fic commetary: "Sunrise, Sunset (The New Day Dawning Remix)"
Remix commentary! (Read it without commentary here)
[warnings: character death, vampirism, underage sex, spoilers through the beginning episodes of S3 Buffy the Vampire Slayer, vamp!Giles/Buffy]
Step one: queenzulu's oeuvre:
Zulu's a friend of mine, so I'm moderately familiar with her writing. I've read almost nothing from her SGA era (we're not really into the same characters or pairings), and ditto her House era -- until a few weeks ago, I wasn't caught up on canon. I read through her amazing House/Foreman AU, the Percussianverse, and titled a potential story there -- "Triangle (the Stockholm Variations)" for the Chase/Cameron story that's snuggled in there -- but it just doesn't play to my strengths. I don't have a lot of experience in House; Chase is not one of my characters; it's a long and plotty universe and I tend to write short, tight, thematic pieces. I also know that Zulu has plans of her own to write more in that 'verse, so even though it's not technically a WiP, I felt it would be more kosher to leave it alone.
There were a few other Buffyverse stories I considered that were even shorter than "Night," but "Night" is what grabbed me most strongly. It's about 500 words, enough to play with, enough plot that I'd actually be mixing, not just expanding on the nugget of story contained in a drabble. And "Night" caught me. It was very much my kind of story -- Buffy/Giles is one of my favorite pairings, especially to write -- there's so much unsaid in the depth of their love and need of each other -- I love vamped characters, especially vamp!Giles -- there's vampire kink, blood and pain, etc. -- and this piece is very thematic, character-centric, introspective, a thinkpiece -- exactly the place I want to play. It's short enough that I felt really comfortable and familiar there -- I reread it many times and found its cadence, its tropes, its wordplay.
I would advise reading it at least once before reading the rest of the commentary. Night by queenzulu.
Step two: Finding the title.
This is my third year of remix, so I feel comfortable saying that I always remix the same way. I find the title first -- usually as I find the story that I want to remix. They go together; I find my own voice in the story, and my own story follows.
My titles are plays on the original title. This year, "Night," which yields lots of possibilities -- the two that I wrote down were "Sunset, Sunrise (The Daylight Remix)", and "Knight (The New Day Dawning Remix)". Obviously, I went with a combination of those two, and I'm ultimately glad that I did. Less punful, more fun.
"Sunrise, Sunset" -- I didn't actually google the lyrics or anything, just used my knowledge that it's a father-to-daughter wedding song, children growing up, fathers letting go, changing relationships. This is a story about Buffy's maturity, and about the changing relationship between Buffy and Giles, and about the changing meaning of sunlight and night in their lives (a primary meaning in "Night") and about the beginning and end of days/nights/epochs.
"(The New Day Dawning Remix)" My Remix Subtitle is about the particular theme that I mix into the original story. This year, it was, I think, a positive spin -- there are two points in my story, once in the middle and once at the end -- that a "new day dawns" -- once at night, and once with the sunrise. Nighttime marks all the moments in "Night" -- everything is in shadows and darkness. I've mixed in sunlight -- not always as a positive, illuminating force; the fic ends with sunlight as a weapon -- but there's sunlight throughout, and also Buffy's growing maturity.
There is absolutely no pun re: Dawn Summers. Applaud me.
Step three: Remixing
Title: "Sunrise, Sunset (The New Day Dawning Remix)"
I always think of the remix subtitle as a thematic guide -- whenever I reach a point in my story or in the original story when I'm not sure where to go next, I refer back to the subtitle and figure out how to fold that theme into the story.
Summary: The darkness shall turn to dawning, and the dawning to noonday bright.
Hymns live in my head. This line is from We've a Story to Tell to the Nations and is a perfect summary of this story.
Rating: NC-17
Fandom: Buffy: the Vampire Slayer
Pairing: Buffy/Giles
Warnings: Character death, vampire!Giles, underage sex.
Spoilers: "Becoming," "Anne"
Original story: Night by queenzulu
Lines stolen directly from "Night" are in maroon.
Sunrise, Sunset (The New Day Dawning Remix)
He can always find her, now.
Like "Night," "Sunrise Sunset" begins with a one-sentence paragraph comparing then-and-now. "Night" begins with "He no longer fears the night," a primal human fear brought to a heightened pitch in a Watcher, who knows what lurks in the night, and who has direct responsibility for the Slayer, destined to fight the night and eventually be destroyed by it.
My own opening line is about the changed relationship between them, the new depths it's found, the new knowledge that Giles has of Buffy as a result of his heightened senses and his newfound awareness of his own emotions, desires, and sensations.
As a man, with the arrogance of man, he pretended indifference to the stench of her sweat, the ooze of her pores, her menstrual blood, the many scents that made her Buffy. Okay, I love the animalistic nature of vampiric desire, the literally visceral nature of it, but I also feel something human and intimate in this kind of knowledge. When you live with someone intimately, you do know these things about them, their scents, good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant, and there's knowledge in those scents, of moods and desires and exertions. So in a deep sense I find this romantic, not just vampires being gross. But oh, he noticed. He noticed with the parts of him unimpeded by superego, his gut, rolling with hunger, his prick, taut with blood, his nose and eyes and ears. He remembers with senses and with senses he tracks her, leaving bloody, hungry-eyed shadows of her friends in his trail.
It's implied but not actually stated in "Night" that Giles vamps all Buffy's friends -- there are empty graves, no bodies. Why? Again, it's not explicit in "Night." I'm not sure whence comes the distinction between the kind of vampire who turns all hir loved ones (Spike!) and the kind who kills them (Angelus!), but I find it incredibly useful. I think Giles' burned-in humanity is something that's... flawed about him, both in life and death. It's what sabotages his Watcherdom, and it's what keeps him from developing a proper reign in Sunnydale once he's vamped. But I don't think he turns the Scoobies because he loves them (although in my heart of hearts I believe he does, see also the OTP nature of Willow/Giles); he turns them as a sick tribute to Buffy, along the lines of Angelus in S2. (I'm not sure who turns Giles in the first place, but I vaguely thought it could be Angelus or one of the vamps in his line.
He loses the scent at the edge of Los Angeles, which reeks of animal bile, dust, death -- even the sweetness of Buffy, the perfume that he tracked like an animal, bathed in at convenience stores and dirty rest stops, is masked by the anonymity of sex upon sex upon sex, whores and liquor and vampires without name or lineage. Buffy is in that city, somewhere, hiding from her history, hiding from his lessons, hiding from him.
This is the first paragraph I wrote -- in the car, in one of those moments when the story that had been living in my head just hurled itself into consciousness, acquired a setting and a theme.
Giles is a supremely unreliable narrator -- he begins by thinking he can always find her, when he really can't -- when his vampire senses fail him and (see below) so do his human skills. He's also convinced of the mutuality of his obsession with Buffy -- which is true to a point, but not to the point that he imagines. For L.A. as an anonymous city of sex and demons, see any episode of Angel ever, and also "Anne."
When I realized this story was set in between "Becoming" and "Anne," everything clicked into place. It makes sense that when Buffy was missing from Sunnydale, her friends might run into trouble of the fatal kind, and Buffy's homecoming explicitly demonstrates the strength of Giles' love for her -- sekrit kitchen tears! Even after death, Giles continues the fruitless search for Buffy, because he loves her way too much.
As a Watcher -- a deceased Watcher, a disgraced Watcher, a Watcher who has already let his Slayer be resurrected once Everything that's wrong with the Watchers' Council is right there -- Buffy's death is inevitable, the eventual end of any Watcher-Slayer relationship. Letting her die is not the issue -- it's the fact that she has friends, that Giles permitted her these friends, that she lived and screwed up the line of succession, that he let his emotions overpower his duty -- this is why he wasn't a good Watcher in the traditional sense and why he can't be a good vampire, either -- he can't track her. No innovation the Council can create could match the fine, pin-sharp skill of the Slayer at disappearance. Buffy knows shadows no Watcher could see. Watchers fear darkness, and Slayers hide in the night.
"Watchers fear darkness" is the recurring theme of "Night," but Slayers' ability to hide in the darkness is my focus, and the rift this causes between Slayer and Watcher
As a vampire, he can track her only to the edge of civilization, although he knows what no vampire should -- the scent of a particular human, the coppery taste of blood he's never fed on. The Judge (before Buffy slew him) would test Rupert and find him wanting.
In being a particular human with particular wants, Giles fails as both a Watcher and a vampire. I felt a little bad about using the Judge to stress my point -- but his condemnation of Spike for loving Drusilla so perfectly expresses the kind of vampire my Giles is.
Or, um, my Rupert. I was really torn here -- in my head, he's always just Giles, but there's some indication that he thinks of himself as Rupert/is Rupert in adult relationships (with Jenny, with Olivia). And the tweed-bound scholar who was Giles as we knew him is gone forever. Many vampires eventually take on or are given new names (Spike, Angel/us, Darla, presumably the Master) and the one we knew who didn't (Harmony) is so supremely contented with herself and the human life she lived that she seems anomalous. (Girlfriend points out that Wishverse!Willow and !Xander are also examples, and that it would probably take a long time -- like years -- to settle into a new, vampiric identity.)
Anyhow, I could've gone with "Ripper" but dislike the fanonical connotations of that as an identity so much that I just couldn't.
And yet, he can always find her, now. He can wait in the darkness of his flat, swimming in seventies music and drowning in high schoolers' blood, drinking the potions of his youth and feeling strength and immortality once more flood his veins. I feel terrible about this sentence. The vagueness of "seventies music," the way I try to establish that Giles is a vampire and eeevil, eeeeeevil, but really can't get worked up about the murderous parts of his personality, etc. I like the second part better, establishing (again per "Night") that he's using the magic he learned as Ripper. He can track her, trace her, locate her, ring her with protection and build for her a sturdy web -- his love, a certain trap. To make the first sentence of the story actually true, I decided that Giles's magic could locate her even if he can't find her physically -- that he really is actively protecting her while she's in LA. She'll return, for her friends, for her mother -- and she will find him. Only, always, her Watcher.
This inversion -- from "Giles will always find Buffy" to "Buffy will find him" -- is one of the keys to the story, which is about Buffy growing out of needing Giles's protection and finding the strength to slay him in the end -- and I think every inversion of this kind mirrors what I see as the central remixing theme -- "Night" ends with Giles killing Buffy; the remix ends with the inverse.
Giles's identity, even as a vampire, is wrapped up in his relationship to Buffy, his role as her Watcher.
++
She throws herself into his flat, sobbing; her wrists wet with blood, her stake dusty from -- Willow? Xander? or the sweet brightness of Cordelia, true queen of a half dozen minions? No matter -- one is dead, the rest will follow, and Buffy will take them all, and when her innocence is gone, her carcass will belong to him.
The use of "take" as a euphemism for "stake" as well as other actions is important. The last clause is a rephrasing of the final sentence of "Night" -- Giles's assumption that he'll break Buffy to the point of despair, empty her of humanity and turn her into a creature like himself.
"Giles!" His fangs extend; he reaches for her, face twisting into want. There's terror in her voice, and though he imagined surprising her into submission, vamping in the middle of a kiss, he can't retract his fangs now, not when he can see the curve of her jaw where the flesh covering her lifeblood is thinnest. He greets her with glowing eyes, and devours her scream.
Um, hot. I mean, isn't that atrocious? Also, isn't that a gorgeous phrase of Zulu's?
She throws herself at him, Hee. stake clumsy in her grip. "Not you," she sobs. "Not like this. You can't be -- you can't -- Giles, please." His arms find her shoulders, press her arms flat against her sides. A bit contortionist there, eh? Also, the gesture of... domineering comfort. He wraps himself in her warmth, wraps her in his strength. In reusing Zulu's language, I tried to incorporate her styleinto my story less than actual dialogue or events. The pieces I steal are used in very different ways, but I use the language to try to keep myself grounded in certain ways, to refer back to the original moods and desires, e.g., here, how Giles as a vampire craves Buffy's warmth. His tee shirt is wet from her tears, and he knows that he's already imprisoned her. On three counts, she can never kill him. First, that he knows her, deeper even than Angelus knew. Every twist of her hips, every thrust of her chest, every parry, he anticipates and blocks. Second, he is her Watcher, closer than family, dearer than friends, and (his cock is hard against her thigh; he can smell her arousal and taste her tears) soon, her lover. But third, third -- he is all that remains to her, the only survivor of the -- who where they? -- Scooby slaughter.
I think at some point I forgot what my original three reasons were going to be, but I like it this way, Giles rationalizing, making excuses, making this profoundly mistaken assumption based on vaguely sound premises. In some sense, he is right, and I think it's both true and hot that they're this close (and I'm sure I'm exaggerating the way they know each other physically from the training they've done -- but I still think it is made of Massive Hot.) I love that he knows her better than Angel does.
When she's taken Xander and Cordelia (separately, lost in the carelessness of mutual loathing), Oz and Willow (feasting together on the football team), Rupert takes her, Death=sex, eh? Power, domination, etc. with her back against a grave and her legs spread wide in fresh earth where flowers and worms struggle towards freedom. He drinks from her neck, this first time, and she gasps and chokes and gasps again -- she groans, and he thinks he's taken too much, but she's still warm in his arms, and sweet in his mouth, and when she moans again, it's with bliss, as he thrusts into her cunt and takes the last of her innocence. His teeth are sheathed in her vein, and both she and he are safe. With the last of her friends, the old order passed away, and here on her mother's grave, in the darkness of a new moon, the new day begins.
Did you see what I did there, where father figure + teenage girl fuck on her mother's grave? Mmm, yeah, I don't have a tell AT ALL.
Also, new day dawning part one.
++
"Honey, I'm home." He rubs dust from his eyes, reaches automatically for the glasses he no longer needs, will never need again. "Morning, lover." Her voice is dry, swollen with vampire dust and demon parasites, with sarcasm. The flat is dry and dusty; the kitchen is unused. Even his bedroom has a half-lived-in feel, because he lives a half-life there. Vampires don't love, and Watchers don't take chances. Neither protect Slayers, not like this, not with the dark magic, once-forgotten, that floods his senses now, protective charms flowing from him into Buffy like the sterile semen of his fucking.
Ironic use of "honey I'm home" and "lover" = favorite ever.
In "Night," Giles uses his magic to protect Buffy, but hides this from Buffy, who presumably wouldn't trust it. At first I wasn't sure how to use this idea, but it turned out to be useful, and give Giles something to do.
Giles is terribly lethargic in this fic, really possessed by inactivity. I'm not sure why this is, whether I really think this is a flaw of Giles's (it sort of comes out in S4, I think -- when he doesn't have something to do, he can fall into this mood) -- it's definitely a flaw of mine, and it feels right here, sort of a heroic villainous flaw.
"Good morning, Buffy."
"I brought you breakfast," she says, and actually smiles as she bares her neck. "Fresh blood in bed? Maybe... blood?" She unhooks her belt, unzips her trousers, reveals the sweet spot of her thigh, his favorite. Her fingers and two small, red scars guide him; he sucks without thought, without care. The sun has risen, and Buffy is safe. His fingers curl into her sex; her lips part easily for him, and she shrieks with the pain of his bite, shivers with pleasure as he drinks her, fucks her, loves her into the oblivion of daytime. Deep plum drapes lined with muslin Ahahaha my tells, let me show you them. Originally it was like, "deep plum drapes lined with offwhite polycotton econosheen lining that he had purchased at The Store" but better sense prevailed! I love having the knowledge to accurately identify fibers/materials/prints/colors, but it's always tempting to overshare this knowledge! hide them from the sun, and they'll sleep together in her warmth, drying blood sealing his lips to her leg.
Daytime is profoundly lethargic. It's safe -- c.f. the beginning of "Night," the worries of nighttime and the safety of day -- but it's also lazy. It's also Buffy's surrender, the sexiness that oozes past her disdain, the thoughtlessness of repeated action. "the oblivion of daytime."
This paragraph plays with this fragment: the sweet spot on her inner thigh beside the curls of her sex. I don't know if I can articulate the way I used the original story when I remixed, the way that I tried to weave Zulu's words into mine, the way I rearranged sentences and reworked images. It's one of the things I love about remixing -- getting to play with this awesome, poetic writing..
Also, they are literally glued together with her blood. My brain is an obvious place sometimes.
Once, she showered after. Once, she cared for appearances, imagined that he'd left some friends to care for her, to notice her truancy, her scars, her emaciation, the whiskey on her breath and the razor burn on her cheeks and thighs. Once, he'd have spent this day buried in arcana, brewing potions and summoning assistance, working in secret to protect her from his kindred. Once, she would have looked the other way, pretended not to know the things he did or the powers he invoked. Now -- now they sleep the sleep of the drunk and the dead, half-doers of almost-brave deeds, a vampire protecting a human, a human protecting a vampire. He turns her friends, her classmates, her teachers, and she slays the creatures he sires. If there were peace between them, it would lie in the death of everyone they've known, but there is no peace, only a bloody kind of love, her tongue just peeking from her mouth, his hand gentling her sleep-tousled hair.
I'm not sure what to do with the startling gentleness at the end of this paragraph, love that really isn't bloody but seems so because that's they only way they know to express love.
Now, they die in daytime, and can only see clearly at night, under the stars, lying in gravedust.
They die in daytime (see what I did there!) -- in "Night," night begins as a fearsome time for the human Giles and becomes safe, unfearful, when he's vamped. This takes that image a step further and gives to daytime the dangers night once held. This is literally true for Giles, to whom daylight is fatal, but Buffy too dies a kind of death in the daytime. She's drinking, which is terrible and bad, and she's letting a vampire live, which is a violation of her calling.
++
"Come with me on patrol tonight?" she asks, yawning, sometime near sunset. Hunger fills him already, to hold her aching muscles, to watch her in battle, to know the scent of her sweat before he beds her in the graveyard.
"Of course, Buffy. I'm here whenever you need me."
"Of course." She dares to roll her eyes. He's angry but -- he can't. He never could.
Giles can't kill Buffy. He simply can't.
So she Slays, silent, precise, an empty whirlwind of passion, and he watches, and waits, and prays to whatever demons will still receive his petitions, that he will not lose her.
A Watcher waits, and weeps, and prays he will go first
When the night's last vampire is dust, But not quite the last, because that's Giles when the bravest demon has retreated to its daytime lair, she leads him to the grave -- Joyce's again, the empty casket, beloved mother. Joyce struggled against him, screamed. Her blood was rich, like an aged wine, and when she drank from him, she swooned. She tried to turn Buffy, braved an embrace, and the stake took her from behind. Buffy lies on her grave, lifts a wrist to his mouth. "Just. Drink," she says, too rough.
His Slayer is old, older than Angelus, older than her mother, older than he. Her blood tastes like a thousand generations of Slayers, a hundred thousand years of lost daughters. Her taste is as crisp as wind, as clear as stars, as musky as an autumn fog. He drinks from her wrist, her neck, her thigh, and when she's wet and limp and weeping, sobbing his name, he makes love to her as gently as he can, a mockery of all he is.
Some pieces in here that are from "Night": "chosen epitaphs," "she is no longer young, but then, she never was."
Giles and Buffy each kill Joyce -- in an obvious Ari-kink, Electra kind of way -- but it's also part of Buffy's growing up ("it was time to move on, and in our world, that means blowing things up." -- Joss, on "To Shanshu in LA"), moving beyond her parents' care.
In some ways, Buffy's motivations are a mystery to me. I think that Giles may have been the last of her close friends/family she encountered, and because he was the only one left in any form she hesitated to kill him -- there's also Giles's list of rationalizations above. In "Night," it's just a given, so I went with that and felt spared from the necessity of providing a reason -- there's also the canonical S6 Spike/Buffy and the possibility that this Buffy is just as broken as that Buffy was.
He's inside her when the heat of dawn reaches the horizon, and the warmth of her desire still holds him when the first rays crackle, when his skin ignites, when the blaze begins.
The last line of "Night" is When she can no longer stand what she has become, she will ask him for the only gift he has left to give, and she will love the night next to him. I knew right away that I wanted to reverse this, that I wanted it to be Buffy who would finally liberate Giles. Instead of Giles bringing Buffy into the night, she drags him into the day (a la Angel's suicide attempt in "Amends"). And here again the new day dawns, stronger and more terrible than the first.
Buffy's feelings for Giles aren't as strong as he thinks they are; also Buffy herself is stronger. She's willing to do this terribly difficult thing, make this sacrifice again after killing Angel just a few months (?) previously. Buffy, my terribly brave and wonderful girl. If Giles were alive, he'd be so proud of her.
And thank you, queenzulu, for writing such an amazing piece for me to work with. ♥
"Goodnight," she whispers, and takes him in a final kiss.
[warnings: character death, vampirism, underage sex, spoilers through the beginning episodes of S3 Buffy the Vampire Slayer, vamp!Giles/Buffy]
Step one: queenzulu's oeuvre:
Zulu's a friend of mine, so I'm moderately familiar with her writing. I've read almost nothing from her SGA era (we're not really into the same characters or pairings), and ditto her House era -- until a few weeks ago, I wasn't caught up on canon. I read through her amazing House/Foreman AU, the Percussianverse, and titled a potential story there -- "Triangle (the Stockholm Variations)" for the Chase/Cameron story that's snuggled in there -- but it just doesn't play to my strengths. I don't have a lot of experience in House; Chase is not one of my characters; it's a long and plotty universe and I tend to write short, tight, thematic pieces. I also know that Zulu has plans of her own to write more in that 'verse, so even though it's not technically a WiP, I felt it would be more kosher to leave it alone.
There were a few other Buffyverse stories I considered that were even shorter than "Night," but "Night" is what grabbed me most strongly. It's about 500 words, enough to play with, enough plot that I'd actually be mixing, not just expanding on the nugget of story contained in a drabble. And "Night" caught me. It was very much my kind of story -- Buffy/Giles is one of my favorite pairings, especially to write -- there's so much unsaid in the depth of their love and need of each other -- I love vamped characters, especially vamp!Giles -- there's vampire kink, blood and pain, etc. -- and this piece is very thematic, character-centric, introspective, a thinkpiece -- exactly the place I want to play. It's short enough that I felt really comfortable and familiar there -- I reread it many times and found its cadence, its tropes, its wordplay.
I would advise reading it at least once before reading the rest of the commentary. Night by queenzulu.
Step two: Finding the title.
This is my third year of remix, so I feel comfortable saying that I always remix the same way. I find the title first -- usually as I find the story that I want to remix. They go together; I find my own voice in the story, and my own story follows.
My titles are plays on the original title. This year, "Night," which yields lots of possibilities -- the two that I wrote down were "Sunset, Sunrise (The Daylight Remix)", and "Knight (The New Day Dawning Remix)". Obviously, I went with a combination of those two, and I'm ultimately glad that I did. Less punful, more fun.
"Sunrise, Sunset" -- I didn't actually google the lyrics or anything, just used my knowledge that it's a father-to-daughter wedding song, children growing up, fathers letting go, changing relationships. This is a story about Buffy's maturity, and about the changing relationship between Buffy and Giles, and about the changing meaning of sunlight and night in their lives (a primary meaning in "Night") and about the beginning and end of days/nights/epochs.
"(The New Day Dawning Remix)" My Remix Subtitle is about the particular theme that I mix into the original story. This year, it was, I think, a positive spin -- there are two points in my story, once in the middle and once at the end -- that a "new day dawns" -- once at night, and once with the sunrise. Nighttime marks all the moments in "Night" -- everything is in shadows and darkness. I've mixed in sunlight -- not always as a positive, illuminating force; the fic ends with sunlight as a weapon -- but there's sunlight throughout, and also Buffy's growing maturity.
There is absolutely no pun re: Dawn Summers. Applaud me.
Step three: Remixing
Title: "Sunrise, Sunset (The New Day Dawning Remix)"
I always think of the remix subtitle as a thematic guide -- whenever I reach a point in my story or in the original story when I'm not sure where to go next, I refer back to the subtitle and figure out how to fold that theme into the story.
Summary: The darkness shall turn to dawning, and the dawning to noonday bright.
Hymns live in my head. This line is from We've a Story to Tell to the Nations and is a perfect summary of this story.
Rating: NC-17
Fandom: Buffy: the Vampire Slayer
Pairing: Buffy/Giles
Warnings: Character death, vampire!Giles, underage sex.
Spoilers: "Becoming," "Anne"
Original story: Night by queenzulu
Lines stolen directly from "Night" are in maroon.
Sunrise, Sunset (The New Day Dawning Remix)
He can always find her, now.
Like "Night," "Sunrise Sunset" begins with a one-sentence paragraph comparing then-and-now. "Night" begins with "He no longer fears the night," a primal human fear brought to a heightened pitch in a Watcher, who knows what lurks in the night, and who has direct responsibility for the Slayer, destined to fight the night and eventually be destroyed by it.
My own opening line is about the changed relationship between them, the new depths it's found, the new knowledge that Giles has of Buffy as a result of his heightened senses and his newfound awareness of his own emotions, desires, and sensations.
As a man, with the arrogance of man, he pretended indifference to the stench of her sweat, the ooze of her pores, her menstrual blood, the many scents that made her Buffy. Okay, I love the animalistic nature of vampiric desire, the literally visceral nature of it, but I also feel something human and intimate in this kind of knowledge. When you live with someone intimately, you do know these things about them, their scents, good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant, and there's knowledge in those scents, of moods and desires and exertions. So in a deep sense I find this romantic, not just vampires being gross. But oh, he noticed. He noticed with the parts of him unimpeded by superego, his gut, rolling with hunger, his prick, taut with blood, his nose and eyes and ears. He remembers with senses and with senses he tracks her, leaving bloody, hungry-eyed shadows of her friends in his trail.
It's implied but not actually stated in "Night" that Giles vamps all Buffy's friends -- there are empty graves, no bodies. Why? Again, it's not explicit in "Night." I'm not sure whence comes the distinction between the kind of vampire who turns all hir loved ones (Spike!) and the kind who kills them (Angelus!), but I find it incredibly useful. I think Giles' burned-in humanity is something that's... flawed about him, both in life and death. It's what sabotages his Watcherdom, and it's what keeps him from developing a proper reign in Sunnydale once he's vamped. But I don't think he turns the Scoobies because he loves them (although in my heart of hearts I believe he does, see also the OTP nature of Willow/Giles); he turns them as a sick tribute to Buffy, along the lines of Angelus in S2. (I'm not sure who turns Giles in the first place, but I vaguely thought it could be Angelus or one of the vamps in his line.
He loses the scent at the edge of Los Angeles, which reeks of animal bile, dust, death -- even the sweetness of Buffy, the perfume that he tracked like an animal, bathed in at convenience stores and dirty rest stops, is masked by the anonymity of sex upon sex upon sex, whores and liquor and vampires without name or lineage. Buffy is in that city, somewhere, hiding from her history, hiding from his lessons, hiding from him.
This is the first paragraph I wrote -- in the car, in one of those moments when the story that had been living in my head just hurled itself into consciousness, acquired a setting and a theme.
Giles is a supremely unreliable narrator -- he begins by thinking he can always find her, when he really can't -- when his vampire senses fail him and (see below) so do his human skills. He's also convinced of the mutuality of his obsession with Buffy -- which is true to a point, but not to the point that he imagines. For L.A. as an anonymous city of sex and demons, see any episode of Angel ever, and also "Anne."
When I realized this story was set in between "Becoming" and "Anne," everything clicked into place. It makes sense that when Buffy was missing from Sunnydale, her friends might run into trouble of the fatal kind, and Buffy's homecoming explicitly demonstrates the strength of Giles' love for her -- sekrit kitchen tears! Even after death, Giles continues the fruitless search for Buffy, because he loves her way too much.
As a Watcher -- a deceased Watcher, a disgraced Watcher, a Watcher who has already let his Slayer be resurrected once Everything that's wrong with the Watchers' Council is right there -- Buffy's death is inevitable, the eventual end of any Watcher-Slayer relationship. Letting her die is not the issue -- it's the fact that she has friends, that Giles permitted her these friends, that she lived and screwed up the line of succession, that he let his emotions overpower his duty -- this is why he wasn't a good Watcher in the traditional sense and why he can't be a good vampire, either -- he can't track her. No innovation the Council can create could match the fine, pin-sharp skill of the Slayer at disappearance. Buffy knows shadows no Watcher could see. Watchers fear darkness, and Slayers hide in the night.
"Watchers fear darkness" is the recurring theme of "Night," but Slayers' ability to hide in the darkness is my focus, and the rift this causes between Slayer and Watcher
As a vampire, he can track her only to the edge of civilization, although he knows what no vampire should -- the scent of a particular human, the coppery taste of blood he's never fed on. The Judge (before Buffy slew him) would test Rupert and find him wanting.
In being a particular human with particular wants, Giles fails as both a Watcher and a vampire. I felt a little bad about using the Judge to stress my point -- but his condemnation of Spike for loving Drusilla so perfectly expresses the kind of vampire my Giles is.
Or, um, my Rupert. I was really torn here -- in my head, he's always just Giles, but there's some indication that he thinks of himself as Rupert/is Rupert in adult relationships (with Jenny, with Olivia). And the tweed-bound scholar who was Giles as we knew him is gone forever. Many vampires eventually take on or are given new names (Spike, Angel/us, Darla, presumably the Master) and the one we knew who didn't (Harmony) is so supremely contented with herself and the human life she lived that she seems anomalous. (Girlfriend points out that Wishverse!Willow and !Xander are also examples, and that it would probably take a long time -- like years -- to settle into a new, vampiric identity.)
Anyhow, I could've gone with "Ripper" but dislike the fanonical connotations of that as an identity so much that I just couldn't.
And yet, he can always find her, now. He can wait in the darkness of his flat, swimming in seventies music and drowning in high schoolers' blood, drinking the potions of his youth and feeling strength and immortality once more flood his veins. I feel terrible about this sentence. The vagueness of "seventies music," the way I try to establish that Giles is a vampire and eeevil, eeeeeevil, but really can't get worked up about the murderous parts of his personality, etc. I like the second part better, establishing (again per "Night") that he's using the magic he learned as Ripper. He can track her, trace her, locate her, ring her with protection and build for her a sturdy web -- his love, a certain trap. To make the first sentence of the story actually true, I decided that Giles's magic could locate her even if he can't find her physically -- that he really is actively protecting her while she's in LA. She'll return, for her friends, for her mother -- and she will find him. Only, always, her Watcher.
This inversion -- from "Giles will always find Buffy" to "Buffy will find him" -- is one of the keys to the story, which is about Buffy growing out of needing Giles's protection and finding the strength to slay him in the end -- and I think every inversion of this kind mirrors what I see as the central remixing theme -- "Night" ends with Giles killing Buffy; the remix ends with the inverse.
Giles's identity, even as a vampire, is wrapped up in his relationship to Buffy, his role as her Watcher.
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She throws herself into his flat, sobbing; her wrists wet with blood, her stake dusty from -- Willow? Xander? or the sweet brightness of Cordelia, true queen of a half dozen minions? No matter -- one is dead, the rest will follow, and Buffy will take them all, and when her innocence is gone, her carcass will belong to him.
The use of "take" as a euphemism for "stake" as well as other actions is important. The last clause is a rephrasing of the final sentence of "Night" -- Giles's assumption that he'll break Buffy to the point of despair, empty her of humanity and turn her into a creature like himself.
"Giles!" His fangs extend; he reaches for her, face twisting into want. There's terror in her voice, and though he imagined surprising her into submission, vamping in the middle of a kiss, he can't retract his fangs now, not when he can see the curve of her jaw where the flesh covering her lifeblood is thinnest. He greets her with glowing eyes, and devours her scream.
Um, hot. I mean, isn't that atrocious? Also, isn't that a gorgeous phrase of Zulu's?
She throws herself at him, Hee. stake clumsy in her grip. "Not you," she sobs. "Not like this. You can't be -- you can't -- Giles, please." His arms find her shoulders, press her arms flat against her sides. A bit contortionist there, eh? Also, the gesture of... domineering comfort. He wraps himself in her warmth, wraps her in his strength. In reusing Zulu's language, I tried to incorporate her styleinto my story less than actual dialogue or events. The pieces I steal are used in very different ways, but I use the language to try to keep myself grounded in certain ways, to refer back to the original moods and desires, e.g., here, how Giles as a vampire craves Buffy's warmth. His tee shirt is wet from her tears, and he knows that he's already imprisoned her. On three counts, she can never kill him. First, that he knows her, deeper even than Angelus knew. Every twist of her hips, every thrust of her chest, every parry, he anticipates and blocks. Second, he is her Watcher, closer than family, dearer than friends, and (his cock is hard against her thigh; he can smell her arousal and taste her tears) soon, her lover. But third, third -- he is all that remains to her, the only survivor of the -- who where they? -- Scooby slaughter.
I think at some point I forgot what my original three reasons were going to be, but I like it this way, Giles rationalizing, making excuses, making this profoundly mistaken assumption based on vaguely sound premises. In some sense, he is right, and I think it's both true and hot that they're this close (and I'm sure I'm exaggerating the way they know each other physically from the training they've done -- but I still think it is made of Massive Hot.) I love that he knows her better than Angel does.
When she's taken Xander and Cordelia (separately, lost in the carelessness of mutual loathing), Oz and Willow (feasting together on the football team), Rupert takes her, Death=sex, eh? Power, domination, etc. with her back against a grave and her legs spread wide in fresh earth where flowers and worms struggle towards freedom. He drinks from her neck, this first time, and she gasps and chokes and gasps again -- she groans, and he thinks he's taken too much, but she's still warm in his arms, and sweet in his mouth, and when she moans again, it's with bliss, as he thrusts into her cunt and takes the last of her innocence. His teeth are sheathed in her vein, and both she and he are safe. With the last of her friends, the old order passed away, and here on her mother's grave, in the darkness of a new moon, the new day begins.
Did you see what I did there, where father figure + teenage girl fuck on her mother's grave? Mmm, yeah, I don't have a tell AT ALL.
Also, new day dawning part one.
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"Honey, I'm home." He rubs dust from his eyes, reaches automatically for the glasses he no longer needs, will never need again. "Morning, lover." Her voice is dry, swollen with vampire dust and demon parasites, with sarcasm. The flat is dry and dusty; the kitchen is unused. Even his bedroom has a half-lived-in feel, because he lives a half-life there. Vampires don't love, and Watchers don't take chances. Neither protect Slayers, not like this, not with the dark magic, once-forgotten, that floods his senses now, protective charms flowing from him into Buffy like the sterile semen of his fucking.
Ironic use of "honey I'm home" and "lover" = favorite ever.
In "Night," Giles uses his magic to protect Buffy, but hides this from Buffy, who presumably wouldn't trust it. At first I wasn't sure how to use this idea, but it turned out to be useful, and give Giles something to do.
Giles is terribly lethargic in this fic, really possessed by inactivity. I'm not sure why this is, whether I really think this is a flaw of Giles's (it sort of comes out in S4, I think -- when he doesn't have something to do, he can fall into this mood) -- it's definitely a flaw of mine, and it feels right here, sort of a heroic villainous flaw.
"Good morning, Buffy."
"I brought you breakfast," she says, and actually smiles as she bares her neck. "Fresh blood in bed? Maybe... blood?" She unhooks her belt, unzips her trousers, reveals the sweet spot of her thigh, his favorite. Her fingers and two small, red scars guide him; he sucks without thought, without care. The sun has risen, and Buffy is safe. His fingers curl into her sex; her lips part easily for him, and she shrieks with the pain of his bite, shivers with pleasure as he drinks her, fucks her, loves her into the oblivion of daytime. Deep plum drapes lined with muslin Ahahaha my tells, let me show you them. Originally it was like, "deep plum drapes lined with offwhite polycotton econosheen lining that he had purchased at The Store" but better sense prevailed! I love having the knowledge to accurately identify fibers/materials/prints/colors, but it's always tempting to overshare this knowledge! hide them from the sun, and they'll sleep together in her warmth, drying blood sealing his lips to her leg.
Daytime is profoundly lethargic. It's safe -- c.f. the beginning of "Night," the worries of nighttime and the safety of day -- but it's also lazy. It's also Buffy's surrender, the sexiness that oozes past her disdain, the thoughtlessness of repeated action. "the oblivion of daytime."
This paragraph plays with this fragment: the sweet spot on her inner thigh beside the curls of her sex. I don't know if I can articulate the way I used the original story when I remixed, the way that I tried to weave Zulu's words into mine, the way I rearranged sentences and reworked images. It's one of the things I love about remixing -- getting to play with this awesome, poetic writing..
Also, they are literally glued together with her blood. My brain is an obvious place sometimes.
Once, she showered after. Once, she cared for appearances, imagined that he'd left some friends to care for her, to notice her truancy, her scars, her emaciation, the whiskey on her breath and the razor burn on her cheeks and thighs. Once, he'd have spent this day buried in arcana, brewing potions and summoning assistance, working in secret to protect her from his kindred. Once, she would have looked the other way, pretended not to know the things he did or the powers he invoked. Now -- now they sleep the sleep of the drunk and the dead, half-doers of almost-brave deeds, a vampire protecting a human, a human protecting a vampire. He turns her friends, her classmates, her teachers, and she slays the creatures he sires. If there were peace between them, it would lie in the death of everyone they've known, but there is no peace, only a bloody kind of love, her tongue just peeking from her mouth, his hand gentling her sleep-tousled hair.
I'm not sure what to do with the startling gentleness at the end of this paragraph, love that really isn't bloody but seems so because that's they only way they know to express love.
Now, they die in daytime, and can only see clearly at night, under the stars, lying in gravedust.
They die in daytime (see what I did there!) -- in "Night," night begins as a fearsome time for the human Giles and becomes safe, unfearful, when he's vamped. This takes that image a step further and gives to daytime the dangers night once held. This is literally true for Giles, to whom daylight is fatal, but Buffy too dies a kind of death in the daytime. She's drinking, which is terrible and bad, and she's letting a vampire live, which is a violation of her calling.
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"Come with me on patrol tonight?" she asks, yawning, sometime near sunset. Hunger fills him already, to hold her aching muscles, to watch her in battle, to know the scent of her sweat before he beds her in the graveyard.
"Of course, Buffy. I'm here whenever you need me."
"Of course." She dares to roll her eyes. He's angry but -- he can't. He never could.
Giles can't kill Buffy. He simply can't.
So she Slays, silent, precise, an empty whirlwind of passion, and he watches, and waits, and prays to whatever demons will still receive his petitions, that he will not lose her.
A Watcher waits, and weeps, and prays he will go first
When the night's last vampire is dust, But not quite the last, because that's Giles when the bravest demon has retreated to its daytime lair, she leads him to the grave -- Joyce's again, the empty casket, beloved mother. Joyce struggled against him, screamed. Her blood was rich, like an aged wine, and when she drank from him, she swooned. She tried to turn Buffy, braved an embrace, and the stake took her from behind. Buffy lies on her grave, lifts a wrist to his mouth. "Just. Drink," she says, too rough.
His Slayer is old, older than Angelus, older than her mother, older than he. Her blood tastes like a thousand generations of Slayers, a hundred thousand years of lost daughters. Her taste is as crisp as wind, as clear as stars, as musky as an autumn fog. He drinks from her wrist, her neck, her thigh, and when she's wet and limp and weeping, sobbing his name, he makes love to her as gently as he can, a mockery of all he is.
Some pieces in here that are from "Night": "chosen epitaphs," "she is no longer young, but then, she never was."
Giles and Buffy each kill Joyce -- in an obvious Ari-kink, Electra kind of way -- but it's also part of Buffy's growing up ("it was time to move on, and in our world, that means blowing things up." -- Joss, on "To Shanshu in LA"), moving beyond her parents' care.
In some ways, Buffy's motivations are a mystery to me. I think that Giles may have been the last of her close friends/family she encountered, and because he was the only one left in any form she hesitated to kill him -- there's also Giles's list of rationalizations above. In "Night," it's just a given, so I went with that and felt spared from the necessity of providing a reason -- there's also the canonical S6 Spike/Buffy and the possibility that this Buffy is just as broken as that Buffy was.
He's inside her when the heat of dawn reaches the horizon, and the warmth of her desire still holds him when the first rays crackle, when his skin ignites, when the blaze begins.
The last line of "Night" is When she can no longer stand what she has become, she will ask him for the only gift he has left to give, and she will love the night next to him. I knew right away that I wanted to reverse this, that I wanted it to be Buffy who would finally liberate Giles. Instead of Giles bringing Buffy into the night, she drags him into the day (a la Angel's suicide attempt in "Amends"). And here again the new day dawns, stronger and more terrible than the first.
Buffy's feelings for Giles aren't as strong as he thinks they are; also Buffy herself is stronger. She's willing to do this terribly difficult thing, make this sacrifice again after killing Angel just a few months (?) previously. Buffy, my terribly brave and wonderful girl. If Giles were alive, he'd be so proud of her.
And thank you, queenzulu, for writing such an amazing piece for me to work with. ♥
"Goodnight," she whispers, and takes him in a final kiss.