Title: Coming Home 5/6
Author: Sweetdoggie (stirling_summer@yahoo.com)
Pairing: B/G
Rating: PG-17
Summary: Sometimes home isn’t a place.
Spoilers: post season 7
Note: If the chapter breaks seem a little weird, it’s because I wrote this as one unit but had to break it up for my beta.
Disclaimer: No permission has been granted to use the characters. They are owned by their creator, Joss Whedon, Twentieth Century Fox, UPN, WB, and Mutant Enemy. This story is non-profit and is intended solely as entertainment. No copyright infringement is intended.
True to his word, Giles managed to “find” papers proving that Wesley had been a deep operative for the Council. He contacted the younger man’s parents and presented them with the Watcher’s Cross, posthumous, for their son’s gallantry. His mother wept and even his acid-tongued father wiped away a tear at the presentation ceremony.
The two grieving parents walked down an aisle flanked on either side by Watchers and Slayers till they came face to face with Buffy. She handed them a large bouquet of flowers as she stopped to speak with them.
“Wesley was a man to be proud of, Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham-Price. He was a warrior of the Light and… he was my friend.”
Mrs. Wyndham-Price took the flowers. “He was my only son. When the Council picked him to be your Watcher, he was so proud. I know you didn’t always see eye-to-eye, but he really did care.”
Buffy put her hand on the old woman’s. “Yes, he did. I will never forget him.”
“Thank you.” The woman leaned on her husband tiredly and they continued on their way out of the assembly hall.
Living with Buffy wasn’t always easy, Giles reflected, but it was interesting. He had come home from a long day at the Consular offices to find her going through the attic. Over the years since the house was built, it appeared that nobody had ever cleaned the rooms at the top of the house which had become a repository for junk. Buffy had decided to go through the stuff one box or trunk at a time. So far, she had unearthed a very nice set of matched rapiers dating from the time of Charles II, a tightly bound little chest full of love letters from an early Slayer to her Watcher, and three seventeenth century training manuals.
Today’s find was a bit more outré. At first, she had thought it was just another large chest filled with old clothes and other moth-eaten rubbish, but when she had pulled the sheeting covering the contents back, she had found the tiny, withered corpses of five infants. She had the feeling that these babies hadn’t died of natural causes. There were no obvious wounds on the dried husks that had been their bodies, but they were all tightly swaddled. The telling point for her was that if they had died a natural death, they would have been buried someplace instead of hidden in a box in the vast attic.
She had sat in the dusty room for an hour debating what would need to be done. When she heard Giles come home, she yelled at him to come to the attic right away. The near panic in her voice caused him to run up the stairs in his haste to reach her.
“What is it Buffy? Are you hurt?”
She nodded to the open chest and he had walked closer to see the contents. She could tell when it registered with him just exactly what he was looking at when he gasped.
“Oh, Dear Lord!”
“Yeah, that was kinda my thought too,” she admitted in a shaky voice. “I didn’t touch them. I didn’t know what to do, actually. Who are they?”
“I have no idea,” his voice was grim. “We shall find out, however.” He pulled out his mobile phone and called his second in command, Robson. “Bring Dr. Wenikle,” he instructed.
The two men raced to the Senior Watcher’s home. Giles tone had indicated that something very important was going on. Buffy met them at the door and directed them to the attic.
Giles had taken over Buffy’s vigil with the small corpses. He was deeply horrified to learn that his home had been used in such a manner and he was resolved to finding out who these children had been and who had murdered them.
Dr. Robert Wenikle was a Watcher with extensive medical training. He had come out of retirement at Rupert’s request earlier in the year to treat the Slayer’s who were injured on the job. He took one look at the swaddled infants and swore under his breath.
“Were they murdered, Doc?” Buffy asked him quietly.
“I’d say undoubtedly. Judging by what I can tell from a purely visual examination, I’d say they were placed in this chest alive and allowed to suffocate. Death would have occurred within minutes.”
Buffy had tears in her eyes. “Who would do such a horrible thing? And why?”
Dr. Wenikle straightened up tiredly. “Infanticide has been common throughout history, Buffy. Sometimes the babies were abandoned on hillsides or in rubbish heaps, but sometimes they were simply murdered and hidden. In many parts of the world, it is still practiced. If the pregnancy had been secret, then there wouldn’t have even been any questions. Given the fact that this house has been the home of Watchers and Slayers for many generations, I’d say we are looking at the fruits of such a relationship.”
“They murdered their own children?” Her voice was weak and protesting.
“Up until very recently, a Slayer would have had no access to any form of birth control. Given the fact of their increased sexual drives, I’d have to say that, yes, one or the other of the two murdered these babes.”
“What do we need to do?” Buffy wondered.
“Let’s get this entire trunk downstairs,” the doctor directed.
Buffy and Giles each took an end of the heavy box and carried it carefully into the lighted kitchen. In the bright room they could see that five dates had been carefully carved into the top of the trunk. 1696, 1698, 1699, 1701, and 1702 had been etched in a scrolling hand.
“Death dates?” Buffy murmured.
“It looks like it,” Giles had replied.
“Do we call the cops?” she asked him tiredly.
Giles looked to the doctor. “Is there anything here that would indicate these children were a Slayer’s offspring?”
The doctor shrugged and gently pulled back the swaddling on one of the babies. They could see it was a male.
“No wounds,” the doctor said, turning the small body carefully. “Nothing visible that would mark it as the child of a supernatural being.”
When he had lifted the corpse from its resting place, a small packet had fallen to the floor. Buffy bent down and picked it up. “Paper. It’s sealed. Giles?” She handed him the folded papers.
He examined the seal carefully. “I’m not familiar with this crest, but we can look it up later. Hand me a sharp knife.”
Buffy passed him a thin-bladed filleting knife and he gently teased the seal from the paper, keeping it intact. He unfolded the fragile documents. It turned out to be a confession of sorts by the Watcher who had placed his own children in the trunk to die. It was heartrending.
Reader,
If you have found this packet, then you already know my dread secret. I am a murderer, five times over. I have murdered my own children, the sons and daughters of my loins so that she, my beloved, would be free to do her duty. I did not do this lightly, but they died so that the world might live.
You might ask me why did I not foster my younglings out, seek adoptive parents for them. I will tell you. The Council. They would have found out The truth is that they can never know. They would kill me and imprison her, though she too would not be long for this mortal coil. A Slayer may have neither friends nor family during her tenure. They must fight and die for all of mankind. After all, when one dies another is Called. Is it not true?
She does not know, of course. I have taken each of our babes as it slid from her womb and told her that ‘twas given to a servant to take to loving parents in the country. She has painted this picture in her mind of a beautiful and prosperous farm where her babies play contented amongst lambs and puppies. God help us that she never finds out the truth.
Another sheet had been folded under the first letter. Giles, tears in his eyes, read it with a trembling hand.
She is gone now. I pray that she and our children have found their eternal home with God. I know that, for my deeds, I shall never be allowed to join them. I am a murderer of innocents. There will be no rest for me.
By my own hand, On this Day of Our Lord, 1702, 10th October,
Gregory Morton
They stood looking at the tiny corpses, the earthly shells that had once been living, breathing babies and felt ill that such great evil had been done. With the back of her hand, Buffy wiped away the tears that streamed down her face.
“We need to bury them, Giles. Is there a Morton family plot? Did this Watcher leave a journal? We need to read it very carefully, I think.”
Giles also had tears in his eyes. “Yes, I believe there is a journal. I haven’t read it for years, but it’s in the library. I don’t think we can go to the police with this.”
The Doctor looked up. “I have several contacts in the coroner’s office that will help us expedite the, the disposition of these bodies without undue attention.”
Giles nodded. “We shall have a funeral. All the Slayers and Watchers in the country must attend. We must not overlook the sacrifice these two people made, one unknowing and both unwilling.”
“I don’t know who I feel more sorry for, him or her. At least she could fool herself with happy thoughts,” Buffy said “He actually knew what he’d done.” She raised her eyes to her Watcher. “Why can’t a Slayer have friends and family?”
“The Council believed that it would make her weak, distract her from her duties. It was easier on the girls if they had no attachments.”
“Bastards.”
“Yes, well…yes.”
They set the date for the funeral for the weekend and three hundred Slayers and their Watchers attended. Buffy gave the eulogy. She waited till the crowd was fully assembled as she stood at the podium behind the five tiny coffins.
“Friends, we are gathered here today to pay our last respects to these five children who had their lives cut short. Sisters, grieve with me. They could have been any of our children. Watchers, grieve with us, that your duty might cause you to take such actions.”
“It will be our duty and our destiny to see that such things never happen again. No longer will the Slayer stand alone. No longer will our girls be deprived of friends and family. Yes, we give hostages to fate when we allow ourselves to love, but how much stronger we become when we do.”
“These children have gone on, they have joined their parents in the afterlife and are happy. They are surrounded by the love of every Slayer and every Watcher who ever lived and died. That their human lives were cut short is a tragedy, but that their souls live on is a great gift.”
“Who among us has not faced death? Who has not lost a loved one? A friend? We go on because it is our duty. We love because it is our nature. These children, murdered by their father, were loved by both their parents. In your hearts, say a prayer for their pain. Now, let us commend their bodies to the earth and their souls to Heaven.”
She stepped down and Giles escorted her to her seat. The five coffins were walked out of the church, born by a Watcher on one side and a Slayer on the other. They were lowered into the Morton family crypt and placed side by side with their parents. Every Slayer and every Watcher walked by and laid a rose at their feet. Then the ceremony was over.
Buffy and Giles went back to the house and sat quietly in the kitchen. They had prepared tea, but let it grow cool as they held hands over the table. Buffy sighed.
“I’ve been thinking, Rupert.”
“Yes, my love?”
“Our lives are so short, some shorter than others, but all of them have so little time. I want to use the time we have in the best way I can.” She looked up at him and focused her sad gaze on his eyes. “Will you marry me, Rupert? Will you marry me and be a father to our children?”
He fell to his knees beside her chair. “Buffy, you are my heart and my life. I would be honored to marry you. I would love to father your children. We can raise them together to be warriors in the Light.”
“They can be grocers, for all I care, Giles. I just want them to be happy.”
He picked up her hand and placed a tender kiss on the back of it. “We shall see that it is so, beloved.”