TITLE: Coyotes
AUTHOR: Anne
RATING: PG
PAIRING: Giles/Ethan (in a sort of way)
FEEDBACK: Oh yes please!
E-MAIL: bookmangal@yahoo.fr
SUMMARY: Giles met a coyote in the desert
DISTRIBUTION: ODD. Hard Rayne. Watchergirls. GRB. GN. Anyone else ask first please.
DISCLAIMER: The characters are the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Sandollar Productions, Kuzui Enterprises, 20th Century Fox Television and the UPN Television Network. The story is written for the pleasure of the author and readers, and has no lucrative purpose whatsoever. Please do not reproduce this story anywhere without the author's consent.
SPOILERS: "Passion"; "A New Man"
TIMELINE: season 4.
WARNING: angst.
THANKS: A big thank to you Pat! You're a great beta reader.
NOTE: [thoughts]

In the Nevada Desert, during the afternoon

Giles materialized in the shade of an immense rock, sighed and smiled with pleasure when he realized it. In spite of the welcomed shade, the heat enveloping him was atrocious and barely bearable. The former Watcher let out a strangled gasp after his first breath of burning air, which dried out his skin, his mouth and throat. He could feel the sweat streaming on his forehead, chest, and belly and in his back. Yet he had been there only for barely thirty seconds. He grimaced when he imagined a dehydrated Ethan, walking under the blazing sun, unprotected by shade, his burned skin covered with blisters, his mouth and throat shrunk with a terrible thirst, his members heavy and painful, almost useless. If of course the sorcerer wasn't already dead from thirst, exhaustion, or poisoned by the mortal poison of a rattler… Vultures could be dismembering his corpse nearby. [The locator spell has a precision only for a one mile radius.] He thought and he whispered,

"Oh my God! No!"

Giles glanced around him and suddenly saw blond-red-furred animal with raised and sharp ears, a long snout and green eyes looking like those of the wolf. It was laid down `sphinx style' on the almost cool sand not far from him near the rocky mass sculpted by the strong sandy winds and Giles immediately recognized the aura of the man he searched for. The coyote looked at the human being in astonishment and Giles stared back at the animal his eyes wide opened with bewilderment.

Then after blinking twice the ex-Watcher, smiled and said, "There you are. Good camouflage … it's an easy way to pass unnoticed and especially to survive in the desert."

Giles sat down near the coyote, which had stood up on its legs and sniffed at him… [Probably to be sure that I'm not a mirage…] He thought and then he continued his monologue: "I thought that you had escaped by using a transportation spell after the MP's put you in their vehicle. I thought you were back in England for the past two months. I knew that you had escaped even before Riley came to tell me that you had escaped from the secret military detention facility in the Nevada desert." He exhaled a long sigh and said, "I'm sorry Ethan. I let the soldiers take you. I knew that the scientists of the Initiative would use you as laboratory rat. They must have been delighted to be able to examine a sorcerer, a man possessing such powers. I gave you to the Initiative Ethan, gladly, because you deserved to be punished. Buffy could have killed me. I could have hurt someone when you transformed me into a Fyarl demon. When I saw you going away in the military vehicle I expected you to be afraid; frightened, and I was sure you would escape using magic. Only later, when my fury disappeared did I really understand what I had done. And I had done something so wrong. What you did was evil, Ethan, but you didn't deserve to be one of the Initiative's specimens. When Riley told me this morning you had escaped two days ago… I cast a locator spell to find you. I wanted to help you to go back home, London, to relieve my conscience."

Giles smiled and added, "I thought that I would find a man thirsty, exhausted, running lost in the desert or sprawled on the burning sand, dying. And what do I find? I find a coyote resting in the shade of a rock. I suppose the transformation is temporary? You're going to be has human again in the near future, in time to leave this desert?" The coyote shook its triangular head, its eyes reflecting sadness. "No?… Oh God! Don't tell me, you used a spell which transformed you into a coyote permanently?" The animal nodded its head and let out a whine of distress. "Why?" Giles asked totally dumfounded. "You know dozens of spells which can transform a man into animal temporarily…" his face suddenly darkened as he guessed what had happened. "Oh! it was the only one you remembered right? The military scientists had transformed your brain into jelly right?" The coyote nodded its head again. "I'm sorry Ethan, but you're going to stay a coyote till your death…" the animal nodded its head a third time and let out a resigned sound.

The Englishman exhaled a long sad sigh and said, "You know… Buffy abandoned me, and that hurts. Badly. She doesn't need me anymore, you understand? She has her boyfriend. But I need her, Ethan. I-I-I love her, you know? I'm in love with her. I can't live without her. It's impossible." He fought to repress tears welling up to his eyes and then continued his voice choked by strong emotion: "I had thought I'd barricaded my heart, I had sworn not to fall in love, because a Watcher can't have a love life because of his sacred duty… But-but I fell in love with my sweet Jenny… Angelus killed her. I was completely mad after her death. I tried to kill that bloody vampire, but I failed, miserably…and Buffy saved my life. I wanted to die you know? To be with her. At her grave, later, I swore again to never fall in love, and… I saw Buffy during the Prom, so beautiful, so radiant, so magnificent. I was so proud of her; she was all that I hoped she would become… I desperately fell in love with her. But… she's not in love with me and she never will. She's in love with Riley, the soldier who arrested you. That bloody pillock! She never loved me, Ethan, nor even appreciated me. I was never nothing more than her bloody Watcher, her mentor, an encyclopedia on legs and a fucking punching ball! She lied to me, she hurt me, she betrayed me… but I still love her so very much. She is my Buffy." Tears rolled on his cheeks and the coyote lapped them to drink and then rubbed its furry head on the man's shoulder to soothe his pain. Giles stroked the animal's head between its ears and said, "I thought of leaving Sunnydale, of returning to London when Riley told me you had escaped… I came here to save you, to bring you home with me, but… you're a coyote now Ethan. What would you think if I were to become a coyote like you? If I become a coyote I could escape my dull life, my sufferings… Buffy and the others will manage very well without me. They don't need me anymore. I shall be happier being a coyote. There will be only nature and us Ethan. We shall live free and in peace. Neither vampires nor demons. No pain, no tears, no worry, no stress, no fear… But a new life, simple. We will play together, have fun, have pleasure - You' re a male coyote right Ethan?"

The animal nodded its head and Giles his. "All right, then I'm going to be a female coyote, so we can have offspring, which will never know that their parents are ex-human beings and that they will keep their human mind up to their death. We had a wonderful life you and I, before the Eyghon's incident. It was a good old time" The coyote nodded its head another time. "We shall forget fast our human life and learn to appreciate that of the coyote. You too will be happy Ethan. You won't have to work for demons which most of the time refuse to pay you but try to kill you instead. You won't see any more the violence which you hate and which makes you sick. You won't have to hide any more from the council's secret operatives who want to kill you – Bloody Travers's orders, and… "He grinned mischievously, "I shall never hurt you again. "Giles stroked the neck of the animal, which let out happy sounds. "Let's be a couple, all right? Let's be the Ethan and Ripper of the desert – coyote version." The coyote nodded its head again and licked the ex- Watcher's hand. "So, it's all right Ethan…"

Then Giles stood up and began to take his clothes off.

*
* *

The shade had disappeared behind the rock, replaced by the intense reverberation of the sun on the sand. The female coyote joined the male, which waited for it at the top of a hill made of sand and mixed pebbles. Both animals smelt each other, moving their tail from right to left, they licked their snouts and chops, letting out happy sounds pleased to be together. A bit further, trotting side by side on the very hot sand, they headed towards the line of high round rocks they saw on the horizon hoping to find a cool den there, some water and things to eat like carrions, birds, insects and rodents. The necessities to live well.

THE END