TITLE: The Watcher: 127 Fountain Street 3/3
AUTHOR: vatwoman
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Giles and everything `Buffy' belong to Joss Whedon,
Mutant Enemy et al. Anna and everyone else I invent are mine.
FEEDBACK: Will be gratefully received, at: vatwoman@y...
He hadn't said `yes' to Jane Bergmann, but then again he hadn't exactly said `no' either. They'd talked for an hour or so and, yes, he'd tested her. Her knowledge of the books and manuscripts was, as she'd said, perfect. Her facility with languages, exceptional. She was a "phenomenon" - he'd heard the quotation marks around the word and wondered how many times she'd had it thrown at her - but she was young and she knew it. She'd led a sheltered life: a single child of elderly parents, tiny village school, girls' boarding school and then, at fifteen, she'd come to The Council to complete her education.
There was a fierce determination to better herself burning in her eyes - and she'd chosen him to help her.......
...... "I have a Slayer, Jane, I'm not even supposed to be here."
"But you are here I can't pass up this opportunity simply because of something that's not supposed to be."
"And if I go back to Sunnydale? I can't teach you from thousands of miles away."
"I know."
He looked away, "I'm not even sure what it is I could teach you anyway."
"Even talking to you like this is teaching me."
Giles turned back, frowning. "How?"
"You're reluctant to talk about it and when you do you don't `gush' I it tells me that being a Watcher to a Slayer isn't an easy life and that maybe I need to prepare myself for that?"
He stared at her, thinking that she saw entirely too much in him and, surprised, offered up a confidence before he even realised what he was doing. "You can never prepare yourself for this life."......
...... The taxi drew up outside the house and he was battered by the whole dιjΰ vu of it. The house, the street, the weather: the only difference was that, being earlier in the evening, it was marginally lighter than it had been the day before......
...... "So how do you survive?"
"One day at a time." He looked away from her for a second and when he turned back his face had taken on an earnest air. "Find something that you can make yours."
"I don't understand."
"Don't make the mistake I did and think that having a Slayer is everything: because it's not. Find a thing, Jane, or a place, or a person and make it yours. Keep it close, but keep it away from your life as Watcher."
"Why?"
"You know why." ......
...... The door swung open at his touch and he stepped into the now familiar hallway: colours on the walls, laughter from behind closed doors, wet steps glistening in the lights, the faintest wisp of smoke in the air ......
...... "What is it like?"
"Losing your Slayer?"
"Yes."
"It's like like having something vital ripped from your body. It leaves you alive, but there's no part of you that's really living anymore." ......
...... "Gie us yer money!"
"And in some language that's English?"
A young, blond, scar-faced, man stepped out of the shadows by the stairs, cigarette dangling nonchalantly from lips twisted into a dismissive sneer. "Ah said, gie us yer money." The passage-way echoed to the hiss of the switchblade opening.
Giles laughed and pushed his hands into his trouser pockets. "Oh please, not money!" Then his expression hardened. "I've got no intention of giving anything to a `shit for brains' vampire."
The creature snarled into its `game face' and threw itself at him. He pirouetted out of the way, caught the vampire's hand and using the creature's momentum drove it, the knife and its head straight into the wall. The knife clattered to the ground. His whole body weight ground the vampire into the brickwork, stunning it for the few vital seconds it took him to spin it around to plunge the stake straight into its heart.
"Who the fuck are you?" It demanded, eyes blazing defiance to the last.
"The Slayer's Watcher."
"The Slayer's dead!"
"News for you, mate "
" jeez "
"Yeah, that would really have been something to tell `the man' hereabouts, wouldn't it?" Giles pressed his mouth against the helpless creature's ear. "Except it's all a little too for that now, isn't it, because, oh look " He forced its head down so it could see the stake in its chest. " you're dead again." Giles pulled out the stake and the vampire dusted. "Pillock!"
"Was that a vampire?"
Dropping automatically into a fighting crouch, Giles spun around. Jordan stood at the top of the first flight of stairs. He straightened up, relaxing as he did so.
"Yes."
"And now it's dead?"
"It was already dead." He gently contradicted her. "You haven't seen a vampire before?" The young girl shook her head. "Do you know what you are?" He'd moved to the bottom of the staircase and looked up into her deep grey eyes. She didn't answer him for a long time, giving him time to consider how surreal this whole conversation was a middle-aged man and a young girl, dust from the vampire falling between them, a situation ripe with the delicious misunderstandings between generations and yet. "Jordan?"
"I'm a vampire slayer." And with her words something settled in him as the Watcher heard a Slayer accept her destiny. But the sting was still there. "Are you here to take me away from my gran?"
"I'd rather take you both." He wondered if she'd pick up on the implied answer to her question.
"I'm staying here and so is Gran."
"Is it ok if I try and persuade your Gran that you should both come with me?"
Jordan shrugged, "Ok."
"Can I come up?" He smiled at her and saw the hint of it returned.
"Yeah, the tea's on. We're having spaghetti bolognese: it's my favourite."
"It's one of my favourite's too." He started up the stairs, following behind her, smiling, wondering at the change in her: old as time one second, nine year old girl the next.
"What's your favourite, favourite, tea?"
"Mmm, `favourite, favourite, tea'? That's a tricky one." They reached the flat and, as before, Jordan stepped aside to let him cross the threshold, but didn't invite him in. "I'd have to say fish and chips."
"Tomato sauce or brown sauce?" she quizzed.
Giles's smile widened. "Oh, tomato every time."
"Peas?"
"Definately."
"Bread and butter?"
"Absolutely."
"Tea or milk?"
"Tea."
Her nose wrinkled. "Yuk!" She grinned and ran down the hallway into the kitchen. "Gran, can we have fish and chips tomorrow? Mr Giles likes it, so it would be ok with him."
Giles stepped into the kitchen and nodded `hello' to Maggie Fleming. She returned it with a slight tilt of her head before once more focussing her full attention on her granddaughter. "Would it now? What day is it tomorrow?"
"Wednesday."
"And what day do we have fish and chips?"
Jordan's face fell. "Friday but he might not be here then. He might have gone back to London!"
"Then he'll miss it, won't he?" She touched Jordan's head and smiled gently. "Go and wash your hands, tea's ready."
"Ok." The glum tone made both Maggie and Giles smile. Jordan trudged out of the room muttering about the unfairness of it all.
"Is there anything I can do?" Giles asked.
"No." Maggie shook her head. "You might want to get washed as well."
Giles walked over to the kitchen sink and washed up as he'd been instructed, smiling at the sudden memory of his mother telling him to do exactly the same thing. When he'd finished he sat down at the kitchen table. "Jordan was waiting for me, wasn't she? How did she know I was back?"
"She has some sense of you."
He nodded. "I thought she might have."
Maggie turned away from the cooker so that she could see his face. "And how was your business in London?"
"Enlightening." He might have continued, but Jordan breezed back into the room.
They all settled down to the table to eat. Jordan's bright chatter about her day flowed around the two adults until they, too, reluctant as they were to let go of the seriousness of the situation between them, were smiling at her enthusiasm for the very stuff of life.
"Mr Giles killed a vampire."
"I'm sure he's killed lots of them, love." Maggie answered.
Jordan frowned at her grandmother, "No, here. Downstairs in the close."
"In the close?" Maggie's sharp gaze shifted from Jordan to Giles. "It was inside?"
He nodded. "Yes."
"I've never seen one before. Have I, Gran?"
Maggie dropped Giles's intense gaze and smiled at the young girl sitting beside her. "Have you finished?"
"Yes. Could I have some ice-cream, please?"
"Did Mrs Stevens give you homework?"
"Some English and some maths."
"Then why don't you go and do it and we'll all have some ice-cream together later?"
"Why can't I have it now?"
"Because I want to talk to Mr Giles."
Jordan's eyes clouded. "About the vampire?"
"Yes."
No dissembling - he'd have to remember that.
"Do we have strawberry?"
Maggie Fleming laughed. "You'll find out later. Go and do your homework, please."
"Yes, Gran."
They waited until Jordan had left before they spoke and when they did their voices were low and harsh.
"You've never seen one here before?" Giles asked.
"No."
"So why now?"
"Opportunity: people are always leaving the back door open."
"You don't believe that any more than I do."
"What then?"
"Vampires are attracted to power and Jordan's pumping out a lot of it. That vampire is just the first of many."
"They'll never get in here."
"They don't have to. They'll get in like that one did and they can just sit downstairs and wait for you to come out."
"I don't go out."
"But Jordan does: shopping, friends. She must go out to school?" Maggie waved a dismissive hand, "She's taught at home. Mrs Stevens upstairs is a teacher."
"Has she always been taught at home?"
"No, just since the start of this term." She raised a mocking eyebrow. "Is that something else the Council disapproves of?"
"Besides your monumental stupidity?"
"How dare you!"
"How dare you!" Giles got up and started pacing back and forth across the kitchen floor. "She's nine years old, Mrs Fleming, and she's already drawing vampires to her. She'll turn ten and it'll be demons. She'll turn eleven and it'll be gods! What the hell are you going to do then?" He stepped up to her, not caring how threatening he must seem to the seated woman. "What the hell are you doing now?"
"You want me to give her up - hand her over just like that?"
"No," Giles sat down again, "Not `just like that' and not without you."
Maggie shook her head, "I can't come."
A look of pure frustration flashed across Giles's face. "Why not?"
"Because I can't."
"Why not?" Giles pressed.
"Because I can't!"
"Then let her go, damn it!"
"Do you think I haven't tried?" Her voice was raspy and drawn.
"I don't know, Maggie, have you?"
And suddenly she was a woman old enough to be his mother. "Don't take that tone with me!"
"Why shouldn't I, you've been using the same tone with me since I stepped into this house yesterday."
"You're uninvited!"
Giles nodded, "I might be, but we have to see a resolution of this."
They faced each other across the table in sudden silence. "I have dishes to do." Maggie struggled to her feet and started clearing the table.
Giles bit down on a vicious comment and asked, "Can I help?"
"You can wash, if you like."
He took her place at the sink. The water ran hot into the bowl, covering the dishes. As he finished with each dish he struggled to place them onto the draining board, rather than throw them there.
"I'm all she has." She was beside him again, cloth in hand, to dry the dishes.
"What happened to her parents?" He was still angry with her and his voice was clipped.
"Her mother died of cancer four years ago. Her father, my son, disappeared a year after that."
"Disappeared?"
As he turned his head to look at her, she turned hers to look at him. "Nothing sinister about it, Mr Giles, just a common or garden domestic tragedy: the sort that happens in this part of the city all the time. His work made him redundant and the Social couldn't find him anything. When he left he said he was going to London to find a job and that he'd call for Jordan when he was settled. I haven't heard from him since."
"Have you looked for him?"
"Not for a while now." Her eyes took on a far away look. "I don't think he ever really wanted a baby. He always seemed to resent the time Lizzie spent away from him to look after the wee one. I knew he didn't love Jordan." Her gaze fell on Giles once more. "It's a terrible thing for a mother to say about her own son, don't you think?"
"It's a terrible position for a son to put his mother into."
"Are your parents still alive?"
"No."
Maggie sighed, "It's the waste that saddens me. It's all such a waste. Did Travers tell you about my father?"
"And your sister? Yes."
"Did he tell you that it killed my mother?" Giles shook his head. "Did he tell you that they'd been devoted to each since childhood, that they'd never spent a night apart from the day they'd got married, that she loved my sister completely? Did he tell you that the last words she heard were me pleading with her not leave me here by myself?"
Giles leaned on the edge of the sink, his hands gripping the metal surface hard enough to whiten the skin, and swallowed heavily. "What about your husband?"
"The shipbuilding was a hard taskmistress - she took more than a few good young men in those days." There was a moment when it seemed to Giles that her eyes might have filled with tears, but it passed in the space of a slow blink of the lids. "She's all I have."
He turned his head away and when he spoke his voice had deepened to a sepulchral depth. "There's a prophecy."
"In The Codex." She found herself pinned with a piercing look. "I know."
He stood silent, stupefied by her admission. When he regained his senses he found himself pleading with her through clenched teeth. "Then let her go."
Maggie's response was a simple two word denial. "I can't."
Giles hung his head, eyes shut tight, and counted to ten, even though he knew it was useless: because he could count to ten thousand and it wouldn't be enough. "I swore I'd never do this." The words were whispered so quietly that even he had trouble hearing them. He turned his head and his eyes, dark and bleak, fell on Maggie Fleming. "Do you have idea what you're making me become?"
Silence fell between them, as deep and sudden as the grave. The dripping tap and ticking clock marked the passage of time it took her to consider his question. And while they stood there, still as statues, the blood ran cold in his veins.
"Don't fool yourself into believing that I've had anything to do with the man you are at this moment - you've made yourself into this."
Blood as ice and his body frozen by it. "If I have to leave here without her, you know I can't leave her here alive."
Maggie nodded slowly, "Aye, with her power, turned, she'd be a danger to the whole world." Her eyes hardened. "I will try and stop you."
"I know." He straightened up and his joints cracked, like ice falling away from trees. "I'm going out: I need some air. I won't be long."
She nodded again and pulled open the drawer she was standing next to, reached inside and brought out a set of house keys. "You'll be needing these, then." As he took them from her, she caught his hand. A quiet warmth flowed between them and, unexpectedly, she smiled at him. "You're worried that the man your are now has always been you, aren't you? Well, he hasn't. When you remember that you'll be able to see things more clearly and from there, you'll know what you have to do." The smile deepened and her hand tightened on his. "Please don't disturb us when you come back in." When he nodded she did too. "I'll finish up here, go and take your walk."
>>>>>>
He got no further than the front doorstep. He let the door close behind him and sat down. His head fall back against the heavy wood behind him and he stared up at the stars. The tears started almost immediately, running down his face, twin tracks of cold silver.
Had he really threatened the child's life? Had Maggie Fleming really acknowledged that he had a right to do so? When in the hell had his life become like this? When had he become so cold?
The mobile was in his hand before he was aware that he'd even reached for it and he dialled her number, fingers pushing at the keys as if he'd been calling her forever.
<"Hello?">
"Anna?"
<"Giles! Hi!">
"I've killed two people."
<"What did you say?">
"Two people I've killed two people."
<"What?">
"The first was my friend, Randall, it was a long time ago. He'd been taken over by a demon and we couldn't get it out of him and it was going to kill us and and we had to kill him."
<"Giles, stop ">
" the second was just a few months ago. A young man, he was part god and he would have lost control over it again and it would have destroyed the world and so he had to die and so I "
<" Giles ">
" suffocated him with my bare hands "
<" GILES! ">
" I wanted you to know the type of man I am "
<"Why are you telling me this? What's happened?".
"What do you mean `what's happened?' I've just told you that I've killed two people! Why are you still talking to me? Why haven't you just hung up the bloody phone and called the police? Tell them I'm in Glasgow. 127 Fountain Street. Tell them I'm sitting here waiting for them!"
<"Giles?">
"What? And stop saying my name! Just stop!"
<"Alright I'll stop saying your name, but I need you to talk to me. What's happened?">
"She won't let the girl go! She won't come! She she shit!"
<" `She' who? The grandmother?">
"Yes!"
<"Ok, tell me!">
"The grandmother is refusing the let the girl go. I've told her that The Council will take them both, but she refuses to leave. I can't persuade her."
<"And?">
"I can't leave here without the girl and leave her here alive to be captured and turned."
<"Oh my God ">
"I'm going to have to kill her."
<"You can't.">
"I'm going to have no choice!"
<"Giles, you can't! She's only a child ">
" with the power to destroy worlds!"
<"I don't care! There has to be another way. Why don't you just kidnap her?">
"How? She has enough slayer strength to kick me into the middle of next week and enough magical power to spirit me off into oblivion!"
<"Talk to her. Persuade her.">
"It won't do any good."
<"But it might! And if you can persuade the girl, then both of you, together, might be able to persuade the grandmother. You have to try.">
"I don't know what to say."
<"But you still have to try.">
Giles took a deep breath, "You're right. I have to try." He frowned uncertainly. "Why didn't I see that?"
<"Too close to it?">
"Perhaps."
<"Giles? I'm not your keeper. You don't have to explain yourself to me.">
The killings. She was talking about the killings. "But?"
<" `But' I think this needs some explanation.">
"Does it frighten you?"
,"I'd be lying if I said it didn't.">
"Can you wait until I'm home?"
<"I suspect I'm going to have to, aren't I?">
Giles rubbed the heel of his hand into the lines dug deep into his forehead. His head was pounding: he hadn't noticed. "Yes. I'm sorry, Anna."
<"So am I.">
"I have to go now."
<"Do you?">
He hesitated and then told her the truth. "No, I don't, but I think I should."
<"Alright Giles?">
"Yes?"
<"You have to make them see the truth of what's going on here.">
"I know."
<"And Giles?">
"Yes?"
<"Don't think that I believe that you're anything other than a good man."> And she hung up the phone.
He dropped it into his pocket and stood up, grimacing as his tired body protested the movement. He took off his glasses and rubbed his hands down his face, erasing the tears. He was cold. The air was still, the sky clear, and he was cold. He turned around and found the key to the front door, opened it and stepped inside.
It was odd, the way in which he always expected the scene before him to have changed, only to find that it hadn't: the lights blazed brightly, the patterned tiles and the stain-glassed window glowed. The sounds from behind the closed front doors was of laughter and the faintest hint of smoke still clung to the air: air that was so still.
Then a noise from upstairs - he frowned - a door slamming, then footsteps. Slow. Soft. A metal bucket clanking and the sound of brush scrubbing on stone. He looked at his watch: it had stopped. 5.30.
< you'll be able to see things more clearly>
< see the truth of what's going on here >
"Mr Giles?"
She was standing exactly where she'd been earlier in the evening, at the top of the stairs, as if she hadn't moved from that very spot.
"Yes, Jordan?"
"Could you close your eyes, please?"
He shook his head, "I don't think I want to."
"I said please."
"I know, but sometimes saying please isn't enough. The other person really has to want to do what you're asking them to do."
She was silent for a few seconds while she mulled over what Giles had said. He stood there, tense with anticipation.
"I suppose you'll want to speak to Gran now?"
"Yes, I think so." He was so gentle with her, his voice so soft, that he was surprised she even heard him.
"Come on, then."
And as he climbed the stairs the very walls rippled around him, cracking and blackening. The smell of fire was strong and the remnant of heat. As he reached it, the great stain-glassed window wavered and melted in its frame and slid onto the floor at his feet in puddles of black glass. The stars outside wavered as wisps of smoke drifted up into the sky.
And so, for the third and last time, he entered the flat. Undamaged it looked to him, but he knew now that it was all an illusion. Maggie Fleming stood where he'd first seen her, in the doorway to her kitchen, balanced on her sticks, wheelchair by her side.
"When did it happen?"
"The day before you arrived." Her voice was different, deeper, accentless. And her eyes - they glowed brightly with her power.
"The whole building was destroyed?"
"Yes."
A sudden sensation of static at the back of his neck and he turned around. The hallway behind him was full of people, grey, silent and unsmiling, but in their eyes he saw yearning.
"Everyone died?"
Maggie nodded, "Except Jordan."
Giles couldn't take his eyes off the older woman's face, trapped here, as he was, within the demonstration of her extraordinary power. "You have to let her go, Maggie."
A smile touched her lips, "It's not me doing the holding." Giles held her eyes for a few seconds longer and then turned slowly to face the young girl. "Jordan holds this place here."
"Jordan?"
Maggie nodded, "Yes. My power does as it's always done: it masks hers from the creatures of the Dark."
"Jordan?" He repeated the word, the question, but this time it was said to Jordan herself.
"I was out playing and there was a fire." She stood straight and tall. "Gran died. It was all my fault."
"How was it your fault?"
Jordan looked from Giles to her grandmother and back again. "Because I broke my promise."
Giles felt his eyes start to prickle: he knew where this was heading. "The promise to look after your grandmother? The one you made when your mum and dad left?"
"Yes."
"This was an accident, Jordan, it wasn't your fault."
"But I could have saved her! I could have picked her up and carried her out!" And suddenly she was crying. "I could have done a spell and magicked her out! I could have I could have " She was across the hallway in a second and into her grandmother's arms. "I'm sorry, Gran. I'm really sorry."
"Shh, love, shh. It's alright." Maggie bent down and kissed and stroked the girl's hair. She eventually looked back up. "I couldn't leave without saying goodbye to her, Mr Giles, none of us could." There was a ripple of air around him as the spectres gave their confirmation to Maggie Fleming's words. "She's been a gift to all our hearts." A frown drifted across her face. "But when we came to her she wouldn't let us go - couldn't let us go. I'm all she has."
Giles nodded, moved beyond words. Another ripple and the air blew cold around them. The walls wavered and the sky opened up above their heads. The lights went out and they were bathed in the ethereal beauty of the sun-reflected moon. Giles got down on one knee and called for her. "Jordan?"
She pushed her face into her grandmother's body, as if she was trying to climb inside her. Maggie bent again and whispered, "It's time for us to go, Jordan. Mr Giles will look after you now."
"But I want to stay! I want you to stay!"
"I know you do, but Grannie can't, my love. You've got things that you have to learn and things that you have to do and you can't do them while you're still here, can you?"
Jordan leaned back and wiped a hand across her face. "That `saving the world' stuff?"
Maggie smiled and curled her hand around Jordan's cheek. "That's right, that `saving the world' stuff."
"And Mr Giles will look after me?" She turned and looked at him, on his knee, just a few feet away from her.
"For a little while, until you get to London, but then he'll give you to the person who's going to take my place and who'll protect you and help you for the rest of your life."
"Why can't he do that?"
It was Giles himself who answered the question. "Because I'm already doing that for another girl: someone who's just like you."
"Another slayer?" Jordan's eyes lightened a little with interest.
"Yes."
"What's her name?"
Giles smiled, "Buffy."
And she giggled. "That's a really silly name!"
"I'll tell her you said so."
"Do we have to go now?"
Giles looked up at Maggie and caught her nod. "I think it's time. What do you think?"
"Gran?" She turned her eyes up to her grandmother.
The older woman enclosed the young girl in a tight hug and looked for all the world like she'd never let her go. "I love you so much, my little girl."
"I love you too, Gran."
They held on for a few seconds longer and then Maggie Fleming let go and stepped back. "Go to Mr Giles." Jordan, tears once more running down her face, came to Giles's side and placed her trust in him with the arm she rested on his shoulder. "Rupert Giles?"
"Yes."
"I place the life of my granddaughter, Jordan Fleming, into your hands. See that The Council understands what I've done."
"I will."
"And you shield her well and choose the gift wisely."
"I will." He promised once more, but frowning slightly this time as he struggled to understand her instruction.
There was no more than a smile between Jordan and Maggie before Giles, still physically connected to the girl, felt the surge of power from her. The house dissolved around them, leaving them standing in a burned out shell.
>>>>>>
They walked into The Council headquarters five hours later. Jordan pressed herself into his side as they rode the elevator to the Library level where the desk guard had said Quentin Travers would be.
It was Jane Bergmann who met them at the doors. He smiled at her and moved to gather her up at his other side when Jordan stopped dead in her tracks. He stopped too. The two girls were staring at each other, eyes only for each other. It was Jordan who spoke first.
"What's your name?"
"Jane."
"That's pretty. I had a doll called Jane. My Gran gave it to me. Do you know what your name means?"
"Yes," Jane Bergmann nodded, "It means `God's gracious gift.' " Giles gasped and found Jane Bergmann smiling at him. "Do you know who I am?"
Jordan nodded imperiously. "You're my Watcher."
THE END
29th September 2002