Author: vatwoman

Email: vatwoman@yahoo.co.uk

Rating: FRC

Summary: for Headrush’s Giles hurt/comfort fic challenge

Words: debt, exquisite, inheritance, isolation, solitude, unbearable

Solitude suits him. Isolation suits him more, but is not possible here. Here, where he’s needed, but not wanted. Here, at his Slayer’s side; destiny-bonded.

And because of that, and because, lost, he’d walked into her classroom, it was she who’d found him, the rose quartz crystal in her hand. Knowing nothing of its history, she’d given it to him. Given it back to him. For comfort, she’d said. For healing.

Oh, God. Jenny.

He used to cry every minute, of every hour, of every day. He cries now only on Wednesdays. Of every second week. An arbitrary choice, he acknowledges that. It could so easily have been Thursdays, or Mondays. Regardless, it seems to him to be a decent compromise between walling himself off from his feelings, and slowly drowning in his tears.

Buffy had told him she was so sorry. That she’d really liked her. He’d become unaccountably angry: how could she have known that? How could that emotion have come so easily to her, when he’d struggled so much to find it within himself? He’d known he’d loved Jenny. Loving her was the simplest thing he’d ever done. But liking her?

Liking is such an exquisite, complicated emotion. He’d had to break it down, look to the parts. He’d liked the way she’d smiled. The way she’d laughed with him. The way she’d made magic. The way she’d worn her jewellery, and the places she’d chosen to wear it. The way she’d challenged him. How she’d gone her own way even though it had broken faith with him, but not with herself. How she’d taken responsibility for her actions, and had stood aside.

And finally, with their tentative rapprochement - the gentle looks, the quiet words - after so much hurt, he’d come to realise that he’d liked her very much indeed.

Days, weeks, months later, he still wishes this life was unbearable but he knows it isn’t. He knows exactly who, and what he has to bear. Knows that’s why he was chosen. Knows that what is demanded of him is utter and absolute sacrifice: of self; of will; of love; of joy; of hope. Knows that his inheritance is the debt of ages, passed from generation to generation - from watcher to watcher - until a balance is found; until the doing of good isn’t seen as a corrupting force that demands the loss of goodness as counterweight. Knows that what he feels now, he’ll feel until the end of time.

They’re on the other side of the street. Calling to him. Buffy, Willow, and Xander; the self styled Scooby Gang. He thinks he might ignore them, but knows he’s long since past the point where that’s possible. Or even desired. And yet …

… and yet stepping off the sidewalk is like falling from the edge of the world.

Street philosophers are fond of saying that it’s the fall that kills you. Bollocks. It’s hitting rock bottom that does it to you every time.

The End