Chapter Text
Drusilla’s teeth sunk into his throat.
And—
You see, said the Oracles, this was not how it was supposed to go.
Giles stared down at the frozen tableau from somewhere outside of his own body—Drusilla’s hungry fangs, the gorgeous arterial spray, Angelus’s outstretched hand trying to stop her—too, too late. There was some sick irony in Angelus’s desperation: he had killed Giles, torn out his very heart with Jenny’s death, and now he wanted nothing more than to see the man alive and well. Well enough, at least, to allow him access to the secrets of Acathla.
You’re stopping this, said Giles. Intervening. Why?
The Oracles looked at him with blank eyes and said: there is no road forward if you die tonight.
He saw it spiral out in front of him, fluttering pages, half-finished tapestries: Spike exploding in a puff of dust, Drusilla shortly after. Angel killed—by Xander, Willow, Buffy, some child who couldn’t care enough about the soul to forgive him for what had been done to Giles. Cities falling. Worlds destroyed. Buffy, drowning in blood.
So you see— said the Oracles.
Giles found his voice. Loud enough to cut through even the suspended animation he was in, the words burning an angry hole right through him: “AND SHE WASN’T ENOUGH?”
The Oracles remained unperturbed. Never had he hated anything more than them, than this—that he had been about to die, perhaps about to see her, the one fucking light in his life, the one person he had wanted without it burning him from the inside out, and he was ripped from it, again, because he was too important to die. But Jenny—Jenny, who laughed in a joyful exhalation, who slipped off her sandals whenever there was grass to walk barefoot in, who was more afraid of emotional intimacy than of the things that went bump in the night—his impossible love, his darling, his only joy, and the world didn’t stop when she died?
His blood hung in the air. They hadn’t even let it hit the ground.
We speak on behalf of the Powers that Be, said the Oracles. Hear us out.
“Let me die,” said Giles. He would not be a pawn of fate. If this was what the world had become, so be it. He’d held out till the end.
We Speak On Behalf Of The Powers That Be, said the Powers. Hear Us Out.
“What can you do to make me listen?” said Giles, and laughed, staring into those blank eyes with as much vindictive rage as he could. “I am already dead.”
The Oracles raised their hands. For just a moment—
“Rupert,” said Jenny, pained, halfway to panicked. Giles’s smile vanished. “Rupert, please—”
What you promised to Eyghon, said the Oracles. A soul.
“My soul.”
A soul, said the Oracles. Not yours. Someone’s. The Powers can claim you, give Eyghon another in your stead. They are powerful enough to negotiate. The Oracles smiled at him, placid, blank. And Eyghon liked the way she tasted.
“Give her over to me,” said Giles. He could hardly concentrate on what they were saying. Jenny swam in front of him like a desert mirage, eyes on him, hands outstretched. He had to hold her. “Give her to me. I won’t listen—I w-won’t listen until you—”
You held out very valiantly, Watcher, said the Oracles. Drusilla didn’t find your heart’s desire, and you taunted her. She got desperate. Sloppy. But the Powers are all-knowing, and they know that fear holds more power over you than desire.
Jenny convulsed.
Your greatest fear has come to pass, said the Oracles. She suffered because of you. Died because of you. But we can make it worse for her if you do not listen to us.
Jenny’s eyes glittered and met his and he saw nothing but fear and grief. Not a drop of that gorgeous fighting spirit. “Please—” Giles begged.
Will you listen?
“Let her go.”
Will you listen?
“Anything,” said Giles, his voice breaking. “I will do anything if you let her go.”
“Don’t—” Jenny started, but she had already disappeared, the rest of her sentence dissolving into a sigh of exhausted relief.
Wherever she had been returned to, it was good to her. Giles felt it and felt dizzy with the comfort of it. He would do anything, anything to ensure that she stayed there, stayed safe, now that there truly was nothing else but her. Her, and this frozen moment, blood in the air. “What do you want?” he asked, voice shaking.
What the Powers want, said the Oracles, is a world that works as it should. A better world. They believed it necessary for our champion to fall—to learn firsthand what he was in danger of becoming, so as to ensure he would adhere to a rigorous moral code without hesitation. They believed—
“Jenny’s death,” said Giles, voice shaking with rage, “was a part of your plan for Angel?”
Her death binds Slayer and Watcher and Champion together, said the Oracles. A love never spoken aloud. A wound that never heals. Our champion loved you, respected you, saw you as father and protector of the girl he loved most. Would never have hurt you without provocation, or even with it, gentle beast that he is.
“The Powers that Be used shame,” said Giles dizzily. “To keep him in line. To make it clear to him what—what he was, what he w-would be, if not good.”
The Oracles seemed to sense what Giles felt about the whole affair. Not quite so blank now, they said, Do not presume to understand the forces larger than you. Death is necessary in order for the world to continue. The world will not continue without the champion, the Slayer, the Watcher. It has been written. It will always be like this. One for the good of many. She would have wanted it this way.
“DON’T YOU SPEAK FOR HER,” Giles roared, and it was only his incorporeality that prevented him from surging forward and attacking, mindlessly, those things that presumed to know Jenny’s heart. Even without a body, he felt that yearning, to rip, to kill—
The Powers that Be are more than you will ever understand, said the Oracles. And we tell you this so that you understand what is at stake. This was their plan. Past tense.
“And am I to expect that their plan now is any better?”
She will live.
Giles froze. He didn’t dare to even hope—
Yours, said the Oracles. Your heart. Your only. Did you know, their eyes glittered, every world, every time she is there, you go to her, and she to you? Moth to flame. No others like you two. And every world, if she is dashed on the rocks, you bleed out all rebellion and tie yourself to the cause for good. They moved forward, snakelike and strange, the candles in the open doorway illuminating their perfect faces. The Powers will repay you for your service. The plan we ask you to carry out does not involve her death.
“Does it prevent her death?”
The Powers cannot intervene at a moment’s notice, said the Oracles. The choices of mortals are mortals’ choices to make. She chose to die. We will let you ensure that she does not make that choice again, but that is as much as we can do.
“You still haven’t explained.” Giles’s voice was thick. Bloody. “What you want me to do.”
Not much time left, said the Oracles. Behind them, the room was shimmering like smoke. Something was drawing Giles back towards that half-dead shell of a thing, that body that tethered him where he didn’t want to be, away from Jenny. We’ll make it simple.
Nothing about this was simple. She to you, moth to flame—
We will send you back, said the Oracles. Before the Slayer had so much as kissed the Champion. Before her heart was his. You will remember this—all of it—and use it to sway her away from him, make their paths diverge. You will tell the Champion everything that we have told you. You will tell all others as much or as little as you choose to tell them. And in return—
Their voices were dissolving. The blood was moving forward.
In return—she will—her—
“I c-can’t hear you,” Giles rasped.
She will live, he heard, faint as a whisper. If you let her.
Just the thought of her, alive again, somewhere, somehow—
Will you do as we have asked?
Anything. Anything. He would do anything to bring her back. He had known this for so long, had held himself past the point of breaking, had been so fucking grateful that some miraculous trick of the light hadn’t let Drusilla into his eyes quite right. He would have shattered like glass to see her. Now, it seemed, was when he could hold himself back no longer.
Please, he whispered, too close to dying to form the words. Please. Yes—
Giles woke up. It was a sunny Saturday morning and the radio was blaring. The events in that mansion didn’t feel fuzzy around the edges, like dreams did upon waking—rather, it felt like he’d blinked and found himself back at home. He raised his hand to his throat and found it dry, no trace of blood. No pain. His heart was pounding.
Had it been real?
The phone rang. Giles very nearly jumped out of his skin. He didn’t particularly feel like talking to anyone when everything felt this impossible to understand, but if it was some sort of message from higher up, he might—he should—
Moth to flame. The words were ringing in his ears. She to you. Every time she is there.
Dashed on the rocks. She chose to die.
The phone rang, insistently. Giles walked slowly down the stairs and lifted it off the hook.
“Finally!” Buffy sang out, and Giles’s knees very nearly gave way. “Gi-iles, you said that you were always gonna pick up promptly after that whole thing with the sewer monster thingies! What if there was another sewer monster thingy and I was calling to let you know about it before you went into the sewers or something?”
Giles could hardly breathe. He hadn’t heard Buffy that bubbly and unencumbered since—since—
“Um, hello?” There was a note of concern to Buffy’s voice, but she had artfully hidden it behind the California cheer he had once found so grating, so intolerable. Now it was water after weeks in the desert. “Giles? Y’know, now’s the part in the conversation where you ask me why you’d be in the sewers at all, and I say, gee, Giles, I don’t know, maybe that’s how Watchers spend their Saturday nights, plus you said you wanted to do some more Renaissance down there in the—”
“Reconnaissance,” said Giles.
“Huh?’
“It’s,” Giles swallowed, “it’s reconnaissance.”
A strange silence—three seconds. Giles counted. “Giles,” said Buffy, slightly softer, “you sound kinda messed up. Are you okay?”
On impulse, Giles hung up the phone, slamming it violently back onto the hook. It immediately began to ring again. Recognizing that Buffy would keep calling if he didn’t give her some sort of an answer, he snatched the receiver up and said, “Terribly sorry, our c-call must have dropped. I—”
What were the words for this? What was this? Could it all just be some impossible dream? But he remembered it all so clearly—Buffy’s laughter, sunlight in the library, Jenny’s small hands pulling on his tie and his sleeve and his heart and—
Hands.
Giles’s eyes moved to his own hands. Saw, for the first time, two fingers that looked like they had been broken and healed wrong. Or, perhaps, healed impossibly quickly. “Excuse me, Buffy, I’ll just be a moment,” he said, and set the receiver down, all but running to the bathroom mirror and forcing the collar of his pajama shirt away from his shoulder.
Drusilla’s fangs had left twin semicircles on his neck—not bleeding, but scarred over, just like the fingers that Angelus had broken. Proof that he was scarred, even if the world around him was new. The Oracles wouldn’t want him to forget.
“—okay?” Buffy’s tinny voice was coming from the kitchen. “Giles—”
Giles ran crooked fingers along the scar, staring himself down in the mirror. Everything that had spun out, a world within a year—all undone within the blink of an eye. The proper emotion was likely gratitude, or perhaps joy; this new world was brimming with possibility, and he, the Watcher, held more knowledge than ever to change fate for the better. Yet this was a world where Jenny had never kissed him, where Buffy had never stood by him in a hallway and said kind of okay that we have something in common, where he had never roused a slumbering Willow after a long bout of research and pressed a mug of hot chocolate into her hands. They all knew him as someone he wasn’t. He didn’t know how to step back into that man’s skin again.
A textbook with arms, Buffy had called him.
“Giles—”
Giles picked up the phone. “Terribly sorry,” he said. His voice broke. He couldn’t stop thinking about how this little girl of sunshine and laughter had never died alone. “I-I’ve received some. Some disquieting n-news and I—if you—”
“Giles.” Her voice was wobbly and uncertain, just as it had been during Eyghon, in a year that wasn’t. “Giles, w-what’s the matter?”
What were the words for this?
“It’s okay!” He recognized the faux brightness and hated himself for putting it there. “Watcher business, right? I mean, if you don’t wanna tell me, or, um, don’t feel comfortable, that’s okay! I really didn’t mean to bug you on your day off. Just. Well. Y’know. There’s a bug in the sewers. But I can totally handle it on my own!”
Sewer monster. Giles remembered this. Thickly, he said, “Bring the throwing axe and aim for the thorax from a distance. You won’t want close contact; it isn’t poisonous to humans, but its secretions are toxic enough to melt most synthetic materials.”
“Wow.” A nervous laugh. “Pretty spooky accuracy, Giles. I was about to put on my favorite battle jacket.”
I know, Giles thought, but didn’t say it.
“Look, I—I can handle this on my own, if.” Buffy swallowed. “If something’s up with you. But I just—if there’s anything I can do—”
“I, I’ll be right as rain on Monday,” Giles promised. “You—called me right in the thick of it, that’s all. I might need some time alone.”
“Of course!” He could hear the guilt in her voice, and hated himself for it. “Talk to you later, Giles. I’ll call you later tonight, okay? I mean, you don’t have to pick up, I just figure—you know, just so you know the sewer stuff goes okay—”
“Of course,” said Giles.
A stutter of uncertain breath. Then, too chirpily to be believed, “—bye!”
Buffy had started ending phone calls with “see you later, alligator!” back in September—or, perhaps, in the coming September, now that everything was ripped open and stitched back together. She had explained to him, impatiently, that his job was to say, “in a while, crocodile,” which Giles had refused to do for two months until just a week after Eyghon. He remembered that she’d been worried, and he’d wanted her not to worry, and the way she’d laughed on the phone…a joyful little hiccup, as if he’d startled it out of her. And then he’d begun to say it regularly, though only when it was a call between the two of them, and she had stopped when Jenny had died. Or perhaps he had. Possibly that meant something. He wasn’t sure why he suddenly missed it now.
Perhaps it was that little-girl joy, still clinging to her, and the possibility that things could be different this time around. But did it matter? He closed his eyes and still saw what the world would become if they weren't careful. He didn’t think he would ever escape that feeling.
There was one number he had memorized, and he had to know. The phone had been disconnected, back in the world that no longer was, and before that, it had just been an answering machine. But if she picked up, this would…it would…
His hands were shaking. It took him ten minutes to punch in the number.
The phone rang.
“Hello?” said Jenny.
Giles’s knees did give way. Sliding down the wall, his hand closed around the receiver as if it was his only lifeline. He couldn’t speak—she wouldn’t know him, or know how he had her number, and there weren’t words, anyway, for what it felt to hear her voice, to know that she—that she was—
“Hello?” Jenny’s voice was waspish, annoyed. He loved her so much he thought he might combust. She said something sharply in Romani, reproving and frustrated, and he recognized the name Enyos in the middle of it, and he could not hang up the phone. She was on the other end of the line. She was alive.
Moth to flame.
Reality came back to Giles in a sharp rush and he scrambled to his feet, slamming the phone back onto the hook. Breathing raggedly, he stared furiously at the phone, infuriated with himself for a moment of weakness that should never have been allowed.
She will live, they had said, if you let her.
There was no way for Giles to let Jenny live and love him. Jenny had loved him and chosen to place herself in the line of fire because of it. She had placed her life on the line because he had cast her out for something that was impossible to stop. She had found an impossible way to solve it, marvel that she was, and it had killed her, and he would never fucking let that happen again. He would never let her love him enough to die for him.
She will live if you let her.
Whatever it took, he would destroy any possibility that she could learn to love him.