new fic
Xander -
“So, Giles….”
Xander paused, choking slightly on his next sentence.
“Larry tells me you’ve, uh, really helped him to be more comfortable with....you know.”
The older man stared at him for a moment, then pulled off his glasses sharply and busied himself polishing them. “It was my understanding that my conversation with Mr. Blaisdell was to be kept private.”
“So you did talk to him?” The uncomfortable eagerness in Xander’s voice was punctuated by his inability to maintain eye contact for more than a few seconds at a time. His next words tumbled out with attempts at laid-back gestures and genial smiles. “He said you told him about your experiences coming out in school and how you suggested he go to LA for the summer to try out being gay without all the pressures of Sunnydale....” A tentative glance in his direction. “He told me you did something similar in LA and met your first boyfriend there.”
Giles’ jaw was clenching as he mulled over his response. “And why exactly did he tell you all that?”
Xander’s response, after a moment, was a shifty-eyed mumble. “....Because he asked me to go with him....”
Giles’ face softened and he looked at Xander curiously. “Are you going to?”
Xander began fiddling with a pencil anxiously. “I can’t exactly run away for the summer can I? We have Demon-boy killing fish and fish-monsters swimming out to sea, and regardless...I’m with Cordelia. I love Cordelia.”
“If not for your responsibilities here and your loyalty to Cordelia....would you want to go?” Giles was using his teacher voice. It was almost soothing, and so very rarely directed at Xander.
“....Maybe. I don’t know.” Xander looked up at Giles, hoping for some kind of answer.
Giles smiled a small smile and gave Xander’s shoulder a squeeze. “You’ll figure it out, just give yourself time.”
As Giles was walking away, Xander couldn’t help but ask. “So about this boyfriend-”
“We are not talking about that. Ever.” Giles called over his shoulder as he retreated to his office.
Xander never made it to LA. He ended up exploring his sexuality in a little town called Oxnard.
Jenny -
“You know what I hate about you, Rupert?” She snarled, gesturing at him wildly.
Rupert’s face was a cold mask. “You’re drunk. Go home.”
“You never fucking listen. If it doesn’t fit in your own little world view, you don’t give it the time of day. That’s why you refuse to use computers, why you refuse to let Willow learn magic, why you-”
“Stop it, and go home,” Rupert said quietly, despite the fury she knew was boiling inside him. He took her wrist and started dragging her down the front steps, but Jenny dug in her heels and resisted, yanking her hand away from his.
“That’s why you won’t even listen when I’ve apologized more times than I can count!” The tears were falling now; she was choking on her sobs. “I didn’t know what would happen! If I did, I would have warned you. I know we can never go back to the way we were, but I just want to you be able to look at me again without hating me.”
Rupert swallowed, struggling to keep hold of his anger. “Please, just go home.”
The fury was back and she shoved Giles with all her might, her words biting and vindictive. “I used to wonder, you know, about Ethan and about what could have possibly happened to make you go from loving him so much to hating him in equal measure. Now I see that it really doesn’t take much, does it? Did you refuse to listen to him too? Refuse to forgive him for something that wasn’t really his fault? Maybe blamed him because you couldn’t bear to put the blame where it was rightly due-”
“Shut up!! ” Ripper roared, pushing her towards the sidewalk. She stumbled off the last step, landing gracelessly on the ground and finding herself staring up at a menacing parody of the man she knew “You don’t know anything about me,” he told her, “or about my life, and don’t you dare try to talk to me about Ethan. He was a spineless liar and so are you. So get the fuck out of my life.” He stepped into his house and slammed the door.
The next two hours were spent drinking tea and listening to Vivaldi, ignoring the banging and yelling at the door.
Tara -
Tara bit her lip while Mister Giles looked at her. “….And so we were floating the rose, and then it started shooting around the room.” She blushed and looked away.
Mister Giles looked curious and slightly intrigued. “Do you have any idea what could have caused that kind of reaction?”
Tara’s blush deepened. “A spell. A powerful one....” She looked up at him then, with a question on her lips that her eyes weren’t sure they wanted to ask. “What were you and Ethan casting...the night you turned into a Fyarl demon?”
Mister Giles’ eyes widened before his face went blank. He must be very good at poker, she mused. “We weren’t casting anything. He was turning me into a Fyarl.”
“But it felt like your aura. Willow’s magic recognized yours and pulled it into our spell, which is why it went haywire.”
“I don’t do magic,” Mister Giles bit out, turning his back on her.
“Maybe you were doing it subconsciously. It happens sometimes; especially when you’re spending....time....with former casting partners.”
Mister Giles spun around. “I know all about subconscious casting, and if you’re implying that I-” He stopped himself. “....I wouldn’t touch Ethan Rayne with a ten-foot pole, and I certainly wouldn’t fuck him.”
Tara tensed at his tone and began to withdraw slightly into herself.
Giles, noticing her discomfort, took a deep breath and calmed himself. “I’m sorry, that was uncalled for. I shouldn’t have gotten upset. Ethan is a bit of a touchy issue for me and I don’t like talking about him.”
Tara nibbled on her lower lip, then reached a hand across the table and took one of his. “It’s alright, Mister Giles. We don’t have to talk about it.” She gave it a squeeze.
Giles squeezed back. “Thank you.”
It was one of the only real conversations they ever had; and when she was gone, the one he remembered most fondly.
Buffy -
“Now that Adam is taken care of, I imagine the initiative as a greater body might owe us a favour or two,” Buffy brought up cautiously one night on patrol.
“I imagine that’s true,” Giles agreed, not really paying attention to her.
“So, I was thinking that we could ask them to release Ethan.”
Giles was paying attention now; he was so stunned he dropped his stake. “For god’s sake Buffy, why?”
“Because the initiative is bad, and Ethan doesn’t deserve to be locked up in a place like that.”
Giles snorted derisively. “On the contrary, I think it’s just what he deserves.”
Buffy turned around and smacked his arm angrily. “How can you say that?” she demanded in disbelief. “After everything that they did, how can you just leave him in their hands? He doesn’t deserve that!”
“I assure you, my conscience has no qualm with the concept.”
Buffy’s jaw dropped. “You’re lying.”
“No, I am not.”
“Yes you are.” Buffy said more fiercely. “Because not too long ago, you and I shared a brain, and you know what I was thinking the entire time I was going down those halls looking for Adam?? I was thinking of Ethan, about how I couldn’t believe I had put him in a place like that.”
“Buffy, we have work-”
“Don’t you ‘Buffy’ me! It hurt to think of him there. It physically hurt. That was not a good mindset for going into battle you know; and now, when I think of him, it still hurts. And you know why?”
“Buffy, we shouldn’t be-”
“It hurts because for a few minutes I loved him like you loved him and that was enough to make me want to do everything I could to help him. How can you possibly feel like that all the time and leave him there?” Buffy eyes were wide, pleading.
“As your watcher, I’m telling you, we are leaving Ethan there and we’re not talking about this. Now leave it alone.” His pace quickened through the cemetery.
Buffy followed quietly. At least now she didn’t have to tell him that she’d had Ethan released last Tuesday.
Willow -
“If you’re going to lecture me, I’m really not in the mood. The woman I loved died and I nearly killed my best friend less than a week ago. I think I’m being punished enough.” Willow kept her eyes closed as she said this, leaning against the trunk of the tree.
Giles sank to the ground beside her. She always knew when it was him, ever since his power had been hers. “I wasn’t going to lecture you.”
“And if you’re going to try and make me feel better, that’s not going to work either. You can’t really make this better.”
“I wasn’t going to do that either.”
Willow cracked open one eye and looked at him, pulling the quilt tighter around her shoulders against the cool Devon morning. “So why are you here?”
“To tell you that love is a fickle and heartless bitch.”
Willow opened both eyes so she could blink at him. “….Huh?”
“I had two close friends when I was growing up. In fact, my first few months in Sunnydale, you, Xander, and Jesse reminded me so much of my own group that it was almost eerie. The details weren’t the same, mind, but the closeness and camaraderie. Anyone looking at you three could tell that you had known each other forever.”
“Is this going somewhere? Because I would really like to get back to brooding.”
“You always used to like to listen to my stories,” he joked lightly. Willow’s lips didn’t even twitch toward the beginnings of a smile, so Giles decided to simply continue. “Deirdre was a potential slayer that my father had been training from the time she was five. She grew up with my family, was almost like a sister...until it was clear that she would never be a slayer, and then my father gave her a thousand quid for her trouble and put her on the first bus to London.”
Willow closed her eyes again and tried to burrow deeper into her cocoon.
“Randall, I met at school. We bonded over play sword fights and discussions of our favourite books. Deirdre adored him right from the beginning and the three of us were inseparable....when Randall and I decided to run away to London, we naturally went to live with Deirdre.”
“Giles, look, I like that you had friends growing up, and I’m really sorry they died....but I’m seriously not in the mood.”
“I loved Ethan you know.”
Willow’s eyes snapped open and she turned to look at him. “....I know....why are you telling me this now?”
“I met him at Deirdre’s. He was her roommate, Tom was her boyfriend, and Phil was the boy Randall picked up one night that never left. When I was in London, Ethan was my heart, my world. The others were great mates, and I never had a closer group of friends before or after, but Ethan…Ethan was my everything.”
“Like Tara was mine,” Willow whispered, her eyes fixed on the horizon in a valiant effort to hold back tears.
“It was Ethan that was being possessed by Eyghon the night everything went wrong. He was always so reckless, always wanted to try everything first.... Eyghon took over. He’d beaten Randall to a bloody pulp, Deirdre was near dead in the corner, Thomas was thrown out the second story window, Philip had run for help as soon as Ethan became violent.....Eyghon was saving me for last though. He was always saving me for last.” Giles swallowed, his face pale as he was getting lost in the past.
“So what happened?” Willow asked, not looking at him but reaching over to take his hand.
“I cast a spell,” Giles voice broke, and he took a moment to recover his composure before continuing. “In watcher training, they teach you a spell for particularly difficult-to-exorcise demons. It traps them in their human host and then you kill the host to stop the demon. I couldn’t do it to Ethan though, he was my world. Sometimes I think that was why Eyghon had left me until last. He knew that I could do destroy him, but the pain I would suffer killing Ethan have been worth being trapped in Limbo, but I’m probably just being paranoid. Instead of casting the spell, I attacked with every bit of strength and adrenalin, I used every offensive spell I knew and fought like a mad man. I honestly don’t actually remember much of those few minutes....all I know is that when I was done, Ethan needed to be hospitalized, and Eyghon had shifted to Randall.”
“And then you cast the spell.” It wasn’t a question.
“Randall meant more to me than almost anyone in the world, and I stood over him and cut off his head.” Giles closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment.
“...You blamed Ethan didn’t you?”
Giles blinked and looked at her with a mixture of curiosity and distrust.
“Sometimes....I blamed Tara for making me love her so much, for making me hurt so badly...”
Giles swallowed and looked out towards the scenery before them, and simultaneously at nothing at all. “Loving him had turned me into a monster, a monster that in a moment of passion picked his best friend to die for his lover’s mistake. It was a decision that I’ve regretted for over half my life, and I couldn’t let a person or that kind of emotion rule my life....I made sure they were all safely in the hospital and then I left. I went back to the Council, back to a life of order and logic.”
“Hence, ‘Love is a fickle and heartless bitch’.”
“Yes.”
“Love saved me, you know. Kept me from becoming a monster.”
“I know.”
“I’m glad you love so much. It kept you from becoming the monster the Watcher’s Council seemed so set on making you...and you wouldn’t be here with me today.”
Giles looked at her. His features, previously hardened by regret and self-loathing, softened now with affection. “You’re not alone with this,” he said. “To do stupid things while grieving is human nature.”
They relaxed in the silence for a few minutes, enjoying the view.
“If you were back there again.....would you make the same choice?” Willow asked pensively.
Giles snorted. “Probably. I’m a bit of a selfish cunt.”
A smile finally tugged at the edges of Willow’s lips, and she leaned her head on his shoulder.
“Me too.”