Banner by Selene

It had taken him twenty years. Twenty years spent making amends for his misspent youth, yes sir-ing and yes ma’am-ing his “betters”, biting back rude retorts as he was talked about by the elder watchers as if he wasn’t standing right there in the bloody room, dressing in the stodgy clothes that marked him as a watcher-in-training.

Thankfully, having three generations of stalwart watchers in the family had overcome his past transgressions, his fall from grace, so to speak, and he’d finally, finally been given his own slayer to oversee.

Oh, he had no illusions regarding this particular assignment. The Council had failed dismally and hadn’t identified Buffy Summers as the next slayer, then gone one further and not realized that Merrick had died, leaving the girl alone with her calling and woefully lacking in the regimented training slayers were afforded.

The Council –Travers and his father, in particular – fully expected him to fail in his endeavor to bring the Slayer to heel and train her to fulfill her calling, her duty. They were looking for a scapegoat, pure and simple. Someone to make a muck of things and get the girl killed, and the sooner the better in their minds.

But he would have the last laugh.

Prior to leaving the continent, he’d raided his family’s extensive library on demons, witchcraft, and the paranormal, books that even the Council would kill to possess… and right under his father’s nose, no less.

His charge was going to make history and wind up being the longest lived slayer in the history of slayers. And he would be recorded as the watcher that made it happen.

The Hellmouth, heretofore unguarded and currently a cesspool of deadly demons, would experience a change. The Slayer was coming to town and would soon be setting to rights such a sad state of affairs.

Confident in his abilities and those of his soon-to-be slayer’s, Giles settled back into his seat and flipped through a magazine the airline had provided as the plane taxied out onto the runway, taking him away from the motherland and towards his destiny.

~*~*~*~*~

“Bloody hell,” Giles muttered as he crashed into a stack of boxes upon which several books on demon mythology were perched; it was only his quick reflexes – and horror over the prospect of the irreplaceable tomes being damaged – that enabled him to catch the pile before they fell from their perch and toppled to the ground.

He righted the books on top of the boxes, then thought better of it and grabbed the lot, transferring them to the less cluttered coffee table, the surface being much closer to the ground.

‘Tea first,’ he thought, eyeing the mess that was the small flat the Council had procured for him.

He’d only been stateside for two days, and in that time he’d managed to familiarize himself with Sunnydale. After acquiring a new driver’s permit, he’d driven around town, locating the local grocery store, bank – and magic shop – all without too much difficulty. And he’d congratulated himself on adjusting to driving on the right side with relative ease and only a few blown horns and rude gestures sent in his direction along the way.

He’d also met with the principal of Sunnydale High School, Robert Flutie, briefly going over his duties as the new librarian. Flutie appeared likeable enough, if rather naïve to the supernatural goings on in the city – but then, that appeared to be the case with most of Sunnydale’s citizens. The two had taken a brief tour of the school after the interview which had ended at the library, and Giles had been left alone to familiarize himself with the layout of the place. He’d spent a few hours in there, arranging his desk and making his workspace ready for the first day of school the following Tuesday, before venturing home to begin the tedious task of unpacking.

Unfortunately, jet lag had caught up with him not long afterwards and he’d drifted off before unpacking the first box.

Giles rubbed at the kink in his neck – compliments of falling asleep on his hard couch rather than the more comfortable bed upstairs – as he waited for his tea to brew. Eyeing the clock on the wall, he wasn’t surprised to see that he’d slept the rest of the day as well as the night away. Excitement over his new position had made it difficult for him to sleep in the week prior to his leaving England, and he’d barely managed a handful of hours sleep a night.

When his tea finished brewing, Giles made himself a cup and took a few sips as he wandered around his flat, trying to come up with a game plan for getting his belongings squared away. Several hours later, he’d made decent headway on the downstairs. His reference books were on shelves, categorized and alphabetized for easy reference. Boxes had been broken down and stacked by the front door, leaving him more space to maneuver about the room. By dinnertime, he’d unpacked all of his boxes and put the majority of his things away.

The phone rang before he could start preparing dinner, the static coming through the line easily identifying the call as international.

“Hello?”

“Rupert? Rupert Giles?”

“Yes, this is he.”

“I have an address for you.”

“Very well, go ahead.” He’d been waiting for this particular information all day, and he scrambled for pen and paper and prepared to write, jotting down the address as it was given to him.

Eager for his first glimpse of the girl, Giles grabbed his keys and let himself out of his flat. He’d just drive by the Slayer’s new home…

~*~*~*~*~

The nighttime drive-by had been a bust, which was why Giles ventured out first thing the next morning. A small moving van was parked out front of 1630 Revello Drive – the address he’d been given by a lackey at Council Headquarters – and two workmen were being directed by an attractive woman who appeared in her late thirties.

From his vantage point several houses away and across the street, Giles pulled out his notepad and jotted down his first impression of Joyce Summers, the Slayer’s mother. Just as he began to write, however, a younger woman – undoubtedly Buffy – stepped out of the house and made her way to her mother’s side.

His jaw fell open and he nearly dropped the pen in his hand.

‘That’s the Slayer that vanquished the master vampire Lothos?’ he thought.

Giles knew that slayers were called at a young age, but the girl standing out on the front lawn in nothing but a pair of shorts that barely covered her bum and a skimpy frock that didn’t leave much to the imagination looked far younger than any of the girls called in recent years.

He was at a loss, and unsure quite how to proceed.

The one thing he did know was that the slayer handbook he had tucked away on his shelf would never see the light of day. There was just something about the girl’s demeanor that suggested she would not be open to any type of book learning associated with slaying.

Giles sighed and reluctantly set his notebook aside and started his car. He definitely had his work cut out for him.

His slayer probably had some type of informal training from Merrick and possessed a few fighting skills – if not raw talent – since she’d managed to defeat Lothos. He was just having trouble reconciling that fact with the girl that now stood before him looking more like a pubescent youth than a slayer.

There was no sense borrowing trouble before it was due, however, and Giles reminded himself that looks were always deceiving.

As he drove home, he made a mental list of things he needed to get accomplished in the next few days.

The first was arranging a meeting with the girl… introduce himself as her watcher and get her on some type of training regiment. Easier said than done, given that he had to take into account her mother’s very visible presence in his slayer’s life.

But, he would persevere.

He had a goal after all.

The End  

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