Fic: Changing the Parameters (Giles, PG13)
Author Brutti ma Buoni
Title Changing the Parameters
Characters Giles, Quentin Travers, OC Slayer
Rating PG13
Word Count 2600
A/N: written for angearia’s Who Are You ficathon, exploring body swap fics in all their possible facets. This fic is part of my Becoming A Watcher series, looking at Giles's early years with the Council. It follows fairly soon after Learning the Ropes, but you won't need to have read the latter to understand this.
The study was just as he remembered. But instead of Gilbert Chalmers, it was Travers who now held the Chief Officer’s post. Younger, but no less stuffy. Giles could imagine Travers taking root in this room, unless he made it all the way to the top first. They’d carry him from the building in his coffin, either way. Travers was Council to the core.
Giles had been waiting in the interview seat for three minutes and thirteen seconds when Travers finally raised his head from his obviously-far-more-significant correspondence.
“Ah, Rupert, thank you for coming at short notice.”
“I thought the Agatean slugwort study could spare me for a day or two, Quentin.” And it had been a very urgent message from the Council. Compared with botany, at least.
Travers had the grace to acknowledge Giles’s possible irritation. “Yes, I’m afraid you’ve been having rather a tedious time of late. So you’ll appreciate this opportunity.”
That sounded all too much like a command, though. Giles was rather tired of those. He tried to sound enthused. “Really? Something exciting come up?”
Quentin leant towards him, confidentially. “We have the Slayer here. The High Council have agreed that she is to undergo Transpossession.”
Christ. That was never done nowadays. “Why on earth...?”
“They feel that we have a chance to learn more about the Slayer mentality and physiognomy by an exchange of consciousnesses.” Travers sounded unctuous; he’d practised that line. Probably on the Council Elders themselves.
“But, why now? I thought it was banned.”
“The High Council are agreed that we can discover enough to make it worthwhile. Besides, Transpossession needs a certain type of Slayer. Vera is a rather compliant little soul, which makes her ideal. She’s most unlikely to try to escape with the body of the transpossesser, which has unfortunately happened on occasion. We’re looking for a volunteer among the Watchers to make the experiment.”
There was a meaningful pause. “It’s a great opportunity, Rupert. Only a few men have ever experienced this.”
Transpossession was incredibly dangerous. There was the possibility of permanent loss of mind, or of damage to the ones possessed. In the past, Watchers had been protected: fully sedated at the moment of possession, and their bodies kept insentient throughout, so there was no risk of the Slayer’s intrusive brain damaging their own. The Slayer being possessed, meanwhile, had to be fully conscious, or else the whole process was pointless.
Giles briefly envisioned a modern, safety-conscious Transpossession, in which two wholly unconscious minds were swapped, remained under full sedation for a week, and were then swapped back, with no one any the wiser for the activity. It would have been pleasantly surreal. But the Council, naturally, was rather more traditional and direct in its methods. “You’re going to kill her, aren’t you?”
“Of course not. She’s a good girl, to the best of her limited abilities. But we doubt very much that Vera will survive Cruciamentum anyway. So we have only a few days to make the experiment, as she will be eighteen next Friday.”
“Bloody sight less likely to survive if she’s spent the previous ten days being possessed in a coma, I’d’ve thought.” That was the old Giles speaking. Pre-Council Giles, who would have told Travers where he got off. This Giles didn’t do that, but he threw out the thought all the same. As though that made him a better man.
Travers sighed. “Perhaps. Such sacrifices are never easy. But a strong Slayer always prevails.” This was the Council’s comforting fairy tale. Travers couldn’t possibly believe it. Even Giles knew of Jacie’s example, barely three years ago. And anyway, even the strongest Slayer dies. In the end.
Self-deluded or not, Travers spouted the ritual words. Then paused, heavily. “You will do it, of course, Rupert?”
That was an order, of course, Quentin. But it was so much more exciting than slugwort that he’d have done it anyway, and gladly.
*
Giles’s mission was simply to report. On the sensory experience of being a Slayer. On observable differences in physical function. On any signs of demon presence within the Slayer.
The last was worrying.
Giles wondered once again what precisely the Elders hoped to gain from this experiment. Transpossession had been banned for a good century or more, but the outcomes of the earlier experiments were well known and widely shared among Watchers. Was there something new?
He’d asked, of course, whether a woman Watcher wouldn’t be better equipped for this. Travers had laughed. “Hardly a job for the pussy brigade.” Vulgarity from Travers was exponentially more shocking than from Giles. Sometimes he envied that power.
So much, in any case, for sex equality. There hadn’t been a woman on the High Council since his mother. And she hadn’t lasted long. The Council was and remained a bastion of men, despite the apparent breakthroughs. His great-great-great grandmother would be furious.
Thus it was that he, an adult man, came to exchange minds with a teenage girl.
*
It took Giles all of an hour to become aware that he had breasts. There was so much else to discover about this new body. Far more interesting than the stuff of slobbish fantasies - he could remember this very subject discussed by Philip and Ran, sniggering over the potential for possession of a female (“Tits of your own! You’d never stop fiddling, would yer?”). But the mere body now seemed peripheral to the real changes he was experiencing.
He was a teenager. There were hormones sloshing around his body; unruly and hideous. He’d forgotten the feeling. When young Danvers walked past, his palms got sweaty, his face flushed, he looked down at his own feet. Giles had fancied Danvers since the lad first applied to join the Council, but he’d not previously found this reducing him to stammering incoherence. Some responses were apparently about maturity of body as much as mind. Fascinating, and comforting. His own adolescent stutterings were partially absolved, in retrospect.
He was a Slayer. That was... that was terrifying. At every step, he was aware of the power he had to control. This small, slim girl’s body was a potentially lethal weapon. When he lifted a cup of tea, it took so little effort he jerked the wretched thing far too fast and covered himself in off-boiling fluid. He was so strong. It made him want to pick a fight with a giant; to lift trucks or boulders and roar his power to the world.
However did they resist?
There was... something inhuman about him/herself now.
*
Giles spent five days in training, learning the feel of weapons which he’d once scarcely been able to lift. The fluidity was incredible; movement without thought. Travers watched, and took notes, and questioned. Endlessly.
Then Giles the Slayer fought a demon. It was one of the lesser breeds, but nonetheless enough to give the average Watcher a stiff battle. He dispatched it in thirteen seconds - four of them spent in selecting the appropriate blade.
He laughed, caked in demon blood and delirious with surprise and pride. He could do anything in this body. He wondered if any Transpossessed Watcher had ever run off with the Slayer’s body, rather than vice versa. He could live life over - female and invincible. (Till the wetworks team caught up with him, said reality. Perhaps not.)
But this was just the start of the experiment. The real point was for Giles to fight vampires. Only then could they get the full measure of the Slayer’s powers.
The first was barely a fledgling, and took little more time than the demon. The feel of the stake striking home was... orgasmic wasn’t literally the word, but bloody close. He brought himself off, fast and desperate, in the ladies’ loos immediately after. Utterly sleazy, and confusing to be at this woman’s body at such an angle, but neither consideration stopped him for more than seconds.
The second vampire was older, wily, but trapped in one of the Council dungeons, without the option of escape. Giles fought it over iron bedstead, shackles and bench, round and round, clattering and crashing, chest heaving, never doubting that it would end, as inevitably it did, with him poised, turning, aiming and striking. The vampire dusted. So it must be.
Giles asked to fight a third. Travers raised eyebrows. He suggested the vampire they had stored up for Cruciamentum. “I can do it. You know I can. I have to take this chance.”
The Elders refused. Denial was like pain.
*
Quentin Travers called Giles to the infirmary. The experiment was complete. They stood looking down at poor Vera, drugged dopey in Giles’s body for the past week. Her sedation was tapering off now, so that Giles wouldn’t be too foggy when he regained possession of his body.
The Cispossession was simply performed. Scarcely a flicker of time passed, before Giles found himself prone, hazy and pyjama clad.
He was vaguely aware of the disoriented Vera being led away. She was two days off her eighteenth birthday. Would she survive it? Hard to believe not, having tasted that power. But the Watchers usually knew who would pass their Cruciamentum, and Travers had made his doubts about Vera clear.
Giles wanted to thank her for the use of her body; reassure her he had kept it well; wish her luck for her trial. He managed, “G’bye V’ra,” before sleep overcame him.
*
The sedatives wore off pretty quickly. Giles was back in the Chief Officer’s study.
“Now, Rupert. Report.”
“It was an extraordinary experience. The sheer power of her-”
“Were you tempted to remain in that body?” Sharp question from Travers.
Lie, Giles. Lie fast, or they’ll never trust you with power again. “Good God, no.” How to explain, though? “I couldn’t bear the pimples.” It was feeble, and Travers knew it.
“You have not the mental strength to be a Slayer, perhaps?” There was a sneer in that.
But it was a reasonable excuse. There were many cerebral reasons not to be a Slayer. So Giles accepted it. “Quite possibly. The thought of dealing in death every night... an awesome responsibility for a young girl.”
“Even with our guidance?” Travers said it with the vast self-importance of the Council.
Fat lot I cared for you, with all that power in me. Where had that thought come from? Dangerous. “Even so.”
Travers eyed him severely. “Giles. We did not undertake this dangerous experiment to hear about the experience of adolescence. We have all been through that.”
Really? Giles tried to imagine Quentin as a boy. Hopeless. Even his earliest memories, of Quentin-the-rising-star, were filled with pompousness and encroaching middle age.
Travers was continuing. “Tell us about the Slayer. What did you feel?”
How to explain?
“She was... It was... there was a tremendous sense of.. I don’t know - of power, strength, certainty.”
“From?”
Giles considered, briefly, concealing his thoughts. It felt almost like a betrayal of the Slayer he had occupied. But he said it anyway. “From another presence. I was very aware of a second consciousness. Or perhaps not conscious, but semi-self aware. It clearly wasn’t transpossessed with Vera’s own mind.”
“Ah. The Slayer!” Travers sounded delighted, but not surprised. Good thing Giles hadn’t tried any concealment.
“The Slayer is a separate entity?” That seemed unlikely, and also against Council orthodoxy. Were it true, the girls would be mere slaves to another presence. Horrible thought.
“The Slayer power is, or so we believe. The essence of the Slayer, one might perhaps say. That which passes from girl to girl as they are chosen successively. We know little of it, and what we do know can only come from Transpossession. Simply investigating a Slayer’s mind has told us nothing; this essence is concealed within her mind. We’ve never found the slightest evidence of a Slayer being aware of this, though one or two of those Transpossessed have remarked on it in the past. The records are frustratingly incomplete, insubstantial. If they weren’t going to record it properly, I rather wish they hadn’t played with these forces.” That was Travers in true Council mode. Patronising even his distinguished predecessors.
“And that’s why this experiment was authorised? Jeavons’s research into the origins of the line?”
“Indeed. He has come up with a rather problematic theory about the basis of Slayer power.”
Giles raised one interrogative eyebrow. Travers was gagging to tell him; no need to pump the man when he so obviously wanted to talk.
“He believes that the original Watchers captured the power of a demon and trapped it within the Slayer. Those African puppets that have gone walkabout told some such fairy story, but Jeavons is minded to take it more seriously than we have done in the past. If so, the power is founded in darkness and, he fears, does not brook human control. Is that compatible with your experience?”
“Hard to say without knowing the type of the demon. But there was a sense of- perhaps darkness is the right word. A creeping power supporting my actions. Strictly the Slayer-type actions too - there was no such sensation when bathing or reading a novel. I’m sorry not to be more specific-”
“No, no, it’s most helpful.” If Giles had been a suspicious man (which he was, so he did), he’d have wondered why Travers was so easy-going on what had nominally been the purpose of the investigation. Travers wrote, ‘Darkness’ on his notepad.
Travers puttered around, asking a few further minor queries. Then, “Should we fear it?”
“Hmm?” Giles was off-balance, as Travers must have intended.
“The demon. Should we fear it? Yes or no, Rupert?”
“Yes.”
That was bald enough. And true enough. That darkness Giles had felt recognised no master; certainly not the girl it temporarily inhabited.
Now started, he talked. “It is dangerous. Fearsome. It takes you over as you fight. Demands more victims. It glories in the kill.” Had he really felt that? Yes. Yet he had almost managed to suppress the feeling, now, back in his own self.
More words for Travers’s notepad. Danger-Fear-Demands-Insatiable-Murderous. Giles felt more and more like a traitor. It hadn’t felt so dramatic when it was part of him. It had been natural, and right.
He tried to backtrack. “It is perhaps necessary to the Slayer to have such feelings. They can be controlled; they do not take one over, by any means. The feelings make the slaughter... bearable.” No twitch from Travers there. No more notes for the pad.
As he left the debrief, Giles had a clear picture of the report Travers would submit. It would be almost true. It would do the job Travers had wanted from the start. He who keeps the record holds the authority.
Except the Slayer still had the true power. Giles knew it now.
*
Six months later, the Watchers’ Journal bore an order from the Elders regarding closer control of Slayers. It cited Jeavons’s findings on the independence, the murderous capacity and the demonic origins of the Slayer.
Vera was dead, of course. Her successor (Sandy? Sandra? Xandra? Something of that sort) had lasted less than three months. Rumour had it the new girl was tougher. Perhaps she would live long enough to see the new restrictions come into force.
As Giles got further from his experiences, his view of the Slayer was becoming distilled. Down to the power; the potential to reject control and the Council.
When he finally got his Slayer, he’d make sure she was well under his thumb.
***