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The Flat in Bath
by Jayne Leitch
I must disclaim: this work is based on stuff that I, personally, do not own.
I'm not making a profit off of what I've written, I did it for fun, and I'd
like the fun to continue. The stories themselves are my own creation, however,
so I would be most appreciative if you honoured the copyrights--mine and those
of the television shows.
spoilers: A look at those hours of blissful ignorance between 'Bargaining' and
the phone call in 'After Life'.
Spoilers for BtVS Season Six (Bargaining and Afterlife)
THE FLAT IN BATH
by Jayne Leitch
Copyright 2001
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mistah Kurtz--he dead.
A penny for the Old Guy
--T.S. Eliot
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The flat in Bath comes fully furnished, but with empty bookshelves and no
electricity. His new landlord apologises profusely--and sleepily--on the other
end of the line while informing him that it is quite impossible to have the power
turned on at this hour, but he will put in a call to the company first thing in the
morning, if Giles is willing to wait...?
Giles is willing. Darkness and empty bookshelves seem somehow deeply appropriate.
What strikes him most, of course, is the utter absence of immaturity in this place.
It's an older building, quaint in its way, with doorframes Giles has to stoop to walk
through and typically draughty British windows. The decor tends toward lush colours, the
furniture toward worn-in overstuffing. The item he is pleasantly surprised to find as he
explores is a rich mahogany desk, set just off the wall in the corner of the living room
where all the empty bookshelves are. Beyond that, his surroundings are almost amusingly
unnoticable.
Unimprinted. There are no cola-can rings on the tables, no forgotten CDs or bits of
misplaced jewellery strewn across shelves or hidden under couch cushions. His new home is
decidedly absent of the young-people clutter Giles had long ago accepted as permanent in his
living space.
He wonders how much of that clutter managed to make its way into the boxes that haven't
arrived yet, and where he'll put it once it's unpacked. Or whether he'll just send it back
to Willow or Xander or Dawn or whoever it truly belongs to.
He wonders if he'll find anything of Buffy's as he unpacks. Then he wonders if the
apartment comes with a fully furnished liquor cabinet.
Without electricity, the brightest room is the living room, with large windows facing
the street and allowing the weak glow of the streetlamps to paint the room in layers of shadows
that at least give texture to the dark.
Giles sits at the mahogany desk with a glass of whiskey and looks at the empty bookshelves.
He could, theoretically, start filling them up with the few tomes he has in his carryon
luggage, but theoretical seems an awful distance from practical this evening. And with all
the travel and altitude changes and switch from Pacific to Atlantic, his hand is acting up.
It seems easier just to sit and swallow and stare.
And swear. Because Goddammit, this is the beginning of his Life, and he has no right
to wallow. Maybe for an hour on the plane, his hand wrapped around the silly rubber monster
while his eyes scanned the shaky writing on the card, but not here. Not here, because here
is where he is going to pick himself up, dust himself off and...
Sit in the dark and drink. Because he never was very good at letting things go.
He curls his fingers around the glass, and feels the ache flare into dull pain along
the bones of his fingers. Everyone he knows had been fascinated by the web of scars coiling
around his hand at one time or another; he used to catch Willow staring some nights as they
poured over books under bright desktop lights, and he knows that Xander used handshakes to
hide the quick tracery of his fingertips over the lines. Spike, during that truly awful time
they'd spent as flatmates, always seemed to know when the pain was at its worst...
...Giles recalls for a moment an evening when he had been massaging the knuckles and
hollows around which the scars twisted and flexed, only to have his good hand batted away by
Spike, whose cool fingers pulled sharply and pressed harshly just long enough to soothe before
he sighed--*sighed*--and went back to the television...
...And Angel never touched his hands. They hadn't spent time together after his return
from hell, not as casually as they had before, but when impending apocalypses forced them into
the same library space, the way Angel avoided all physical contact was almost pathetic. There
had been a moment when, in passing a book between them, Angel's fingers had grazed his own, and
Giles had felt the vampire freeze in shock; it lasted barely an instant before the book was
duly passed, but Angel hadn't come within arm's reach for the rest of the night.
The scars troubled Dawn; her eyes would follow his hand when he moved it to clean his
glasses or pick up a book, and they would cloud over with sympathy whenever he favoured it.
Olivia, though...
...Giles pictures the look that washed over her face when she discovered the blemishes
that hadn't been there the last time they'd made love, the mild stiffness that had to be flexed
out before he could do anything delicate; she had fixed questioning dark eyes on his own, then
brought his hand to her lips and kissed and sucked and licked the fault lines without waiting
for an answer...
...And Buffy had noticed them once, in the library a few days after returning to Sunnydale.
She had looked to where he was pointing something out--a picture of a demon, perhaps, he
couldn't remember--and been thrown into a brief silence before blinking back tears and resuming
the conversation, never seeming to notice again.
The flat is getting colder as the night draws on; Giles swallows his whiskey for the
burn down his throat and goes to dig a pullover out of his bag. The damp of seaside air
and cold of encroaching autumn is seeping into his fingers, and he fumbles with the zipper.
The physical markings of his time as an active--and inactive--Watcher are spread over
his body, landmarks he can point to as proving the battles happened, souveniers that prove
he was there. He doesn't know how many scars must be buried under his hair by now; possibly
enough to rival the number on his hand, considering his tendency towards head wounds. There
is a discoloured, jagged crescent on his right thigh where a S'Ovrik bit him; Wesley had been
panicking, and his resultant attempt at the antidote hadn't held long enough to heal the mark
completely. He's getting closer to a bad back and worse knees. His hands are deeply calloused
from whittling stakes and swinging weapons--callouses other Watchers will sniff at when he
visits Headquarters in a few days, because the roughest things a Watcher should handle without
gloves are the pages of his books. He wonders if anyone will listen when he explains how he
had to fight with everyone else after Buffy died--how he wanted to fight with everyone else
long before--then acknowledges that he doesn't think anyone will care enough even to ask.
He goes to stand at the window and stares out at the people walking through the evening,
blissfully unaware of what might be hiding in those bushes, around that corner. He reminds
himself that Bath is nowhere near a hellmouth, and sighs. He goes to refill his glass, then
returns to the window.
Giles knows what the Council thinks of him, and firmly believes that they only think it
because they don't know what really goes on between the Watcher and the Slayer and the demons
they battle. He imagines the looks on the faces he'll pass at Headquarters, the widened eyes
from the younger set impressed by his time in the field, and the disapprovingly pursed lips of
the elders that will attempt to impress upon him that *finally* his abandonment of propriety
has led to the loss of his Slayer. If he had stayed true to tradition, kept Buffy isolated
from friends and dating and school--he purses his own lips against his glass--Buffy would have
died much sooner, and he would have made his return trip years before now. But then, they
would no doubt remind him, at least it wouldn't have been his fault.
His eyes lose focus, and Giles remembers a night a few days after the First Slayer
incident. They had all gone patrolling that night, looking for demons who managed to escape
the destruction of the Initiative; their group was much larger than usual, because Anya tagged
along after Xander, Willow brought Tara, and Spike was hanging around trying to make nice so
they wouldn't kill him for working with Adam. And Dawn...Giles blinks, and reminds himself
that Dawn hadn't actually existed that night, despite the fact that he clearly remembers the
sound of Buffy's voice as she complained to Riley about...nail polish and a skirt, he thinks.
Something Dawn had spilled on one of Buffy's skirts. He shakes his head.
They made a huge group, wandering through various cemetaries and secluded alleys and quiet
streets, but for some reason they never split into teams. The couples held hands and spoke
quietly to one another, the occasional quip made them laugh much louder than they should have--
and together they killed five demons. Afterwards, they returned to his house--all of them--and
he let them rummage through his kitchen for food, sprawl on his furniture, and watch his
television until they fell asleep. Most of them had still been there the next morning when he
came downstairs for tea, and he'd watched them sleep while he waited for the kettle to boil.
Giles blinks, and the sun-drenched image of his old home, full of entirely comfortable
bodies and the gentle sounds of deep slumber, is replaced by the new one, cold and empty and
silent. He turns away from the window and finds a chair in the darkness, settles himself into
it and flexes his hand. He compares that night to one from this past summer, early August, he
thinks it was, when all of them had gone patrolling together--minus one couple but plus one
robot--and killed two vampires. They'd retired to the Summers house that night, empty because
Dawn was sleeping over at a friend's, and there had been lounging, and laughing, and rummaging
for food. He had watched while Willow plugged her laptop into the Buffy-Bot and began another
series of endless "fine-tunings" of various programmes. He had taken a cup of cocoa when Tara
brought the tray in from the kitchen, he had listened to Anya and Xander argue over something
on the news, and he had gamely played a hand of blackjack with Spike until the vampire couldn't
take it anymore and escaped to his crypt. And soon Xander and Anya said their goodbyes, and
Willow unplugged the robot and sent it upstairs to recharge, and Tara smiled sleepily at him
and wished him goodnight before following Willow up to what had been Joyce's room.
Giles remembers taking his empty mug to the kitchen and rinsing it in the sink before
checking that the back door was locked and turning out the lights. He recalls listening for
a moment at the bottom of the stairs, and starting up them when it became clear that the girls
had turned in for the night. He closes his eyes, and sees how the Buffy-Bot looked as he
stared in at it from the door to Buffy's old room: plugged into its battery, motionless, eyes
open and staring at nothing. He had watched the steady blink of its indicator light for a
while before moving to the bed and sitting carefully beside the prone body. Reaching out, he
had brushed one of his scarred fingers over the bare latex skin of its arm, from the limp curve
of its elbow all the way over its shoulder and throat and lips and nose and eyelashes to its
hair.
And he had smoothed the silky strands from her forehead, leaned down, and planted a gentle
kiss just above her right eye, just the way the kind of man he wished he'd been when she was
alive would have done. Then he had stood up, walked out of the room, and secured the rest of
the house before going back to his home, alone and silent.
Giles opens his eyes and frowns into the dark. He reminds himself that Buffy is dead,
that the rest of them are an ocean and most of a continent away, and that he needs to change
his watch now that he's crossed a number of time zones. He tries to do so, and discovers that
the fingers of his scarred hand have stiffened into almost total uselessness; he curses once,
absently, and takes another mouthful of whiskey. The watch can wait until later, when he has
heat and lights and, with any luck, dexterity.
He does the math in his head and realizes how late--early, actually--it is. He pushes
himself out of the chair, groaning softly as his legs creak in protest, and turns to find the
bedroom, despite being thoroughly on Sunnydale night patrol time and not nearly tired yet.
The sight of the empty bookshelves stops him. He traces their lines and angles and
shadows with his eyes, and realizes that he hasn't let anything go yet, anything at all. That
he misses the life he distanced himself from all summer, that he misses his full living room
and Willow's eyes and Xander's smile and Dawn's laugh and Buffy's--and Buffy. Knows that he's
been missing them all for months now.
He turns away from the shelves and settles himself back into the chair, pulling his
sweater closer around him. This is his Life, darkness and empty bookshelves, and Giles is
willing to live it if he must.
And then the telephone rings.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
--T.S. Eliot
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
End.
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