TITLE: The Watcher: 127 Fountain Street 2/3
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 dreamed that night in shades of grey.

He saw ghostly figures that flitted by him, in mist, at the edge of his vision. Or stood in corners, huddled together, staring at him, talking behind their hands in voices he could hear nothing of.

Called, he rose from his bed and walked with them through the house, through the stairways: a danse macabre of sombre tones and mournful faces. The heat he felt, the heat of fear.

On out into the street and the building was blacker than night. No lights at the windows. No welcome against the dark.

He felt the rain cold on his face and the wind tug at his clothes.

A shudder passed through him and as it did so the building wavered, winked out of existence, leaving the hill clear of the sign of human habitation … and Jordan was by his side, looking up at him, her pale skin and hair standing out in stark contrast to the wet darkness around them. She took his hand, "Close your eyes."

He did as he was ordered and felt pressure and heat and a great wind rushing in on him.

"Aaah!" He cried out softly, suffocatingly hot, an arm flailing as he tried to disentangle himself from the sheets. Sudden consciousness tore into him and for a fraction of a second, between one blink and the next, the ghostly figures were still with him making him wonder if he was awake at all. Then he managed to switch on the light. The room was reassuringly solid around him. Slow footsteps trod down the hallway outside his door, accompanied by the light tap of sticks on the wooden floor. He found his watch: 5.30am.

Time to get up.

>>>>>>

A quick shower, shave, teeth clean and a fresh set of clothes made him feel immeasurably better: as did the tea in his hand. Maggie Fleming sat opposite him at the old kitchen table her stare no less angry than it had been the night before.

"You spoke to The Council last night, then?"

Giles looked up from his mug, surprised by the first direct question she'd asked of him that had anything to do with why he was here.

"Yes, I did. I'm sorry if I disturbed you."

She waved away his apology with a dismissive hand. "When you get to my age you find that sleep doesn't come easily or for very long. Who did you speak to?"

"Quentin Travers."

Maggie pulled a disgusted face. "That nasty wee beast of a man!"

Giles smiled. "Couldn't agree more!"

"But he sent you here."

"I didn't come willingly."

Her gaze sharpened, "Aye, well, perhaps, but you still came."

As her eyes drilled into him he remembered Quentin's words of the night before < ` … very powerful witch in her own right …'> And a very striking woman. Twisted with age and disease she might be, but there was immense strength in her still, both in the steadiness of her emotions and in the fierce intelligence behind the deep brown eyes.

"I've learned, over the years, that Quentin tends to mean it when he says that things are a matter of life and death."

"And all Watchers are self-serving fools!"

Giles sat back and watched her. The gnarled hands tightened slightly, for an instant, then they relaxed once more. "In my own defence, may I say that I try not be." He leaned forward again, resting his forearms on the table. He studied his palms for a moment and then looked up at her. "The Council wants Jordan to come back with me; you, too, if you'll come."

Maggie shook her head. "She's not going."

"She's projecting, Mrs Fleming: I know it and so do you."

"It's under control …"

"… for now, but the power she has is only going to get stronger. Will you be able to handle it a year down the line? Two?"

"You know nothing about the power!" The old woman's eyes flashed in anger.

"She's a Slayer, I can recognise that power easily enough!"

Maggie's brow furrowed, "But that would mean …"

"… that I'm the Watcher to the current Slayer."

"Then what are you doing here?"

"Consider it a professional courtesy." Their words, bitten off and polite beyond measure, seemed to make both of them stop and draw breath. "I have to go back to London for the day. May I have your permission to come back this evening?"

"Do I have a choice in the matter?"

"For the moment, yes" His reply was uttered as confirmation of something he knew she must have already known. He stood and had moved to leave when a thought occurred to him. "Travers said that there's been some unpleasantness between you and The Council – what happened?"

Maggie turned her head slightly so she could face him. "Unpleasantness?" She mocked. "Aye, well, I suppose you could put it like that. I won't be telling you, it would spoil all of Quentin's fun." She shook her head. "Ask the wee man, I'm sure he'll be delighted to tell you himself!"

Giles bowed fractionally, acquiescing. "Alright, but I'd like to hear your side of it when I get back."

"Perhaps." Her reply was delivered with an almost regal tilt of her head.

He frowned. His voice, when he spoke, was gentle and somehow sad. "I'm not your enemy."

Maggie Fleming shrugged and replied, "You're Council," as if that said everything that needed to be said.

And as he sat on the plane leaving behind the wet, grey, city Giles suspected that, in the end, it did.

>>>>>>

When this building was designed and constructed the architects and builders had been given very specific instructions – give it a hollow space three stories high, with open plan study areas off it, shelving up the walls, ladders, small carrying lifts, and all of it entombed in concrete the thickness of a whole room. This, then, was the hub of the Council - the Library.

Within the larger space was a smaller one. It sat in the middle of the Library shimmering behind its transparent spell-protected walls - The Vault - access granted to very few and containing the Council most precious, powerful and dangerous possessions. It was here that Giles had been sent, to see Jules Prideaux … and The Commentaries. It was here that Giles would allow the Council its first sight of The Codex in so many long years.

He could see the short, stocky, Frenchman through the walls and it was like stepping back in time. The last time he'd seen Jules it had been here, with Jules sitting at the single table, head bent over a manuscript, brow furrowed as he tried to make sense out of the dense language of an age-old prophecy. Then there were the other memories – memories of young men called to their destinies, lost in the world they were thrust into, unsure of themselves, angry with fear, and who, for a brief period half a lifetime ago, had found strength and solace in each other's arms. They'd parted, but had remained close friends: the Slayer's Watcher and the Council's master of prophecies.

The shield of the walls crackled slightly as he approached them. The disturbance caused Jules to raise his head from the papers he was reading. He waved his hand over them and they disappeared, then he pushed his glasses up onto his forehead and grinned at Giles.

"Quickly, mon chère, lest the walls eat you!"

Giles rolled his eyes, "I could be so …" He stepped through the wall. The sharp double pain of the psychic scan of both his body and his intent made him gasp out loud. He was propelled out into the space, breathing fast, heart pounding. "… lucky." He glanced over his shoulder and shuddered. "Bloody hell, I'd forgotten how much that hurts!"

Then Jules was laughing and hugging him hard and pulling his head down to plant a lingering kiss on his mouth. Giles responded, enjoying the feel of the soft lips on his own, but then pulled back slightly with a mumbled warning. "Jules, you'll scare the natives."

The Frenchman stepped back and spoke a particularly rude epithet in his own language to the room at large. Drawn by the noise in the otherwise silent library, faces appeared at the doors and windows of the study rooms around them. He glowered at them. "Pah! Why should we care when the natives are too much les anglais to understand what we are to each other!"

"Mais, je suis anglais." Giles reminded his friend, a smile starting across his lips.

"Bien sur, but you have a little francais inside you."

The smile became a grin. "No, but I've had a little francais inside me!"

The grins became full blown laughter which they both gave rein to. They hugged again and then Jules pulled away, hand on Giles's arm drawing him to the chairs at the desk, as he became all business. Before he sat down Jules drew on the spell to opaque the walls, shutting off both sound and light to outside observers. He dropped his glasses back onto his face and asked, "You have The Codex?"

"Yes." Giles reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out the familiar, small book. It was wrapped in cloth and when he drew the book from this protective covering Jules couldn't suppress his small gasp of astonished delight.

"It is beautiful!"

"I suppose it is. I'd forgotten." Giles frowned, turning the book over in his hands. "I'm so used to it now I've stopped looking at it."

"May I?"

Giles handed the book over and watched as his friend stroked the soft leather of the cover, opened it and ruffled the edges of the pages of parchment before bringing it to his face and breathing in deeply. "Hmm," he murmured appreciatively, "Délicieux: leather and Rupert."

"Behave, Jules." Giles growled good-naturedly.

"So," Jules sat back, The Codex placed on the table between them. "Tell me about the jeune femme."

"I've hardly spoken to her – her grandmother is keeping her away from me."

"It's not surprising since you are there to take her away."

"Not something I'm willing to do."

"Perhaps not." Jules pulled a sympathetic face. "Whoever of us ever wants to do this? But then it becomes a necessity and one can only do one's duty and try to do it with all the compassion that can be found."

" `One's duty?' "

Jules laughed away Giles's disparaging tone. "Oh, chéri, if you could only see your face, all screwed up in righteous indignation!"

"This isn't a laughing matter, Jules."

"No, you are right. I apologise." Jules dropped his hand onto Giles's forearm and squeezed lightly.

Giles shook his head and placed his hand on top of his friend's. "I'm the one who should be apologising … it's … it's just an unpleasant situation."

"But she must come to us, Rupert."

"Of course she must." Giles sighed heavily. "You know, I can feel her even now and she's not even my Slayer."

"Oui, that is how we found her: the sympathetics amongst us … they felt the power."

"And it's only a matter of time before something far worse feels it too …" Giles stopped, thinking about what he'd just said. "… although, given who we are, I can't actually think of anything far worse." And he grinned, a brief flash of gallows humour. "What does the prophecy say?"

"May I?" At Giles's nod Jules picked up The Codex and carefully thumbed through the pages. "Verso 52." He turned a few more pages, found what he was looking for and nodded, as if he had been shown a truth he'd known all along. "Here."

Giles took the book as it was offered to him and began to read the words of the prophecy. " `She who follows the third dead Slayer …' " He looked up at Jules. "I know this passage, it's one of the most obscure prophecies in the whole Codex."

"Of course …" Jules nodded, agreeing. "… but it perhaps becomes less obscure when one substitutes `third' with `thrice.' "

"And your grounds for doing so?"

"Both words appear in The Commentaries."

"Show me?"

Giles's voice had softened and caused Jules to throw a penetrating look in his direction. His friend's face had smoothed out to a bone- deep blankness that gave nothing away of the turmoil he must be feeling. Jules waved his hand over the desk, muttered a few words of incantation and the air shimmered to reveal the collection of bound vellum pages that made up The Commentaries. The Codex, in its hand tooled leather and illustrated with exquisite drawings, was a thing of beauty, whilst The Commentaries, pages roughly sewn and bound, was a workman-like thing. Jules, his hands guided by familiarity, immediately found the correct page and turned it towards Giles. His finger pointed to the line of translation.

Giles sat and looked at it for a long time – until his eyes watered up with the staring. Slayer-lore: The Codex and The Commentaries. It had always been thought that The Commentaries was simply an interpretive companion piece to the glory that was The Codex and yet here it was, revealing itself to be a glory in its own right.

The latin word for `third' couldn't have been more clear in The Codex and yet the author of The Commentaries was speculating on whether the word should, instead, be `thrice.'

Giles picked up The Codex once more, read the prophecy out loud and marvelled at the clarity brought to the passage by the substitution of one small word.

`Bereft of home and hearth, She who follows the thrice dead slayer shall cling to shades. And the power shall grow in her, unchecked: slayer of the deep twilight.

Shield guided She shall show her strength of limb and strength of spirit, And he shall walk her into the light.

Released, shield to gift, she shall take the world into her hand.

And she shall bring down lightening from the north And she shall bring down fire from the north And she shall drive away the devourer of souls.'

"It's Buffy: `the thrice dead slayer.' "

Jules nodded. "Of course. Nothing about the prophecy made sense to the author of The Commentaries, as you can see, but he continued to speculate because he could imagine a slayer being twice dead …"

"… if she was turned …"

"… yes …" Jules hesitated. "And your part in the prophecy? `Shield guided'?".

Ignoring his friend, Giles picked up The Codex and read the prophecy once more. " `Slayer of the deep twilight.' Hmm. You think that the reference is to Scotland?"

"Yes. That and the bringing down of lightening and fire from the north."

"Her magical powers."

"Oui." Jules watched his friend sit back and scan the words on the page before him. "You have doubts?"

Giles pulled a face. "Always - these things are hardly `The Cat In The Hat.' "

"Thank goodness – I do not understand that book!" Jules smiled and was glad to see it returned. "In my experience these things rarely become clear until you have the object of the prophecy before you."

"Yes, and in my experience you get that moment of clarity just before the object of the prophecy flattens you trying to escape!"

"Will she try to escape?"

"I don't know. A lot of it will be up to the grandmother."

"And she will not be co-operative."

"So Quentin tells me."

"Has he told you why?"

"Not yet, I'm going to see him once we've finished here."

Jules nodded. "Then we are finished."

A frown creased Giles's forehead. "We need to discuss this … we have to understand what this prophecy actually means."

"It is important …" Jules laid his hand on Giles's arm. "… that much is clear, but the details can wait for another time."

"When?" And suddenly this was about Giles's fear for his slayer … and `when' was such a small word to hold it all.

"Who can say?" The shrug was the lift of one shoulder. The smile was gentle. Knowing. "You must go and see Quentin now." Giles stood reluctantly. "Would you leave The Codex with me?"

Giles nodded, turned, walked away and disappeared beyond the barrier of the walls.

>>>>>>

For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, Rupert Giles walked into Quentin Travers's office, but this time, with the prophecy between them, there was none of the verbal sparring that usually characterised their encounters.

"Rupert." Travers came out from behind his desk and motioned Giles towards the group of armchairs clustered around a hearth on the other side of the room. As Giles sat down Travers asked, "Can I get you something? Tea, perhaps?" Giles shook his head. "Very well." Travers joined his guest, settled in a chair and looked at Giles over steepled fingers. "So?"

"Before yesterday, if someone had told me that I'd agree with you about anything I'd have said they were mad."

"And now?" Travers's smile was without its normal mocking quality. "Ah … countries will fall."

"Probably." Giles settled back into his chair. "What would you like to talk about first, ancient history or coming prophecies?"

"It is the girl?"

Prophecies, then. "Jules seems to think so."

"And you?"

"I trust Jules."

Travers nodded absently. "And your part in the prophecy?"

<'Shield guided'> "Something else you neglected to tell me."

"You must bring her to us, Rupert."

"I know." This admission had been easier with Jules – the man who knew the true nature of Giles's calling. With Travers, this felt like a betrayal of his soul. Unease drove him to his feet and on over to the window. This high he could look out over the rooftops of this great city - buildings ancient and modern – and saw in them the reflection of his very world: ancient prophecies come to pass in a modern world that has no knowledge of them and no need for them. Mankind makes its way now in a world dominated by the harsh double beauty of mathematics and science. And what of gods and monsters? "I can't be this girl's Watcher, Quentin." He turned to face the older man. "I don't think I have it left in me."

"Yes, you do. As I'm sure you'll see when you return to your Miss Summers."

A fleeting frown washed across Giles's face. "Don't you mean `if' I return?"

"No, I'm sure I mean `when.' "

As the two men looked at each in silence, Giles was reminded of the conversation they'd had in the abandoned inn before The Cruciamentum. They'd seemed then to be moving towards some sort of uneasy acceptance of each other's position - an acceptance so quickly undermined by the events that had followed.

"I can't be her Watcher." Giles repeated, this time with more strength in his voice. "Don't ask me to do it."

Travers was quiet for a few moments longer. "Very well, Rupert, it will be as you wish."

"Thank you."

"Come, sit back down." He waited until Giles had settled again before he continued. "So to current ancient history. Maggie Fleming's sister was a Slayer and her father, a watcher: Watcher to his own daughter."

"And we allowed that to happen?"

Travers shrugged slightly. "He heard the Calling … and there was no precedent for the situation."

"What happened?"

"A prophecy. We thought we knew what they were facing, but we were wrong and they were sent out unprepared into a nest of Ashok beasts."

"Oh, god." Giles shuddered as he recalled his own near fatal encounter with the famed hellbeasts.

"Quite."

"They were both killed?"

"Yes, along with the four other watchers and a dozen or so K'llirrian mercenaries with them." A slight shiver rippled through Travers's frame. "The Slayer and her Watcher were dumped on the family doorstep – same house Maggie and Jordan Fleming are currently living in. Maggie Fleming found them."

<In pieces, no doubt> Giles shuddered again. "And?"

"She asked for and got an internal investigation into their deaths. The Council was shown to be negligent. Maggie Fleming has forsworn The Council ever since."

Giles pulled a face. "Hardly surprising." Then he frowned. " `Current ancient history'?"

Travers sighed. "Another Slayer in the family and lost in much the same way a couple of hundred years ago."

"And now they have a third Slayer? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out why she doesn't want to hand the girl over, does it! Bloody hell, what a mess!" He stood and started pacing backwards and forwards across the mat in front of the hearth. "Maggie Fleming thinks you're a `nasty wee beast of a man.' What did you do to her?"

"Tried to make her see sense."

"In your own inimitable style, no doubt." Giles's voice was as dry as dust. "We have got to do better by these children!"

"Give them a life when we know just how short at time it'll be that they have to live it?" Travers shook his head. "Can you honestly say that Miss Summers has benefited from such an approach?"

"Yes!" Giles's one word reply was spat out fiercely … and not elaborated upon. He, too, knew all about saying just enough.

Travers smiled. "Miss Summers isn't really the problem here, though, is she?"

"Except for the fact that Jordan will become the Slayer on Buffy's death."

"Yes, except for that. Interesting, isn't it, that the Powers seem to have decided that the Faith line is an aberration?"

Eyes narrowing, Giles huffed out an angry breath. "Excuse me if I don't show any remorse over that fact!"

"Just so."

"We have to understand this prophecy."

"Jules will work it out."

"But when?" Giles ran his hands backwards through his hair. The tension transferred to the skin of his face, tightening it across the bones. "I have to know … when … when … Buffy's going to die."

"This'll be the third time. I would've thought it's getting easier - for both of you."

There was a terrible silence.

Giles pulled his sleeve away so he could see his watch. "You've been civil for almost ten minutes. I was beginning to remember why I used to like you." He looked up and his eyes were glacier cold. "Then you had to go and spoil it, didn't you?"

"This love you have for her will, ultimately, be your undoing."

Giles straightened to his full height and stared down at Quentin Travers. "And when that day comes I'm sure you'll be found shedding crocodile tears and wishing good riddance to bad rubbish."

Travers stood, walked past Giles and settled at his desk. He pulled his papers towards him before fixing his gaze once more on Giles. "Go back to Glasgow, Rupert, and bring back the girl."

Dismissed, Giles spun angrily on his heel and marched towards the door. With the open door in his hand, Quentin's voice stopped him. "Contrary to your opinion, when `that day comes' I will be found mourning the loss both of a valued colleague and a man that I respect. Good day."

And he went back to his work, leaving Giles to softly close the door.

>>>>>>

Travers's words had surprised him, shocked him, even. He'd had no idea that Travers still respected him after he, Giles, had lost all respect he'd once held for the older man. Travers had been a member of The Council for as long as anyone could remember: his family had provided The Council with watchers for generations. Their influence had come and gone, there were a good number of Board members among them, but Quentin Travers head of Special Ops and The Council's self- styled enforcer, was as highly placed as anyone from his family had been within the past one hundred years.

He'd been Giles's tutor for the first three years of Giles's career as a watcher, guiding him through those uncertain times. It had been a heady experience - Travers was a renowned expert in the ancient Sumerian culture, its archaeology and language - the studying, the challenges to the intellect, the sheer bloody hard work of it.

Travers had been a hard taskmaster, but a fair one: depending on the circumstance he would be ruthless in his criticism, or unstinting in his praise. He ruled over `his' watchers like some kind of benevolent dictator – he expected the best and generally got it. Giles had thrived.

When it had fallen apart, it had done so quickly. Travers's great intellect was fused to an ambitious streak … and he'd reached out and taken his position: and whereas before his life had been all about artefacts and translations, it had become all about plots and politics … and gaining power … and keeping power.

It had been like watching J. Edgar Hoover at work. Over the years Travers had systematically siphoned up each tiny scrap of information about every single member of The Council … and no-one knew where the information was held. He`d been offered a seat on the Board on many occasions, but had declined them all, satisfied, he'd said, with his current position …

… and all Giles had been able to see was a man who'd betrayed himself and his calling. They'd eventually fought about it. Giles had called his former mentor a traitor. Travers in his turn had called Giles a fool. They barely spoke now except in snarls and cheap, vicious, shots. There was just too much water under the bridge and there'd been too many arguments over too many things.

"Damn him!"

"Who?"

Giles spun around in his chair to find Jane Bergmann standing behind him. He narrowed his eyes at her. "Your boss."

"Yours too, unless I've missed something."

Ignoring her comment, he asked, "Are you just going to stand there or are you going to join me?"

"How could I resist such a gracious invitation?" She grinned as she settled across the table from him. "We always seem to be meeting in the café – why is that?"

Giles sat back and looked at her over the top of his cup. "We've met here twice now – hardly a number that justifies comment."

Jane frowned. "You're hard work, do you know that?"

He swallowed a mouthful of tea. "In what regard?"

"I don't know … small talk."

"Why would I want to make small talk with you?"

"Because that's how people get to know each other."

"And you want to get to know me?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I want you to be my teacher."

He was so surprised he laughed out loud. "Yesterday you were threatening to have me arrested and now you want me to be your teacher?" He shook his head, still amused at her audacity. "I'll pass, thanks."

"And if I hadn't threatened yesterday to have you arrested?"

"I'd still pass."

"Could you tell me why?"

"No."

The frown was back on her face. "Is that a `can't' no, or a `won't' no?"

Giles raised an eyebrow at her persistence. "You're very pushy, aren't you." It wasn't a question and the tone of his voice had hardened.

"When I want something, yes." She refused to be cowed by the `go away' she heard in the cool warning implicit in his words.

He studied her for a moment, eyes narrowed, then got to his feet. "Come on." He nodded his head to collect her to him and strode out of the café. They rode up four floors in the elevator in complete silence. It deposited them at the second level of the library and when the doors opened Giles took the half a dozen steps across the corridor until he met the rail of the gallery. He waited until Jane had joined him and then gestured at the scene spread out before them. "They're your teachers – look at them."

Jane stared out over a sight she'd come to know so well over the past four years: row upon row of books spread out all around them. But they weren't enough anymore … and she needed to make him understand that. So she began to speak, in low tones designed to make him lean down and concentrate on what she was saying, quoting word for word from the books, page and line number, printing details where there were any, addendums where they'd been added, and always swathes of text. She spoke for almost ten minutes, giving him passages at random from books she loved, books she hated, books so rare that she'd only been able look at them through the glass panels that protected them. And then she stopped. "I have perfect recall: once I've read something I know it and I know it for all time. I can read a language key and then translate something from that language into English." She looked away from the shelves and into his eyes. "These books can't teach me anything anymore."

Giles took off his glasses and polished the lenses, faintly embarrassed, aware of just how patronising he'd sounded. He was also aware that his position was now more perilous than it had been. When he thought he could fob her off with a `go away and read' response, he'd thought himself to be safe, but the situation had changed now into something he'd have to pick his way though with extreme caution.

"Now you need the skills to interpret them in the real world."

"Yes."

"How old are you?"

If she was puzzled by his question she didn't show it. "Nineteen. I came here when I was fifteen."

"You're very young to get a Slayer. I can't remember the last time a Watcher of your age was Called - and that's what this is all about, isn't it?"

"I didn't see any harm in trying to maximise my chances."

Giles smiled sadly remembering a time when he was in just as much of a rush to get on, get a Slayer, save the world. "So why come to me?" There was a bench a few steps further down the corridor and he waved her over to it. They sat together, side by side.

Jane frowned again, her favourite expression for the past fifteen minutes it seemed to him. "Because of what you were when you were younger …" She looked up at him trying, he knew, to interpret the schooled blank look on his face. "… and what you are now. The fact that Buffy's still alive after five and a half years …"

"… is entirely because of who she is."

She shook her head. "I disagree. A Watcher serves the Slayer: isn't that what you told me yesterday? And I think that … I think that maybe you've served her very well."

"Do you." The cool dry tone was back in his voice again. "How very `certain' of you."

Jane shrugged. "I've read your diaries – would you like me to quote from them?" She didn't give him an opportunity to answer as she plowed on. "What it means to be a Watcher has changed …" She grimaced, correcting herself. "… no, it's become what it always should have been … what it used to be. The Council serves the Slayer. Not the other way around. Buffy reminded us of that … and she knew that it was true because that's what you've been doing for her, isn't it." And now she was asking questions that weren't really questions. "I don't want to be you, but I want to be that type of Watcher. I need to be that type of Watcher."

She wouldn't ask him again for his help: he saw that in the set of her shoulders and the deliberately blank look in her eyes. His guts twisted up inside him. He was burned out, he knew it. Five and a half years of keeping his Slayer alive. Five and a half years of seeing her through one crisis after another. Five and a half years of coping with emotions so deep that he could have, should have, drowned in them. Five and a half years of living on the very edge of hell … and a lifetime of regrets to swallow it all up in. But he'd said that this was The Council's work, serving the Slayer, and now here was Jane Bergmann, sitting beside him, calling his bluff.

He stood up suddenly making her pull back slightly in surprise. He turned his head to stare down the corridor. "I need to walk or I stiffen up." He announced and turned back so he could look down at her. "Walk with me?"

Her face was still so very serious as she nodded slowly and replied, "I'd like that."

>>>>>>

Travers stepped through the shields of The Vault and sat down at the table beside Jules. "Where are they?"

Jules gestured with a thrust of his chin. "Level Two."

As Travers looked up he saw Rupert Giles and Jane Bergmann slowly walking the circuit of the observation deck around the Library. Rupert Giles and Jane Bergmann: so different and yet so alike. He wondered if they'd realised it yet.

"He will say `yes' to her." Jules watched his best friend as he leaned down to better hear the words of the young woman walking at his side. "I think he already has."

"Yes …" Travers agreed, softly. "… I think he already has."

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