Title: A Watcher Called Jane
Author: GilesCat
Pairing: G/B and G/F eventually
Rating: PG 13 for now but it gets much much worse later…promise.
Summary: In response to the G/F pairing challenge. 
Faith has been recalled to Active Duty. 
Giles is retired, but The Council can never leave well enough alone.  Buffy is also retired.
Spoilers: Well its set in the future so everything up to end of Season 6.  Season 7 not happened.
Distribution.  ODD, anyone else who wants it, if there is any such person!  Just let me know.
Credit: Permission to use these characters relating to BtVS & AtS, has not been given.  Joss, Twentieth Century Fox, UPN, WB & Mutant Enemy own TM and copyrighted them.  This is purely for fun, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Dedication: Jo Neve for her beta.
Notes: <indicates thoughts> italics are location information

A living room in Sunnydale.

Faith was bored. Her Watcher had been pacing the length of the room for the past ten minutes. Three times she had stopped, turned to face Faith opened her mouth, then shut it again before resuming her pacing. Faith wanted to be out slaying. It was her job. She was good at it. <Only thing you’re good at girl.> she sighed loudly and leaned back into the sofa, this was going to be a long night, and she may as well relax. <C’mon woman, spit it out!>

“Is it bad?” she decided to prompt Jane, her Watcher.

Jane stopped again and looked at Faith, anguish writ large on her features.

“I... I’m quitting.”

Of all things this was not what Faith had expected to hear. She had been bracing herself for prophecies, apocalypses, Buffy returning…, but this? <Quit? Is it because of me? Am I so bad you would rather retire than be my Watcher?>

“Oh." A beat “why?”

To her immense surprise Jane blushed. Jane was in her forties and epitomised the tweed school of Watcher with her stuffy attitude, her taste in clothes, her rigid disciplinarian approach to Slayage and Faith had never seen her show any emotion other than irritation with her Slayer. Jane couldn’t hold the gaze of her Slayer and looked away. Faith just stared.

“I’m pregnant” whispered the Watcher.

“Shit!” Faith’s first thought popped out of her mouth, followed by her second “How?”

Jane looked back up an ironic lift of an eyebrow.

“Now Faith, please don’t tell me you don’t know where babies come from.”

This time it was Faith who blushed, shaking her head.

“I’ve been sleeping with someone…obviously. And since this” she gestured at her stomach with an all encompassing wave “has happened I can’t continue to be your Watcher. It’s against the Rules for one thing.”

“There are rules for pregnant Watchers?”

“Of course not. The rule is no pregnancies. Neither Slayers nor Active Watchers. I have to retire from active duty”

“Slayers can get pregnant?” Faith asked, horrified. The possibility had never crossed her mind. She had always taken precautions but it was against disease not motherhood.

“Of course you can, you menstruate don’t you?” the watcher asked in her usual irritated tone.

Faith felt like an idiot. It seemed obvious in hindsight. “What will I do?” she asked when Jane fell silent and resumed her pacing.

“You’ll have a new Watcher of course. The Council will decide who.”

“Oh.” There didn’t seem to be anything else to say. Frankly Faith was surprised they had shared this much information with one another. “Should I patrol now?”

Jane nodded and it was with relief that Faith slipped outside into the cool evening to do what she did best, work.

Bath, a flat, very early

Giles jerked awake, his heart thundering, his hand automatically reaching for the stake he kept in the bedside drawer. The phone rang again and Giles realised it was that which had woken him. He sat up, peering at the clock, <3.07, who calls this early…Buffy?>

“Hello?” his voice sounded thick and groggy.

“Sorry to wake you Mr Giles. Mr Bradshaw wishes to speak to you.” The efficient tone of the Head of the Watcher’s Council secretary cleared the last of the sleep fog from Giles mind.

“It’s alright Miss Wainwright, you can put me through.” He wondered as the line went temporarily dead if she ever slept, he giggled slightly when the thought vampire popped into his head.

“I hope you’re not drunk Rupert old man.” The amused voice of Glen Bradshaw, Head of the Council, cut through his speculations

“No. I was asleep.”

“Well this won’t help you get back to sleep. You’re rehired. Faith needs a new Watcher.”

The meaning of the words horrified Giles. A myriad of emotions tumbled through him. Pleasure at being needed, fear for Jane, reluctance to leave England, desire to see Sunnydale again. Fear won out.

“Good Lord! Is Jane alright?”

‘Yes yes, she is fine…seems to have got herself pregnant.”

Giles knew Jane, so the idea of Jane pregnant, the idea of Jane performing the necessary act to get pregnant astonished him. Very nearly he repeated Faith’s question, but stopped himself from sounding a fool. He also knew the rules. Jane would never be more than an administrator or in-house researcher for the Council of Watchers again.

“Oh…I see. Why me? I’ve been retired five years now.”

“Yes, we know…but…to be honest with you Rupert, you’re the only one we can think of who can handle Faith. Jane’s recent reports…they have not been good. Faith needs someone who understands her and perhaps provides some stability.”

Fear clutched at Giles heart, “Reports? Stability? You are not inspiring me Glen.”

“That is why we are sending you.”

“I don’t really have a choice, do I?” Giles asked, mildly. He felt far angrier than his tone of voice betrayed. He liked his life again. He had painfully rebuilt it here in Bath and now he had to leave and resume Watcher duties in Sunnydale, again. <Leave Buffy again.>

“No. You don’t. You have three weeks to wrap up your life and get to Sunnydale. You will take over the house that Faith and Jane share. We feel it best to have the traditional arrangement of Slayer and Watcher sharing a house.”

“Oh God.” Giles swore, but the phone line was already dead. ”Fucking Council”.

TBC