AUTHOR: vatwoman
RATING: FRC
SUMMARY: A short piece describing Giles’s thoughts at the end of the ‘Buffy’ episode, ‘Grave.’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: Without prejudice. The names of all characters contained herein are the property of Joss Whedon/Mutant Enemy. No infringements of these copyrights intended, and are used here without permission.
FEEDBACK: Yes please, on list at TweedyBookGuy, or to:
vatwoman@yahoo.co.uk
Years ago I drew lines in the sand, then turned my back so I wouldn’t see her stepping over them. And when the time came to build fences, and walls, and towers, and battlements, I did so, then looked around me - so satisfied with my work - only to find her standing on the outside, wise to my plans, too strong to be captured by such puny defences.
And it came to this. As apocalypses go, this was a good one - so close to succeeding that the fabric of the earth is still trembling with the shock of it. So am I, still trembling.
Yet she’s weeping now - almost broken now - held in the arms of a boy who’s loved her all his life, but could never love her enough to keep her safe and sane.
Her eyes would have told me. First, bright with madness, then bloodshot through grief, and blackened by corruption, they would have told me everything, if I’d cared to look. The wonder has been my blindness - wilful, cowardly - and my self-serving belief that her descent into darkness was no such thing at all.
So hating her would be an hypocrisy. Yet I do. Hate her. Hate her for her need to revenge, and the way that even now she’d unleash it once more if she could. Hate her for the mirror she holds up to me. For we’ve both killed now, and know its taste; the immediate sweetness of it - like a rush of sugar to the blood. But she doesn’t know yet that there’s also bitterness - thick as gall - hidden deep inside her, waiting to choke the life out of even the smallest act of reparation.
Standing up is hard - walking even more so - but it has to be done. Life goes on. Life will go on.
She knows I’m coming for her. Let her be fearful of that - she deserves to be fearful of us all - although I know it will fall to me to make her whole again. And if I can, I will - even though the crushing pain of her power is still fresh in my chest; and I can feel her darkness in my blood; and the young people whom I’ve come to serve and love have no idea what it is that they’re asking of me.
And this will be my final act of reparation, for things said and unsaid, for deeds done and undone: the wheel coming full circle.
For this is my fault.
So I go to her; Willow, as she weeps.
END
12th June 2005