trouble. Though doubtless they phrased it differently. Client relations management perhaps.
Giles suddenly wondered whether he would get out alive. It would be inelegant, simply to gut him in a waiting room, but given the decor in this drab space, presumably Evil Inc didn’t always worry overmuch about style.
Lilah Morgan entered through the door Giles had also come in by. She looked much as when he had last seen her, years before. Much as? Identical, to the scarf at her throat, concealing her severed neck. She also looked startled, deep down, underneath the gloss.
“I’m sorry,” said Giles, reflexively. “Did I come at a bad time?”
She didn’t speak her response to his fatuous pleasantry. A relief. Giles wasn’t certain what dead Wolfram and Hart employees got up to in between meetings, but he had a strong sense that he didn’t want to discover. And that any break would be a welcome one.
“You worked it out, then?” Lilah’s brow arched, familiar and scathing.
“It’s the Slayers,” he responded, simply.
“Well... duh.” That was unexpected. A crack in the corporate facade, a curl of crimson lip in genuine if scornful amusement. Perhaps that was what had attracted Wesley’s attention. “But what?”
“I... was hoping you might help me to discover that,” he admitted. Giles had had more than enough time attempting to puzzle this one out, without notable progress. Why, precisely, would Wolfram and Hart want to increase the Slayer population several hundredfold?
The brows stayed up; the shoulders rose to join them, elegantly indifferent. “If you really want, Mr Giles. Though I’m fairly certain it won’t be an answer you like.”
*
The bowels of Wolfram and Hart were an unexpected place. Giles had heard rumours of the wonders of the library, the prophecy room, the sophisticated electronics. No one had thought to mention the records store. It looked, as all well-run record stores did, utterly tedious. Filing cabinets to eternity and beyond, with cheap neon lighting unflattering to the complexion of even the living. In the merciless light, Lilah’s lips looked blue, even under the perfect gloss covering. Giles tried not to stare.
“Good afternoon,” said the perky woman at the desk. “I’m Files and Records. How can I help?”
Lilah was brusque. “Everything you have on Sunnydale 2003. The Slayer awakening spell. New Slayers called.” The woman in charge of the records opened her mouth, but Lilah spoke before she could. “Just tell us where the files are. We don’t know what we’re looking for.” The woman’s eyes clicked and spun. “Bay seventy-four. Cabinet 120 onwards.”
Rupert Giles genuinely enjoyed research. Lilah Morgan was a brilliant investigative attorney. It still took them three days to get through the mass of information and conclude that they had little to go on. It wasn't a wholly unpleasant experience, strange to report. Giles enjoyed the professionalism of Lilah's approach, and even more the few signs of its fraying, as she progressively removed shoes, jacket and eventually the neckerchief that concealed her wound.
It appeared that she had no autonomy over her own clothing. It was the same suit, both times they met. The same white top, against which the bloody gash at her neck was quite obscene. Remarkable. It troubled Giles increasingly as the days passed. Familiarity did not breed comfort with the mechanics of the undead.
He eventually realised that he was staring, but Lilah’s head was tilted back against the nearest bank of metal cabinets, and her eyes were closed. Perhaps she didn't get much chance to rest, during whatever alternative to real life she underwent on a normal day. Wolfram and Hart had plenty of pocket dimensions where time would pass differently for the no-longer-human. No doubt they got good value for their investment in Lilah Morgan.
His own head was rolling back, resting blissfully against the chilly metal of the cabinets directly opposite her. Perhaps just a little rest, here, in the belly of the beast.
He wasn't sure how long his pause lasted. Lilah was up and reading once more when his eyes opened, her neckerchief refastened and skirt pulled to a respectable straightness. She turned over a page, realised she was at the end of the file and called out, "Hey, you there." It had a raw sound, discourteous, where Giles had become accustomed to finesse. She was fraying, rather.
The woman who was known only as Files and Records appeared, smiling her eternally supportive smile. "How may I help you?"
"I can't find the next file. Where's the stuff on Slayers called after-" Lilah checked the label on the buff file. "July 2003?"
The woman-demon-filing construct's eyes flickered. "There are none."
"No files? Crap, did we finally go paperless?"
"No. Slayers, called, August 2003: none. September 2003: none. October 2003: none-"
"Could you give us the précis, please?" intervened Giles. He tried to swallow rising dread. Girls had been called after the spell; they'd been able to trace its ripple across the globe. His throat started to close, as the dread wouldn’t be swallowed, and Files and Records continued obediently.
"The last known Slayer called was Marie-Francoise de la Rue, of Réunion on 12 July 2003, shortly before the Slayer spell reached its antipode. No further Slayers have been called or will be called."
It had been almost four years. Even allowing for the impact of the spell sweeping up a whole generation of Slayers at once, there should have been new ones cropping up now. New girls on whom the potential was bestowed, reaching puberty and becoming eligible for Slayerhood.
He paused. "And identified Potential Slayers?"
Her eyes didn't flicker. "There are no identified Potential Slayers. The Slayer line is ending." He rather thought her incapable of a lie, given her functions. And something inside him, dully, said Yes. You knew there was a price. This was it.
Giles was neither especially proud nor remotely surprised that the first fully coherent thought he was capable of expressing turned out to be, “I need a drink.”
Lilah looked back steadily. Her brow was quirked, and her eyes held no especial sympathy. If there was an emotion visible, it was perhaps, I told you so. Which was fair. They had both known there would be consequences, back in time when the deal was first done. And here consequences were. Hardly the moment to expostulate.
“I need,” he expanded, “A gin the size of my head. With, perhaps, the faintest suggestion of tonic. Just for variety.” He paused, uncertain of his next step but unwilling to drink alone, facing his inadvertent betrayal of the whole Council and the Slayer line head on. “I don’t suppose your contract would permit you to accompany me?”
Lilah’s eyes flickered closed for a moment. He fleetingly wondered whether he had touched her emotions, but- “That would be acceptable.”
Imagine that. Imagine being a ferociously intelligent, independent woman, and having a leash in your head, permission sought behind your eyes, every time you stepped outside of a set pattern of service. Didn’t bear too much thought, he found. He suspected that she too needed a drink.
*
The bar was better than Giles had expected. Ancient prejudice had led him to assume that all bars in Los Angeles were both loud and brassy. This was quiet, subtle, presumably highly expensive and - given his guide - very likely demon-owned. However, they knew how to serve desperate men, and Giles got himself outside a couple of stiff G&Ts without a great deal of ado. Lilah was on her second martini by the time he looked up.
The low lighting flattered her, taking away the strain. Freshening her clothes, though it was still that same business suit, in which she was presumably clad for eternity unless her masters willed otherwise.
She tilted the glass slightly in his direction, a combination of fellowship and mockery which was becoming increasingly familiar. Her mouth curled at the corner again, and Giles stuck, hypnotised, as she lifted the olive from her glass and sank her teeth in. Bit, chewed, swallowed. Her throat bobbed, and somewhere under the scarf he assumed her wound gaped briefly open. Still watching, he felt a shiver of something wholly unsuitable as she wrapped her lips around the remainder of the fruit and slipped it off the cocktail stick.
It would simply not do. She might be very beautiful, but she was unquestionably the dead plaything of corporate evil.
Disturbingly, that wasn’t sufficient to take Giles’s mind off her mouth.
Or, indeed, the very fine thighs she was at that moment re-crossing. Which, in its deliberate seductiveness, rather did the trick of recalling his superego to active service. He coughed, self-consciously, and sought to reinforce the return to virtue.
“Do they let you out much?” As though she were a dog.
Her nose wrinkled at the bluntness. “Now and again.” Poised and neutral.
“For old clients?”
Her eyes flicked closed, then open once more, with a faint hint of pain. “You could put it that way.”
So they animated her on a mortal plane for Wesley too, Giles could assume. Perhaps others. Perhaps she did live, after a fashion.
He was startled when she volunteered more. “I live every day, you know. They don’t flip a switch and take me out of the box. I’m just... not always here.”
“They don’t let you change, though.” He waved down the length of her, from decapitation scar to increasingly scuffed high heels.
“No.” She turned her head, gestured for a waiter. “No, that they do not.”
“How do you bear it?”
She broke off to order more alcohol, before turning back to face him. “For an intelligent man, Mr Giles, you ask the stupidest of questions.” She took one small sip of her fresh martini, before devouring the olive as though it were a personal enemy. No seduction in that gesture.
He took the point.
*
After that third drink, they began to talk properly. About what they had done, between them, and what that might mean for the world. Oddly, Giles quite enjoyed laying it all out for a deadly enemy. It wasn’t as though there were a great deal of surprise to the whole thing; Lilah felt no obligation to give horrified interjections. And Wolfram and Hart knew rather more than he did. So he talked.
Lilah listened, toying occasionally with her glass, or her latest olive when the next in her procession of martinis arrived. She looked, mainly, quizzical. At no point whatsoever did she appear concerned for the fate of either the world or Wolfram and Hart’s evil plan. It was soothing. So different to the Slayer Council, with its furrowed brows, heroism and apparently unavoidable dead girls.
“Doesn’t it make life more difficult for Wolfram and Hart, though,” he reached, eventually. “All these additional Slayers? Surely it must affect you.”
“Of course,” she said, imperturbably. “Of course, it’s not easy right now, with hundreds of little Slayerbots taking out our operatives. We’re pulling back from all kinds of commitments. But we play the long game, you understand. One generation of tough trading, versus centuries of Slayer-free activity? You do the math.”
Even that loathed expression couldn’t detract from her point. Even before she dragged her finger very, very precisely along the line of her wounded throat. The Slayer line, the fate of the world... pretty much kaput, and within foreseeable lifetimes. Scarcely to be wondered that Wolfram and Hart thought it worth the candle.
Giles rather suspected that defeat was already visible in his eyes. Till Lilah said, “Unless you change it back.”
He was swallowing at the time, and regrettably the ensuing choking fit was prolonged. But, eventually, Giles collected himself sufficiently to speak. “It’s possible?”
“Sure,” said Lilah, smiling. “You can kill ‘em all.” She didn’t give him long to choke on that one. “Well, it might work. We aren’t certain. But a blood sacrifice that large might just do it... Except you won’t, of course. Probably not even if it were the one sure way. You may see the need for a sacrifice, but you won’t kill more than one at a time.” The look on her face was... comradely? He assumed, from that, that she was well aware of Ben, and Spike, and Dawn, and the other innocents he had been theoretically or proactively prepared to end for the sake of the world. But that wasn’t the true Giles. Necessity was a terrifying driver, as he knew well. Underneath, he was not a killer.
It perturbed him, at times, that he had to remind himself of that so frequently.
She leaned over, laid a precise, chilly hand on his knee. “Don’t worry, Rupert Giles. I know you wouldn’t kill all those innocents. But you could take their power away.”
Of course, it was always going to be that, if anything. Take the scythe and undo the magic. Make it one girl in all the world again, bearing all that burden. So it could be any of them, called abruptly from a sisterhood of strength, and plunged into a fight to the death alone. And then the next, and the next, as it always had been.
But at least it would continue. Theirs wouldn’t be the last protected generation. Humankind would still have someone to fight against the vampires, the demons, the forces of darkness. “I can’t imagine - it’s going to be a terribly difficult decision for us to make.” The prospect of the debates made him blench somewhat. Giles loved the Slayer Council. It was infinitely preferable to the dictatorial reign of Quentin Travers, and those like him. However, speed of decision-making was not its forte.
Lilah’s look bordered on contempt, with perhaps just a small side dish of sympathy. “Oh, Rupert... Really, Mr Giles, I thought you had been better schooled than that.” Oh, and a touch of derision. Don’t forget that, Rupert.
“Meaning what, precisely?” He sounded as wooden as ever a Travers might. Get thee behind me, Morgan.
“Meaning that this isn’t a democratic process, Rupert. All or nothing. If just one Slayer refused to give up her power, the undoing spell would fail. You need to take it now, secretly, so they don’t have a chance to fight back.”
Finally, Giles thought he’d seen through their plan, that Lilah had dropped a clue to the real agenda. “Just one Slayer keeping her power is a disaster? You mean, they will all lose their power? Well, won’t that be awfully handy for your lot?”
Lilah necked - an unfortunate verb, but an apt one - the remains of her last drink. “You’re absurd, Rupert Giles. They will all be unchosen, so one will be chosen again. And presto, the Slayer line is rebooted.”
“So Buffy gets called all over again. Marvellous. One girl-“
“Not necessarily Buffy,” said Lilah, and got up to leave.
She turned back, just before going out of sight. “I believe the Senior Partners have someone you could talk to about this. Just call.”
*
Obviously, painfully obviously, Rupert Giles didn’t believe everything he was told by Wolfram and Hart. He most certainly didn’t follow up their suggestions immediately. He had spent four years learning to share everything with the Slayer Council. He would not act unilaterally on a matter which intimately concerned the Slayer line.
He was not a killer.
But.
Sometimes, extraordinary measures were called for. So he had learned.
Every research path, every spellbook, every prophet and prophecy he could muster, all pointed in the same direction. No more Slayers.
On a dark day (in June, but literalness was not the point), he found a reason to visit the Berlin branch of Wolfram and Hart Once again, the receptionist denied all knowledge. Once again, the now-creased business card caused worry and respect and led him into the very secure waiting room. The décor was not more exciting than that in Los Angeles, regrettably.
It took rather longer for Lilah to appear this time. She did not look better rested. Giles tried not to pity her.
“Who do you want me to talk to?”
“I don’t know.” She flinched, as though the violence that darted through Giles’s mind had found physical expression. “But they will.”
They entered the lift, and she tapped in a code Giles couldn’t see. The control panel warped, shifted and a white button appeared. The lift dissolved around them.
Cautious discussions with Angel and colleagues had revealed the existence of the White Room to the Slayer Council, so this moment should perhaps have been less of a shock than it was. Giles stepped into disorienting blank white. There was something under his feet, though quite what he could not have described. Elsewhere, there was nothing.
“I hardly think that speaking with the Senior Partners’ liaison will suffice to convin-“ Lilah’s cold, cold finger stopped his words. He could feel her nail, lightly, pressing against his upper lip.
“Not the Senior Partners. Some people who know how you feel.”
Out of the blankness came a drumbeat. A throb, familiar and unknown all at once. Three men sat before him. Old - ancient - he rather thought. If he’d been parsing them for an anthropology test he would have used phrases like “sub-Saharan African origin” and “basic textile production”. But he was not. He knew full well who they were. They came from the Rift. They took a girl, and filled her with a sufficiency of demons to use as a tool to save humanity. And they saved humanity. But after they were done, there was barely a girl remaining.
“You’re the Shadowmen.”
“Is that what you call us? We are the Watchers.” Of course they were. “We watch the Slayers. We help the Slayers. But we also see beyond the Slayers, and we remember why they were created. We watch over the world.”
“And you ally with darkness. You filled a girl with demonic power, and used her till she dropped. And here you are, three men, in the heart of the triple evil of the Wolf, the Ram and the Hart. Give me one single reason why we should trust you?”
“Because you are not “we”. You are merely “I”. You know that not everything can be decided by those who are closest to the weapons. A wider view-“
They continued. It was familiar. The Watchers’ creed, learned at his father’s knee. Self-justification, self-aggrandisement. And he still wasn’t convinced that the coincidence of three Watchers and three evil beasts was merely coincidental. Buffy had never mentioned how many Shadowmen she had met.
The Watcher on the left noticed his suspicions. “Rupert Giles. Three is merely a number of significance. Like one. One girl in all the world. One man to make a deal to save the day. Is that not so?” He reached out a finger, and pressed it between Giles’s eyebrows. “Now, know.”
Giles saw. The fate of the world. Buffy refusing the spell which would have saved them, and choosing her own way. Choosing to make a choice for hundreds of others. Choosing to put an end to the Slayer line. And he saw the future. The rising tide of evil, the army of Slayers fighting, ageing, dwindling, dying. The last Slayer was over 100 years old when she died. Still good for her age, but unable to fight back the horde of vampires called by a Master in Chennai. India was the first to fall, but once a subcontinent of over a billion former humans has fallen to vampires, the world will not be far behind.
And so it was. The Slayer line ended. The human race ended. All quite simple, when you saw it play out.
Giles didn’t thank them. Who would? When his eyes opened, he was in his hotel. No sign of Lilah. But a note, offering a deal that would allow him the spell. Save the world. At some personal cost, but when wasn’t that the case? After he had read it, it burned to fine ash where it lay. Showy, perhaps, but it left the furnishings untouched. Wolfram and Hart really did have extraordinary powers.
*
Seven months after that painful series of drinks with Lilah Morgan, three months after the Shadowmen, here Giles was, all avenues and alternatives exhausted. “You may very well groan, but it is audit time. And frankly, that gives me substantially greater pain than you. If I do the library and the select weapons, do you think we could detail some of the novices to help with the arsenal? Because I find myself somewhat daunted by the scale of the task.”
Dizzy with relief at being let off stocktaking, the inner circle agreed. Giles had been rather hoping they would spot his pretext and expel him forever. It would have seemed easier.
Stocktaking the library was simple. He was, after all, a half decent librarian, when events allowed him to be. Xander dropped by, nostalgic, after the first day, but predictably left when invited to join in the work. “You know how I love a jolly evening’s cataloguing, but I have girls to- to train. Yes. Much training is required.” His hasty exit almost collided with Willow’s equally nostalgic entrance. Giles tried not to project the tension he felt. Willow was far more likely to detect him, now or later in the process. She could well be the greatest danger to both the plan and to him personally.
She picked up a book. “Want some help? It’s kinda nice to see you librarian-ing again.” They exchanged fond smiles, and got to work.
After an hour or so, Giles threw out a casual, “Everything all right with you, Willow?” He expected to hear some feeling response relating to Kennedy and their apparently complex yet satisfying relationship. Instead, he got a frown.
“I... I’m not sure, Giles. There’s something hinky with the Slayer line.” Giles spluttered, convincingly startled.
“Good lord! Whatever can you mean? What does Buffy-“
Willow said, “I haven’t told them yet. But I think... I think maybe the spell is having consequences. Can we talk, properly, soon?”
Of course they could. Of course. And Giles could see how that would go. Willow finding out what the spell had done, and what the options were for undoing what should not have been done. Not telling the Slayers, any more than Giles had. And he and she, perhaps one or two select others... they would make together the choice that Giles now faced alone. Share the guilt; let Willow feel the pain he felt now. Let her know that her redemption had been the world’s destruction.
No.
How fortunate that he was already so far down the road of unilateral action, when he became quite, quite certain that he had no other choice.
*
The select weapons store was not easy to access. There was a certain amount of unpleasantness regarding verification of one’s identity, lack of enchantment and so forth. Sufficient at least to prevent any of the inner council from bothering Giles as he undertook his tedious task. The shadowcasters were in here, Kendra’s Mr Pointy, various one-use items against very particular enemies, and the scythe. It wasn’t terribly well protected, per se, but then to get at it one would have to fight one’s way through the headquarters of the Slayer Council and into the store, so perhaps it was unnecessary. The Council evidently had never considered betrayal by a trusted member of the inner elite. Giles certainly hadn’t, until now.
Giles’s stack of ledgers concealed an adequate, ready-to-be-glamoured substitute scythe. He put off replacing the true scythe until the last feasible point. Was he hoping to be stopped? Not precisely. And yet at many moments he would have welcomed it, and the fate of the world be damned.
Out of the secure areas, with the scythe in his bag, he was on the run already.
Wolfram and Hart London was far too distant in the circumstances, Giles felt, though the walk could not possibly have taken him more than half an hour.
He had tried to think of an alternative venue, but the deal he had been offered indicated that he needed Lilah Morgan for this, and it was the quickest way he knew to access her. As he crossed the threshold into evil, he promised every Watcher and Slayer who had gone before him that he would not let the scythe fall into the hands of evil. Even if it had to be destroyed to save it.
“I should like to speak with Lilah Morgan.”
Denial, business card as shibboleth, the security of a pretty-much-everything-proof waiting room. He knew the routine, now.
And, in due course, Lilah.
*
Lilah was pale, paler than ever, her lips almost bloodless, her hair starting to frost with grey. She had a new scarf at her throat. It showed traces of blood. Perhaps that explained her pallor, horribly.
“You have the spell?” They hadn’t given him the whole enchantment as part of the deal, retaining the power over his actions that had forced him to re-enter their portals.
“Yes. And you have the scythe. Every detector in this building is going nuts.” She smiled. “Good work, Rupert.” It stung.
A room had been prepared for the ritual. It was appropriately dark, grey walls, blood-streaked marble counter tops. A scatter of herbs and ritual objects was laid out, with a dish, and a knife. It looked ominous.
Lilah began to read out the full spell instructions. Complex, dark, but not impossible. Not with the excellent preparatory work of Wolfram and Hart, at least. And undoing was always simpler than doing.
She paused, suddenly, and laughed. “Oh, oh boy. I always wondered why they made me your liaison. Guess I was handy. You need the blood of a dead woman.”
Giles’s stomach heaved, empty of food for some hours now, but determinedly trying nonetheless to find a way to expel knowledge through physical revulsion. That taking power from living women should require a dead woman. And he had one handy.
He picked up the knife. “Where would you-“ He’d been assuming the arm, as one usually did for dark rituals.
But her mouth twisted, and she reached up to loosen the scarf. “Why make a new hole in this old hide, mmm?”
He’d seen her wound before. It looked almost unreal, insignificant, till she tilted up her chin, and the flesh gaped. She held the dish up to her jugular, and squeezed. The skin shifted, pallid and plastic, a world away from the living. Blood dripped, reluctant and slow, anything but arterial. She smiled at him, and spoke quite normally. That was, perhaps, the worst of it.
“You need, like, a quart of this stuff. I’ll be a while. You get going.”
Giles spoke, and burned, and cast and chanted, and all the while, Lilah bled for him, calmly, quietly. She joined in the incantations where required. Her face grew slowly paler. Even if he could have interrupted the casting to do so, it would have been tactless to enquire whether this would kill her. Presumably, she had little choice in the matter.
Finally, they were there. Lilah’s bowl of blood tipped over the scythe, dyeing it with gore. The burning herbs flared crimson. Giles felt himself flush dark too, banked fires scorching through him as the spell took effect.
And then it was done. One girl in all the world would be called tonight. She would fight, and die. She’d be supported by the former Slayers, and they would bury her. And perhaps one of them would be called next. Giles would see none of it. From the moment he’d secretly accepted Lilah’s offer in Sunnydale, he had been moving towards this moment, and away from the Slayers.
Lilah looked better now, as though the spell had reinvigorated her. Perhaps her employers were awarding her a performance bonus in rather fleshly form. Lips and nails were a blood-dark red once more. She reached out her left hand to Giles. It contained a new employment contract. “Welcome to the rest of your life, Rupert Giles.”
And so was completed the second half of the deal that Rupert Giles should never have made.
*
It was a splendidly appointed office. The furnishings, the technology, the reference works: all carefully designed and calculated for maximum utility and pleasure. There was however relatively little sign of pleasure on the face of its occupant. The head of Wolfram and Hart London wearily raised a brow, as his intercom buzzed insistently. “What is it?”
His closest associate said, “There’s something you will want to see immediately, Mr Giles.”
Giles sighed. There were always things. But Lilah was in general good at keeping them off his desk unless they really could not be avoided. He tried not to think about what damage she might be doing with the items which did not pass under his gaze. It had been a calculated risk when he requested her support in his new post. But he had reckoned someone might as well benefit from his stupidity. And he couldn’t bear the thought of her being locked away again once his deal was completed.
The thing was, once you made a deal with Wolfram and Hart, no matter how good your intent, further deals unravelled themselves irresistibly before you. And if they offered you a deal, there was probably some double jeopardy involved. Had this deal gone one way, the Slayer line would have been ended and Wolfram and Hart free to practice the evil they chose. As the deal had gone the other way, Wolfram and Hart had caused a painful split in the Slayer Council, gained a knowledgeable employee to head up a national office, and ended the Slayerhood of Buffy Summers. For the moment, at least. Giles tried sometimes to estimate which outcome they would have preferred; he suspected they were largely indifferent. Either spanner in the works of the white hats was welcome.
The second part of his deal had been the right thing to do, Giles was convinced. The Slayer line was too important to lose. He’d visited the Shadowmen once more, and seen the future of the human race unroll, long, long into the future. Young girls sacrificed themselves, alone, but the world kept on turning. Giles buried himself in whisky. Or gin. Or Lilah. As required.
Lilah slipped into the office with a slim file. Giles opened it. It did not take long to assimilate the contents. The Slayer was dead. She had lasted longer than her predecessor, at least. But that was no way to die. Not at sixteen.
He closed his eyes. “I wonder how soon the new Slayer will come calling.” They always did. He was, after all, the great traitor of the Slayer Council; the worm in the bud; the destroyer of the new age. And he had the scythe. Eyes opening once more, he contemplated it. Now dark and dulled, the blade hung on the opposite wall. Where Giles could keep an eye on it. Do Wolfram and Hart justice, they hadn’t tried to take it from him.
Lilah looked startlingly beautiful today. Power suited her. Of course it did. He’d known that when requesting her as his associate; a role she would relish. She bent over the desk, giving him a deliberate eyeful of cleavage. Probably with benign intent. She knew how the passing of Slayers distressed him. She’d experienced it often enough.
Yes. The new Slayer - who might be one of the old ones; might even be Faith or Buffy recalled to her lost destiny - she’d be on the doorstep before too long, with a plan to take him down. Rid the world of Rupert Giles, and reclaim the scythe.
Much good it would do her. The scythe was polluted now. No more a Slayer weapon, he suspected. And as for ridding the world of Rupert Giles...
Lilah was being professionally reassuring. “No need to worry. We’ve doubled the defences around you, as usual with a Calling. You’re quite safe.”
“Oh. Quite.” It wasn’t the reassurance Giles had been seeking. But he saw no reason to mention that. Someday, the new Slayer would rid the world of Rupert Giles, and his contract would be complete.
He could hardly wait.
***