TITLE: The Watcher: Ministers of Grace 1/3
AUTHOR: vatwoman
RATING: PG13
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, UPN etc own Giles and anyone else in the Buffyverse, Anna and everyone I invent are mine.
SUMMARY: Third story in The Watcher series, and, at last, a vampire! This story follows on directly from `127 Fountain Street.'
FEEDBACK: Will be gratefully received on list, or at: vatwoman@yahoo.co.uk

Synchronicity.

The wonder of it made Anna stop working just to better appreciate it: one idle glance away from what she was doing that had taken her gaze down her driveway and out across the street to his front door just as he stepped out of it.

His side of the street was as shadowed as hers was bathed in bright sunlight, and she smiled wistfully at the cliché-ridden aptness of that fact. He seemed to bring the shadows with him. With his back to the sun, she couldn't make out the details of his face until he was almost standing in front of her, and then she saw that they were so roughly etched on him that looking at him was almost too much for her to bear.

She held out her hand, and when he took it she applied a gentle pressure to tug him down beside her. He settled on the ground sheet, still holding her hand. He bent his head slightly, apparently watching the play of his fingers across hers, and the late afternoon sun caught his hair. There seemed to be so much more grey in it than she remembered. She let go of him and went back to her work.

The bulbs came easily out of earth that had been softened by the night's light rain and she fell into a rhythm of digging out, brushing off the bulb and placing it in the basket that lay on the lawn on the other side of the flower bed. She occasionally glanced across at the man sitting so quietly at her side, with his eyes closed and his face tilted up to the sun. A warm breeze from the Indian summer day drifted across them bringing with it the simple scents of the last of the roses and late-mown grass.

"You look tired." That was a lie. In truth, he looked past the point of exhaustion. "Thank you for the phone call."

It took him a long time to say anything, as if everything that he was, was concentrated on feeling the warmth of the sun on his face. He slowly reopened his eyes. "I thought you'd want to know what happened."

"I did," she nodded. "I slept a bit easier last night."

"Good. What …"

"When …"

Giles gestured for her to continue.

"When did you get back?"

"I'm not sure," he frowned, trying to remember. "Seven, eight o'clock this morning. Something like that. I still haven't shaken this damn jetlag."

"Have you managed to get some sleep?"

He shook his head, "Tossed and turned."

"How's Jordan?"

"Quieter when I left this morning. I don't think she stopped crying at all yesterday."

"But Jane's with her?"

"Yes." He rubbed the heel of a hand into his left eye. That was when she realised that he wasn't wearing his glasses. He took his hand away and it dropped neatly into his lap to rest there with the other one. His shoulders slumped listlessly and she wondered just how far into shock he'd fallen. "This isn't the conversation we're supposed to be having."

"Isn't it?" She sat back and idly rubbed some dirt off her hands. "It's actually pretty much as I'd imagined it; we go from how you are, to how Jordan is, to how I am, and see where that leads us. Unless you really do just want to cut to the chase?"

"That would probably be best."

"Why?"

"Because there's no point in drawing this out when we both know what the end result will be."

"Which is?"

"Your disgust at what I've done." His voice, suddenly devoid of the dreamy, slow-motion quality, was full of self-loathing. He looked away. Frown lines extended across the side of his brow and the tendon in his neck was stretched taut. The heavy muscles in his jaw visibly rippled under his unshaven skin and there was a flush across his neck and face that made him look feverish. He rubbed his eye again. "How are you?"

If he meant to mock her she couldn't detect it in his voice, but still, the thought that he might be fuelled her sharp response. "Do you really want to know?" He didn't reply, forcing her to continue on a sigh. "I'm concerned … frightened."

"Of me?"

"*For* you."

He laughed harshly and then his face set again like stone. "Don't waste your energy, I'm not worth it."

She took a moment to just look at him - to look at the mess he was in - before she replied. When she spoke she allowed a deliberate hint of anger into her voice.

"Is this what you do?"

"What do you mean?"

"This is what you do, isn't it?" she nodded, answering her own question. "It's funny, I thought you were alone because the people in your life had walked out on you." She tilted her head to one side as she looked at him, "I had no idea you'd pushed them out."

She watched his eyes narrow and his skin grey out.

"No," Giles contradicted in a clipped, angry tone. "Jenny, if you remember, was murdered."

"But she was very much the exception to the rule, and hadn't you already pushed her away?"

"What are you doing?" The anger had deepened his voice and added a rasping edge to it.

"Still raw is it? Too close to the bone?" She continued to push him. Taunt him.

"What the hell is this?"

The pain on his face was palpable. She wondered if he'd really not expected her to fight for him.

"You're drifting, Giles," she explained

"And that justifies you being brutal?"

"I'm saying what I think." Anna leaned forward slightly to add emphasis to her words. "I'm being honest with you. I'm not trying to hurt you."

"Perhaps not, but you have."

"Then I'm sorry for that," she reached across and took his hand, holding on tight. "But I think if we're going to have this conversation, if we're going to go on being friends, then I don't want to go on without knowing that there's only ever going to be complete honesty between us."

"And what are you *honestly* trying to say about me right now?"

She didn't flinch in the face of his mockery. "That you were the one who phoned me. That you're not being consistent in what you seem to want. That you don't get to choose whether or not we stay in each other's lives. That your arrogance in thinking that you do get to choose offends me."

"More than my killing people does?" He pulled his hand away and moved to stand up. He got as far as his knees before he stopped. "Has it even occurred to you that me pushing you out of my life might be the best thing I could ever do for you?"

"Of course it has, and I may come to agree with you, but you're not going to be allowed to push me. If it comes to it that it's safer that we don't carry this forward then it'll be because we've decided it."

If she'd shouted at him, been anything less than completely rational about this, he would have got up and walked away from her. As it was, her implacable calm defeated him. A tired ghost of a smile pulled at his mouth, "So it's official: we're friends?"

Recognising the olive branch for what it was, Anna returned his smile, "I think we are …for the moment anyway … unless …"

"No! Don't you *dare* get all hesitant on me now!"

"I won't. I promise." She raised an eyebrow, "Perhaps we should start again?"

"With?" Giles settled back down.

"You look terrible."

"I think you said `tired' the first time." He managed a quiet smile to take any sting out of the dry tones. "It's what three nights of virtually no sleep, two days of my own modest version of shuttle- diplomacy and almost having to kill a young girl does to you."

Anna nodded and heard in his words his readiness to talk. "Do you want to help?" She gestured at the flowerbed in front of them.

"Alright." Giles slipped off his ring, dropped it into the pocket of his shirt and rolled up his sleeves. "What can I do?"

"You can clean the bulbs off. Then just chuck them in the basket." She'd found her rhythm easily enough earlier and found it again with him: digging out the bulbs; handing them over for cleaning; laughing with him as he dropped mud on his jeans. The sun continued warm on their backs, but cooled by a welcome breeze. "Your friend. You said his name was Randall?"

"Thomas Randall. You've already heard a lot of this. Eyghon?" Anna nodded. "When I dropped out of university, I deliberately found myself the worst crowd I could to run with. We got involved with everything; sex, drugs, and, eventually, magic."

"But not the magic that you'd been studying?"

"No, that was kid's stuff compared to what we got into." He brushed his hands off and stared into space for a few moments. "There were five of us, just enough to make sure that peer pressure would put pay to anyone who decided to act as a voice of reason."

"Did anyone?"

"Deirdre," he frowned slightly, trying to remember. "Said she'd had a vision that we were all going to die."

"Had she?"

"I've no idea, but I wouldn't have listened to her even if I *had* believed her. Having a death wish was considered to be `cool' amongst my small circle of friends." He shook his head at the depth of his stupidity. "God …"

"And then you found Eyghon."

"Yeah, Ethan and I found it. The spell to summon the demon was in a grimoire we'd nicked from a rare book dealer. I remember it, the way the book seemed to fall open at the page." He huffed out a short lung clearing breath and then inhaled deeply. " `Course we did the spell. Didn't think about the consequences - couldn't have given a shit about them to be honest - until Randall lost control. Eyghon took him whole. We couldn't get the demon out of him and suddenly it was coming for us. We tried everything we could - spell after endless bloody spell – but it didn't do a damn bit of good. It tried to kill us, one by one, but we kept beating it down. Beating *him* down. Then, finally, he just didn't get up again."

"Did you try to revive him?"

Giles slowly shook his head. "Eyghon left Randall's body the moment he died – the body liquefied immediately."

"Oh …" The sound forced its way past her lips of its own volition. Anna wasn't even sure what it represented. Horror? Sorrow? Anger? Fear? Pity? All of those.

"Couldn't even give his parents a body to bury."

"What did you tell them?"

"Nothing … at least I didn't. We ran, all of us. Didn't know where the demon was and we didn't want to take the chance that it would find us. So we ran."

Anna nodded, knowing that this was going to be the answer. And who would have blamed them for doing what they did? "Where did you go?"

The corner of Giles's mouth curled upwards in a self-mocking smile. "The `bad boy' couldn't hack it and threw himself on the mercy of his dearly beloved mum and dad. My father got me back into college and back into the Council. He went to see Tommy's parents. I never found out what was said."

"And Ben?"

He bent one knee, leaned an elbow on it and fisted his hand at his temple. "A much more straightforward tale of god taking over the person of a human male, human resisting but not being strong enough, god opening a dimensional gate that, as well as letting out all manner of unpleasant demonic creatures, will eventually destroy the world, Slayer injuring god, god temporarily turning back into human, *not* dying and looking like making a recovery that will see the god once again threatening the world." He looked Anna straight in the eye as he finished. "I couldn't let that happen. She would have reopened the gate to her world and destroyed ours. So I killed him and with him, her."

Anna pulled her legs up to her chest, wrapped her arms around them and rested her chin on her knees. They sat quietly, just looking at each other. Around them life went on, traffic in the street, children playing in her next door neighbour's garden, dogs barking in the distance, and there was something deeply surreal about that.

"Why are you telling me this?"

He looked off into the distance and the slanting sunlight caught his hair again, turning grey to silver. "Some of it's fear." He turned back. "The fear that maybe I've turned into some sort of monster, and I need someone to tell me that it isn't true. Some of it's what you said: friendship demands truth. Some of it's just a … a need to say it out loud. To someone. I've been carrying it around for so long. It's hard, sometimes, to keep it inside."

"And you think it should be easier?"

"No, of course not."

Anna shifted again to sit cross-legged. "Do you want to know what I think?"

"Yes."

"I think that we live in very different worlds, you and I." Her words came slowly as she thought about what she was trying to say to him. "Even though mine's been as black as hell, I live in the sunlight." She held out her hand to the sun, flattening her palm so that no shadows fell on it. Then she curled her fingers in slowly and it was if she was drawing night to her flesh. "But I'm not sure you do." He stayed silent, looking intently at her half closed hand. "Maybe for that reason I can understand why you had to kill Ben." He looked up into her eyes. "Self-defence is an accepted argument for killing someone in my world, so I wouldn't even know where to start in trying to argue that the defence of the planet shouldn't be an accepted one in yours."

"They're the same worlds, Anna," he contradicted gently.

"No, they're not," she shook her head. "If they were, we'd all know about vampires and demons and watchers and slayers, and I would have gone to some glorified `pest' exterminator to get rid of my ghost and you and I would never have met."

"You forgive very easily."

"I didn't say anything about forgiveness. I said `understood' why you killed him." She tilted her head to one side, and pinned him with a piercing look, "Do you think that Ben's death is something you need to be forgiven for?"

"No." The speed of his response, the lack of hesitation, spoke of the truth.

"Neither do I." *His* truth was hers now also, something she'd had to come to terms with over the past few days.

"And Randall?"

Anna nodded, knowing this was to be his next question. "That's harder." She held out her hand to him and he slipped his fingers into hers as he'd done earlier, "I think that's something you need to forgive yourself for."

"And if I can't?"

"Then you have to find a way to at least make some sort of peace with it; you can't live the rest of your life with it eating away at you like this."

"Not even as penance?"

"You mean arrogant self-indulgence." Giles raised an eyebrow at her vehemence, and despite the seriousness of their conversation, smiled at her. "Penance is an overrated commodity." The harsh tones stayed with her as she asked what he realised would be her last question of him on this matter. "Would you have killed Jordan?"

"Yes." And despite the horror of the situation that had been forced upon him in Glasgow, he knew he was telling the truth. "Just as I would have Dawn before her." Then because he knew they'd finished with this, he changed the subject. "Thank you for my invitation."

"Are you going to come?"

"Do you want me to?"

"Yes."

He smiled at her, as a friend would, a smile full of understandings. "Then I'll come."

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