Title: Thine Own Heart 1/3
Author: Athenae
Summary: The history of the three Giles Watchers: himself, his father, and his grandmother, in explanation of the rift between Giles and his father
Spoilers: Takes place roughly in Season Seven, with references to Willow's actions in Season Six
Rating: R, language and violence, non-explicit f/f slash
Author's Notes: The title comes from the poem quoted at the end, William Butler Yeats' "The Two Trees." The story was inspired by a challenge on the Tweedy Book Guy list, intended to get us exploring the history of Giles' estrangement from his father, but I've not followed the guidelines exactly, so I don't know if it can be considered a response as such.
Acknowledgements: Thanks to Antonia for the beta. Anything that isn't screwed up in here is her, the rest of it's my fault.

Everyone Giles ever met on the Council had a different version of the story, but in every one, the ending was his father's fault.

Things overheard during the holidays, meetings he caught the tail end of at the Academy, memos to which he should not have been privy, considering the family connection. The cautionary tale of Elinor Giles was one of the more colorful legends of a school full of magnificent parables, and for someone not to mention it to the young man, carefully adding that Jeremy Giles must have had his reasons, would have been strange indeed.

But he would have known that his father was to blame even if he didn't listen to tales told over pints after classes, didn't pay attention to the way professors glossed over the story when he was in the room, hadn't snuck into Quentin's office one night and spent six hours buried in Elinor's private files.

He would have known it from the guilt that collapsed his father's face the day she died, two weeks after he turned 15.

***

"Giles, who's this?" Willow pushed the silver-framed photo across his desk.

She had volunteered to help him clear out some of his old things to donate to charity, but had seriously underestimated the number of boxes they'd need.

Every surface in his apartment was covered with bits of crystal, old woolly sweaters all pulled out of shape, magazines in tatters, metal instruments whose use Willow could only guess at. And, she thought, how many books could one man own? He kept producing them, from under couch cushions and behind the flour in the kitchen.

He barely glanced at the picture she indicated. "No, I'm keeping that."

"I know. I'm just curious who it is. She looks like you. The taller one, anyway."

He put down the blue glass vase Joyce had given him one unbearably awkward Christmas and picked up the picture. "It's my grandmother."

"The Watcher grandmother? Is that her slayer?"

"No. She never had the privilege of working with an active slayer. She was assigned mainly to monitor potentials until the Council knew whether or not they would be called. This was her last assignment, Catherine Jones."

Willow frowned at the photo. "She looks a little like Faith."

Giles took off his glasses and squinted at it. "Yes, I can see that. In the eyes, and the way she holds her head …"

"And the leather get-up. And the wicked sword."

"Those, too."

He put it back down. "Let's get back to the books, shall we?"

Willow didn't take her eyes off the photograph, Giles so seldom mentioned his family that any tidbit was seized on and chewed over during Scooby meetings like the juiciest celebrity gossip. "What was she like?"

"Willow," Giles huffed impatiently. "Why do you want to know this?"

"It's just … a female Watcher. In 1930s England, no less. That's so cool. It's like a … a spy movie, with Ingrid Bergman, and vampires."

He smiled, a hooded smile. "She was rather like that. More Greta Garbo, though, than Ingrid Bergman. By the time I knew her, she was very old, and ill. She'd been in care for years, because of what my father considered great mental instability."

Willow's eyes grew wide at this wealth of information. "Your father considered?" she ventured cautiously.

"After her last potential, this girl in the photograph, died … in a freak accident, apparently, she grieved quite deeply. They had been very close. And my father, who at that time was in training as a Watcher, had her committed to a mental institution."

Willow looked up at him, shocked. "But, if it wasn't one run by the Council, if she talked about slayers, they must have thought …"

"That she was quite batty, yes." Giles' face twisted with something Willow didn't understand. By the time I met her as a child of six, she had had years of electric shock therapy. Debilitating drugs. The doctors had convinced her she had imagined most of the things she talked about, though every now and again she was lucid enough.

"She talked in riddles, most of the time," Giles said softly. "She told me endless and elaborate stories about knights and ladies, and when she was finished there was always a lesson, a moral to the tale. I think it was her way of holding on to the only thing she knew how to do: teach children to fight the darkness.

"It wasn't until I began my own training that I found out exactly what happened to her. What my father had done."

His eyes were far away. "What I discovered … that was in large part why I ran away to London. My father and I haven't spoken about it in years. Or about anything else, either."

He looked at Willow then, and appeared to catch himself. "Anyway, dust and ashes, a long time ago," he said briskly, and she cursed her too-open, obviously nosy face.

"Shall we continue this tomorrow?" he asked, looking away again. "It's getting late, and I would hate to keep you from Buffy and Dawn."

"No problem," she acquiesced, hoping she didn't actually have a little cartoon light bulb over her head. When he shut the door behind her with a final smile and wave, she hugged herself and nearly squealed out loud with glee.

Part of the trouble with Giles, she and Xander had once decided, was that he appeared to need so little from them. Except for times of great duress, he kept his stalwart and self-sufficient face before them, rebuffing all but the smallest attempts at affection or assistance.

Here, at last, was something she could do to repay Giles for all his counsel and intervention after Tara's death. Some way she could pay him back for the harm he'd suffered at her hands.

Giles did so much for them, for her especially. She would do this for him.

She'd make Buffy look up the number, or find it on the net.

"This," Willow whispered to herself, "is going to be great."

***

Two weeks later they were finally finished packing. Teasing Giles loudly about paying for a chiropractic treatment, Xander loaded the heavy boxes into his truck and promised to drop them off at the local Salvation Army.

After the boy left, Giles straightened up the gaps in the bookshelves and noticed the photograph Willow had remarked on leaning up against the coffee table. He picked it up and looked into the two faces; one, a more delicate mirror of his own, the other pale, older than her teenage years and curiously defiant.

Elinor was standing slightly behind Catherine, her hand on the younger girl's shoulder. Catherine stood, legs apart, sword drawn, in a mock knight's pose, a wicked smile on her lips. She looked like she was protecting her Watcher. Elinor, her eyes shining, looked as though she did not mind being protected in the slightest.

This was what Jeremy Giles locked away in a madhouse, he thought, putting the photograph back down.

When the bell rang, he sighed. "Xander, what did you forget?" he said, opening the door.

"Hello, Rupert."

Whenever Giles pictured his father, he saw him the day he'd stood beside his grandmother's grave. His father had delivered the eulogy, sounding for all the world as if it wasn't his fault she'd spent the last 50 years confined away from the world. And when the first shovelful of dirt hit the box she was buried in, Giles snapped, and before he could stop himself his fist was flying toward his father's face.

Laughable, really. He was a skinny child who hadn't hit his final growth spurt yet. He could no more inflict harm on the six-foot-tall, 200 pound man dressed in black than he could fly. But that didn't stop him from trying.

And the obvious disparity in size didn't stop his father from hitting back, much harder, so that the last thing he saw before he blacked out was his father's tormented face, looming above him in the rain.

He blinked, and the vision disappeared, and in its place stood a gray old man, worn and tired and in traveling clothes, so much smaller than the monster of his memories.

"Father." He drew a deep breath, trying not to think of the last twelve arguments they'd had in the last twelve years. "Why are you here?"

Jeremy Giles sighed, and there it was, the echo of his disappointment of a childhood. "It was a very long flight, Rupert. Might I have a drink, or sit down?"

"Of course." He stood aside and let his father enter, ashamed at once at the shabby state of his rooms, the Chinese food packets still littering the counter from the last research party the others held. He splashed some whiskey into two glasses and handed one to his father.

"How long have you lived here?" His father set his bag down and sat, facing the kitchen, not looking at him.

"Seven years, off and on," he replied. "I returned to England for a time, but then ... came back."

His father looked up sharply. "When were you home, Rupert?"

"Does it matter?" He paced behind the couch. "Tell me why you're here. What is it you want?"

"What I want?" Jeremy looked puzzled. "The young lady who summoned me here so peremptorily told me it was you who required my presence."

"The young ..." He froze, then grimaced and downed his drink in a gulp. "Willow. Bloody Masterpiece Theater ... what the hell was she thinking?"

"You didn't know?"

"Clearly, Father."

His father looked away again, shoulders slumping. "It was," he said wearily, "a very long flight."

"Of course you should stay the night in Sunnydale," Giles said grudgingly. "I'm sure the local hotels will have room. I'll call one of them for you."

Jeremy looked up sharply. "How generous of you."

"Well, this place isn't really equipped for …" Giles caught himself apologizing and winced.

"For what?"

"For rehashing old arguments and explaining myself to you as if I was tardy for dinner," Giles retorted. "How is Mother?"

"Very well. She said to tell you thanks for your last letter."

"You spoke with her recently?"

"After your … Willow called me, I called to let her know I'd be seeing you."

"I can imagine what she had to say about that."

"'Try not to bollocks things up more than you already have' were her exact words, actually," Jeremy said, smiling for the first time.

Giles couldn't help but smile back. The divorce had been bitter, but trust Mother to keep her sense of humor about it after all these years.

The silence stretched until neither could bear it anymore.

"What did Willow—"

"Are you and—"

Both chuckled. "You first," Jeremy said almost graciously. "It's your house."

"What did Willow tell you required your assistance?"

Jeremy stood, pacing, and the familiarity of the nervous habit struck Giles like a blow. "She told me about her … trouble, last year. I'd heard of her, of course, through the coven, and of your involvement. She said you needed help sorting out what to tell the Council."

"The Council." Giles snorted. "Yes, that's definitely who I need passing judgment on my actions, or on Willow's, for that matter."

Jeremy eyed him levelly. "They might be able to help you keep her in line."

"Oh, Father." He sighed, suddenly exhausted. "If only Willow was our problem. If only I still believed that cabal of fascists and fools could actually be of some kind of use to us. Your world is a much simpler place than mine."

"Yes, in your world one raises demons and kills one's friends. I can imagine mine looks rather staid in comparison."

Giles shook his head. "Had I even needed your help, which is laughable, I could have called you, or you me."

"She also said …" Jeremy hesitated. "She said you wanted to see me."

He could say no, she was wrong, and that would be the end of it. Giles saw that with certainty. He could say no, and his father would walk out the door, and there would be no more attempts at reconciliation.

When he didn't speak, his father put his glass down on the side table, and saw the photograph. "I didn't know you had this."

He picked it up, and Giles stifled an absurd urge to snatch it away from him. "Mother gave it to me when I came here."

Jeremy stared at it, a look in his eyes Giles could not place. "She was magnificent, wasn't she?"

"Yes, well, you took care of that, didn't you?" The words out too fast, his jaw slamming shut on the last of them.

"That is enough!" his father shouted, startling them both. "Rupert, we hashed this over before you went to London, and we hashed it over again when you returned. How long do you intend to go on blaming me for your grandmother's illness?"

"How long is she going to be dead?" The old familiar rage welling up in his chest. "How long was she a stunted, broken woman who only remembered enough of her life to tell me fairy stories about it?"

"You don't know what happened."

"I do know! I read her diaries when I joined the Council, Father. I know what happened between her and Catherine. And I know what you did to her afterwards."

Jeremy looked at him coldly.

"No," he said. "You don't know. You weren't there. You can't imagine."

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