Title: Who Watch You Fall 4/4
Author: Pythia
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of them – Buffy and the gang belong to Joss.
It hit right where he wanted it – liquid fire burning down his throat and into his stomach, a punch of warmth that slammed straight into the pain in his guts with about as much subtlety as a blow from a troll hammer - or Xander’s wrecking ball.
“Bloody hell.” Spike’s soft exclamation held disconcerted surprise. “Show it some respect, Rupes. This is the good stuff, remember?”
“Yes,” Giles gasped, gulping for air and watching his ceiling reel and sway above him. “Quite.” His eyes were watering and it took a moment to blink the sudden surge of moisture away. “*Lord,* but that’s smooth.”
“Yeah?” The vampire took the bottle from his outstretched hand and tipped it back to check the label. “I should damn well think so.” He held the pose for a moment, studying the way the light from the lamps gleamed in the depths of the amber liquid as he twisted it this way and that.
“A being breathing thoughtful breath,” he quoted softly. “A traveller between life and death; the reason firm, the temperate will, endurance, foresight, strength, and skill …”
Giles shivered, hearing the weight of weariness behind the words. Not just the exhaustion of the day, but a hint of long, endless years, whispering from the lips of a man born when the poem was new. “A perfect woman, nobly planned, to warn, to comfort, and command …” Spike’s voice tailed off, the words drying in his mouth, and his lips quivering around the final word.
”And yet,” the Watcher completed, picking up the verse with reverence, “a spirit still, and bright, with something of angelic light.”
“*Buffy,*” came the toast – and it was the vampire’s turn to chug and swallow, his head thrown back so he could get the maximum effect. There were, Giles decided after a moment or two of watching the whisky go down, some definite advantages in not having to breathe ...
“*Oh*, yeah,” Spike growled eventually, taking one last, convulsive gulp. “*Real* smooth.” He offered the bottle back, and Giles took a second, slightly less desperate swig.
“She did, you know,” he observed, savouring the mellowness of the burn and the way the spirit and the smoke had begun to buzz through his veins.
“Did what?” Spike waved at him to keep the bottle and lifted the other one from the floor beside him.
“Have a … light, about her.”
“Oh. Yeah. Yeah, she did.” The vampire had lifted the cigarette from his lips so that he could drink; now he abstractedly tapped the gathering ash into the chalice and lifted the fragile tube back to draw in another breath of smoke. “Not fucking fair, is it,” he murmured softly, staring at the glowing tip of the tobacco. “Ya fight the big bad, win the freaking day – and there’s nothing but pain and bleeding misery at the end of it all. If this is what being a fucking White Hat’s all about, you can bloody well forget it. It ain’t worth it.” He took another swig of whisky – a short one this time – and glared at the Watcher over the mouth of the bottle, as if daring him to deny it.
“Not worth it?” Giles returned the glare with a bemused frown. He pulled in his own lungful of nicotine and tar and let it out with a slow breath, the movement of his lips sending shadows dancing through the smoke. “Of *course* it’s worth it. Has to be. Because …”
‘Because if it isn’t …’
Once again, he struggled for words; words to give some sense, some meaning to the events of the day. There were no words he could find to define the savage grief which gnawed at his soul - only feelings: the deep, terrifying dread that had convinced him to commit murder for the sake of the world, the cold, choking realisation that all their efforts had been too little, too late – and the splintering, heartbreaking memory of the price his Slayer had chosen to pay.
“If it *isn’t,*” he managed, taking another gulp of whisky to smooth some of the sudden roughness from his voice, “then there was no point in running, no point in fighting the knights, no point … to any of it,” he concluded brokenly. “We might as well have given Glory the Key the day we …”
“Screw *that,*” Spike growled, a sudden flare of yellow tainting his eyes. “I didn’t get myself beaten to a bloody pulp just for the sake of my health …” He trailed off. Giles was considering him with weary patience, waiting for him to work it out – waiting for him to remember why he *had* endured Glory’s punishment instead of saving his own selfish skin
“Oh,” the vampire realised, shifting a little self consciously and taking his own quick mouthful of liquor. “*Right.* Got it. Gotta be worth it.” He paused, giving the wounded and weary Watcher a long. hard look. “Still sucks, though.”
Giles sighed, tipping his head back into the cushions and letting his eyes close; the warmth of the whisky was swirling through him, sending his senses dancing. Hard liquor, blood loss and stupidly powerful painkillers – and there was still too much to feel, too much to bear.
“Quite,” he breathed, and took another long, numbing drag on the cigarette, imagining the smoke surging into his lungs and then seeping out again, through the innumerable cracks in his heart and soul.
Doing the right thing was hard. He knew that. Had known it ever since the day he’d been forced to murder a friend in order to save the world from his own stupidity. He’d tried – dear Lord, he’d *tried* – to ease the way for his Slayer, help her to *have* a life, conspired with her to construct and maintain the fragile illusion of home and family. A normal world. An ordinary life.
For a very, very extraordinary young woman.
He’d seen her grow. Watched her blossom. Observed her as she’d changed from flippant child to responsible adult. And – in the end – he’d been witness to her death, the way so many Watchers had borne witness over the centuries. ‘They gave their lives to save the world.’
The world, on the whole, went on.
But living in it … that was going to be the hardest thing of all.
Silence fell over the room. A muffled, weighty silence, one punctuated by the occasional soft breath or throaty gulp. The air slowly filled with smoke. When the cigarette in the Watcher’s hand burnt down to a nub, the vampire simply lit another and handed it to him without comment. When the vampire tilted the bottle and found it empty, the Watcher merely pointed to the liquor cabinet, sending him to fetch a bottle of much younger Scotch to tempt his palate. They didn’t need conversation – didn’t really *want* it after that initial exchange of words. They shared the liquor, they shared the tobacco, and they shared the grief, a burden neither of them would have had the strength to carry alone.
Not that night.
That night there were raw wounds to salve and bleeding hearts to cauterise; damage shared by the living and the dead. Two men in mutual concord, two hearts wracked with loss – and one weary, shattered soul .
END
Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967).