ITLE: 'Seeking Sanctuary' 6/8
AUTHOR: Pythia
DISCLAIMER: The Slayer and her Watcher 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.
Posting Note: * * implies emphasis and { } indicates thought.
He talked to her while he helped her dress - then and afterwards as he bustled through banking up the fire, making soup and then sharing it with her, a solid mug of comfort that she clutched in her chilled fingers. The soup tasted of cream and spice and happier days; the words tasted like a half forgotten memory, the rich depths of his voice and the sense of safety that it wove around her. She savoured them both, slowly and with almost guilty pleasure; she knew she didn't deserve this, didn't merit his care or his affection. But he offered her both without hesitation, pouring them over her like a healing balm. Healing, she suspected, for both of them; he spoke with an open honesty that would have had no place in the guarded, wary world that they had once shared. Sunnydale had been a place of secrets and secrecy; she'd known her Watcher well, but she'd known very little *about* him. Here, in this quiet sanctuary, besieged by storm and isolated from the world, he gifted her with himself, filling the threat of silence with revealing words and wry observations.
He talked of the Sully, of his life on its windswept hills and its sea washed shores; about living rough and coping with the issues of isolation. About the largesse the island offered him; about taking eggs from the cliffs, scavenging for wild herbs and long hours fishing out in the bay. He told her about the crayfish that lurked in the rocks at the foot of the headland, and the taste of wild oysters gathered at low tide. He spoke, too, of days of hunger, of times when his stores ran low and the weather chained him the island so that he was forced to ration what little he had. He'd even, he said, run out of tea once; a horror he narrated with earnest self mockery. She had to laugh at that, at his words and his expression, seeing the quiet twinkle lurking in his eyes. It felt good to laugh. The smile he found to answer it was even better.
Moment by moment he did what she'd asked him to do; he made her feel warm again. Not just warm to the skin, however cosy and comfortable it felt to be wrapped in his trappings, but a deeper, more fundamental warmth; one that eased the ache in her heart and soothed the anguish of her soul. There were no demands and no expectations; just the words, washing over her. She immersed herself in them, drinking them in as if each syllable were as precious as raindrops landing on a parched earth.
The hammer of the storm slowly grew quieter, the shouts of thunder turning into muttered, distant rumbles and the howl of the wind slowly died away, leaving whisper of the rain to become a gentle backdrop to the gift of his litany.
Over the soup he spoke about his work, telling her about the study he was pursuing in the ruins - the cataloguing of stone, the unearthing of old bones and the discovery of precious treasures. Not vessels of gold or silver, but the tiny fragments that evoked the past; the shreds of cloth, shards of pottery, glass beads and disintegrating metals that wrapped their buried owners in the echoes of their lives. She listened with genuine fascination as he related the legends and the histories that those echoes were confirming. They weren't his usual topics; instead of legends of monsters or the horrors of prophecy he gave her spiritual tales, stories of the monks and nuns who had come to the island hoping to find themselves. The ruin on the hill was that of a monastery, built to house those who'd lived and prayed among the island's silences; it had been founded by a woman now hailed as a local saint, an Abbess said to have the power to speak to the dead and to bring peace to unsettled spirits. She had come to the Sully, it was said, seeking refuge from the evils of the world; she'd set up the altar stone from her old priory at the heart of the island - and ever since then, the legend said, no evil creature had been able to set so much as a foot on the Sully's sacred stones.
Others, he said, had followed her over the years; seekers of truth, men and women in search of a closer rapport with God …
"Refugees from pain," he concluded softly, watching her with haunted eyes. "Those in need of sanctuary."
She put down her now empty soup mug and reached to hug the blanket more tightly around her shoulders. "Did they find it?" she asked, remembering how she had felt stepping down into the bay - the sense of sanctity and the weight of ancient sorrows underpinning it. {No evil creature can set foot here …} It might be a legend, but there was a great deal of truths in legends - and here she was, curled up inside Giles' sweater, sitting safe inside his croft. The island had not rejected her. She didn't *think* she was evil, but then she'd come back so empty, had felt so twisted and *wrong* …
"Maybe," her Watcher sighed softly, staring over the rim of his mug and into the shimmer of flame. "I know I did."
His words - so soft, so sorrowful, so *resigned* - raked claws of anguish across her soul. The day before she'd have reacted with an inward flinch and withdrawn even further into herself, seeking to escape the inevitable sense of guilt and pain. But here, cradled in the warmth he had given her, safely anchored in the loving harbour of his heart, she could finally accept that there *was* no escape from those feelings. That they were part of the healing process, vital steps in the journey she had been asked to make. A journey he had been taking ahead of her, torn by grief and burdened by regret and remorse.
Buffy slid from the chair and joined him on the floor, moving to wrap her arms around him. "I'm sorry," she murmured, laying her cheek against his shoulder. His immediate reaction was wary surprise - after which he quirked a quiet smile behind his beard, curled his arm around her waist and tucked her in comfortably beside him.
"Don't be," he said. "You did what you had to. As did I. You gave your life to save the world. I took one for the same reason."
{He took …?}
Buffy lifted her head to stare at him. He was still gazing into the fire, his eyes clouded with memory and his focus distant.
"Yours was the nobler deed, I have to say. Something to be proud of …" His voice tailed off into pensive silence. She went on staring.
{Ben.}
{He killed Ben …}
It wasn't hard to figure out. She'd left Glory's mortal prison lying in the dirt, battered and bleeding from her attack - and when she'd come back from … well, from where she'd been, there'd been no sign of him, or *her* for that matter. She'd never asked about his fate. Never even thought to question what had happened after she'd gone. Glory had been defeated, and she wasn't coming back. It was only *now* that she realised why.
A part of her wanted to be angry. Wanted to push away from him with accusation and condemnation in her eyes. He had *killed*. Killed a helpless man in cold blood. He had death on his hands and the strength of will to commit murder.
The old Buffy might have reacted badly to that realisation. Might have reared back and lashed out, angry at him and angry at herself because he *had* been right. Because he'd been driven to do the one thing that she could never do. But the new Buffy - the one that had been ripped from heaven and suffered the sorrows of the world - simply tightened her hug, pressing closer with a shiver of distraught sympathy. 'Death is your gift,' the first Slayer had said. Her gift to the world, to her sister? Or had it been *his* gift to her? His acceptance of a burden she could never carry.
{He would have killed Dawn …}
If he'd had to. If it had been the only way. He'd faced the truth of all that, and he *would* have done it - and he would have had to live with it afterwards, with knowing what he'd done.
With endless regret and unbearable remorse.
Looking at him now - at the anxious lines that creased his face and the look that haunted his eyes - she knew that he regretted Ben's death. Not just the necessity of it, but the deed itself. There'd been too much death that day, and he'd had to carry all of it: the murder and her suicide, shattering his world and tearing his soul to shreds.
No wonder he'd left Sunnydale when he did.
If she'd been capable of honest emotion in those early days of her return she probably would have been resentful for what he'd done; walking out on the Scoobies like that, abandoning Dawn to her guilt and her grief. It had never occurred to her that he might have done it to protect her from his own.
{No-clue Buffy, that's me,} she sighed, laying her head back on his shoulder and breathing in the warm, earthy fragrance that was a little bit of peat-smoke, a touch of wet oiled wool, and a whole lot Rupert Giles. His scent was comforting - although nothing like the mindless, heedless comfort of dead flesh and cold kisses that she'd embraced with bitterness and self-loathing. Spike had made her feel weak, made her feel needy and desperate. She'd devoured his touch, his presence and his passion - and none of it had been enough to break through the ice that held her heart. Yet one simple breath, one whisper of that unmistakable, utterly Giles-y smell and she felt challenged and strengthened and found herself staring at painful truths with confidence. A *shaky* confidence, perhaps, but confidence none the less. When she'd set out that morning she'd thought she was running away from everything. It was only now that she realised she'd been running* towards* something. Something she needed. Something that made her complete.
"I had no choice."
"I know." Giles put down his mug and laid his hand over hers instead, warming cold fingers between the heat of his heart and his work weathered palm.
"Neither did you." She offered the words gently - making them an acknowledgement without censure, the forgiveness she knew he hadn't found in himself.
"I know that too." He paused for a moment, then added: "Doesn't make either of them any easier to bear."
"No," she agreed, still in that soft, forgiving tone. "Life sucks, right? Having to live it. Having to live *with* it. But we keep on .. keeping on. Doing the livingness. I guess. Except …" She frowned, thinking about it. "You're here, doing the hermit guy stuff - and - I - I came back and I - I just couldn't get it right again."
He sighed. A slow heave of his shoulders that expressed the weight they carried. "We are a pair, aren't we ...?"
"We always were."
Everything paused; a slow and pensive pause in which the echo of her words rippled and resonated like a distant chiming of church bells. Buffy looked up. Giles looked down. Their eyes met - and then he was smiling, hugging her a little closer with a soft gulp of happiness that held both laughter and tears.
"I missed you," he said. "I missed you so much."
She hugged him back, forgetting - for a moment - that she was a Slayer, and perfectly capable of breaking ribs if she wasn't careful. "I think," she admitted with a tearful gulp of her own, "I've been - missing me, too. I don't know who I am, anymore. I can't do it ... without you. I need your help. I need you to be - "
"Your Watcher again?" he offered softly, no doubt recalling the last time she'd said those words to him. She'd meant them then. She meant them now, more than ever.
"Yes. *No* …" she corrected, then again, "yes … I - I don't know. Exactly. I just need *you*. The whole package. Watcher, teacher, friend - whatever. Be Giles. For me. So that *I* can be me again."
The smile he found for her was haunted; it came tinged with sympathy, affection, and hint of weary resignation. "I don't know if I can," he said. "That part of me - the Watcher, the defender of all that was good and true … I've lost him, Buffy. I not sure if I can find him again."
"You will," she murmured, cuddling up against him so that she could listen to his heartbeat, softly counterpointing her own. "We'll go look for him together. In the morning," she added, sleepily. "Once the storm is over …"