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Time to Say Goodbye
by Lianne Burwell
January 2004
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Giles woke at nearly noon with a drum band doing drills in 
his head. It wasn't a hangover headache -- he'd had enough 
of those in his life to know what that was like. However, 
the distinction didn't make him feel any better.

He pushed himself up to a seated position on the rug in the 
middle of his living room and looked around, shivering 
slightly. It wasn't actually cold -- he was in California, 
after all -- but the breeze from the fan up in the loft 
verged on uncomfortable against naked flesh, and the memory 
of what he had done the night before didn't help either.

Puddles of wax that had been candles -- plain beeswax, made 
by hand with no artificial ingredients -- sat on the coffee 
table in mute reproach. A knife with a dark crust lay next 
to it, and he mentally reminded himself to wash and bandage 
his hand. The book -- one that he'd carried with him for 
years, but had not opened since that night. The night that 
Ripper had died.

His stomach rose up in his throat, and he forced it back 
down again. His threadbare robe was lying over the back of 
his armchair, and he quickly pulled it on, armoring himself 
against the day and what he had done. His glasses were on 
the side table, and he put them on, almost like a disguise. 
He opened a window to get rid of the last of the burnt wax 
smell, then moved to clean up. The candle remains went in 
the trash, while the knife was cleaned and returned to the 
metal lockbox along with the book. As for the stink of 
Chaos, there was little he could do about that. Even a full 
purification wouldn't get rid of it. It would simply have 
to go away on its own, over time. If ever.

He found himself staring at the table top, still feeling a 
tad dazed. He really should go get something to clean it 
with, although he wasn't sure that the wax stains would 
ever go away. Perhaps he should get rid of it. He didn't 
think he would ever be able to cleanse the memory of what 
he'd done from it.

Two months it had taken. Two months to gather the 
ingredients. Two months to prepare himself for what he 
planned. And in the end...

He hadn't been able to do it. To pull her back from where 
she was. She had earned her rest. She didn't deserve to be 
brought back to this world that had caused her so much pain 
and grief. Not to comfort her sister, her friends. Not even 
for a foolish old man who cared far more than he should 
have.

Giles shook his head, trying to clean away the last of the 
effects of his aborted spellcasting, then went back to 
cleaning up the residue. Nearly a quarter of a century he'd 
resisted the siren call of Chaos magic, only to give in at 
a weak moment. Already he could feel the withdrawal pains 
starting. Again.

Maybe the hangover feeling would be easier to deal with if 
he *were* drunk. There was a nearly full bottle of whiskey 
in the cabinet in the kitchen, and a half bottle of vodka 
in the freezer. He didn't usually keep alcohol in his 
apartment, but he'd flirted with alcoholism in the days 
after Buffy's... death. There, he said it. She was dead and 
she was not coming back.

Giles closed his eyes, fighting off a sudden vertigo. Even 
after all these weeks, it hadn't gotten any easier. Every 
night when he went to bed he remembered that night. The 
night he'd failed his charge. The night he'd become a 
murderer.

He was shaken from his bout of self-pity by the ring of the 
doorbell, followed by a pounding on the door. "Giles? Are 
you there?"

"Damn," he muttered to himself. He looked around, then 
grabbed the lock box and slid it under the sofa. "Just a 
moment," he called out. He straightened up and went to the 
front door. "What is it?" he asked, opening the door. 
Bright sunshine hit him in the face, making him wince.

"Giles, are you alright?" Dawn asked. "You didn't come in 
to the shop, and you didn't call. We were worried."

"Ah. Right." Giles looked down and realized that he was 
still wearing his robe and nothing under it. "I'm afraid I 
overslept. What time is it?"

"Noon. Overslept? Are you feeling okay?"

"What? Oh, I'm fine. Just.. tired. Um, I need to get 
dressed. Excuse me." With that, Giles almost fled up to the 
bedroom.

He'd been so focused on his self-appointed task that he 
hadn't done laundry lately, so finding something clean 
enough to put on was a task. Below, he could hear Dawn in 
the kitchen, setting a pot of water to boil. Tea. Yes, a 
cup of tea might be a good idea. Perhaps if he had some tea 
he would feel a little more like Rupert Giles, Watcher, 
former Librarian, shop keeper, and less like Ripper.

"Giles? The tea is going to get cold."

Giles came back to himself with a start. He was sitting on 
the edge of his bed staring off into space, his slacks in 
his hands. He shook his head and finished getting dressed, 
slapped a quick bandage on the cut across his left palm 
then headed down the stairs to the main level again.

Dawn met him at the bottom of the stairs with a fragrant 
steaming mug and a worried expression on her face. "Are you 
sure you're feeling all right?" she asked. "I could drive 
you to the doctor's."

That made Giles smile. Not because of the kindness of the 
author -- Dawn was always kind, bless her -- but because of 
her eagerness to drive him. She'd only recently gotten her 
driver's license and was always looking for an excuse to 
use it.

"I hate to disappoint you, but I will be quite fine," Giles 
said, reaching for the mug. "But thank you for the offer."

As she handed him the mug, their fingers brushed against 
each other and Giles stiffened. It wasn't as though he'd 
never touched the teenager before. In the years he'd known 
her there'd been other casual, accidental touches. But this 
time it was different. This time he was aware -- almost 
hyper-aware -- of the mystical energies surging below the 
surface image of a teenaged girl. The energies, carefully 
concealed, that made her the Key.

As well, he could feel the faint taint of Chaos magic that 
came from her own aborted attempt at raising the dead -- 
her mother, and thankfully she'd changed her mind at the 
last moment. These were things he'd never noticed about her 
before, but the newly reawakened part of him recognized 
them and was drawn to them. With the energy inherent in the 
Key there was so much he could do. Protect his children -- 
Xander, Willow, Anya, and all the others who had been drawn 
into the world of the Slayer. Prevent threats like Glory 
from rising again. Reshape the Watcher Council the way it 
should be...

Giles flinched away. He did his best to cover the reaction, 
but he could still see the flash of hurt on Dawn's face. He 
sipped the tea trying to get himself back under control.

Dawn. A young girl. Not a battery to draw on for his own 
purposes. That had been what Glory wanted with her. Giles 
felt nauseous. What was he becoming?

For a moment he felt like the tea was going to come back 
up, and he set the mug down on a side table. "I'm sorry," 
he told Dawn. "I just have a terrible headache. Could you 
please let Anya know that I will be leaving the shop in her 
very capable hands today?"

That brought a hint of a smile back to her face. "I'm sure 
she'll like that," Dawn said, some of her good humor 
returning. "She's always saying..." She stopped, the 
picture of embarrassment.

"That she does a better job of it than I do?" Giles 
suggested. He shook his head. "She may be right. I'm not 
sure that I was ever meant to be a shop-keeper." What he 
had been meant to be, trained to be, was a Watcher, and 
with his Slayer dead, he was beginning to realize that he 
had absolutely no idea what he was going to do with the 
rest of his life.

"No! I mean..." The smile was gone again.

Giles started to reach out to pat her shoulder, but stopped 
himself before he touched her. He could still feel the 
vibrations from the last innocent touch. "Don't worry 
yourself," he told her, picking up the mug again so that he 
had something to occupy his hands. "I'm just being maudlin. 
I suppose I was due for a mid-life crisis sooner or later." 
Giles winced again. He felt older this morning than he had 
in a long time.

"You're not old," Dawn protested, and he realized that he 
had said the last out loud. "You're mature."

"That's kind of you to say, but the fact is, I am 
getting... older," Giles said. Then he shook his head. 
"Never mind me. Don't you have school today?"

Dawn snorted. "It's August, Giles. School doesn't start for 
another two weeks."

Oh. "Then perhaps you should be out enjoying the last of 
your summer vacation," he suggested.

"Are you sure?"

Giles forced a smile that he hoped looked natural. "Yes. Go 
have fun. Just be careful and make sure to be home before 
dark."

That made the corner of her mouth quirk up. "Yes, dad," she 
said. Then, without warning she reached out and grabbed 
Giles in a big hug.

Almost immediately Giles was swamped again by the awareness 
of all the potential inherent in the young girl, and it was 
all he could do not to jerk away, hurting her feelings 
again. Instead he hugged her awkwardly while trying to keep 
from spilling his tea. Finally, to his relief, she pulled 
back and Giles was surprised to see a hint of tears in her 
eyes.

"I don't think I ever told you this, but I'm really glad 
you're here," she said. "After mom... And then Buffy..." 
She stopped and brushed a tear away with the back of her 
hand. "Thank you," she finally said.

Giles could feel his own eyes starting to prickle. "Thank 
you, sweetheart," he said hoarsely, and kissed her forehead 
lightly, determinedly ignoring the surge he felt at the 
touch. Then he stepped back. "Now go have fun doing 
whatever it is teenagers do these days."

"Okay. I'll see you tonight. Take care of the headache."

"I will."

With that, she was gone, along with all the energy that had 
been tormenting him. Giles collapsed onto the sofa, 
gathering his thoughts.

It had been years since he'd last felt this way; when he'd 
made the break from Ethan and the Chaos magic after that 
ill-fated night. He could remember how difficult it had 
been to pull away from it. Every time he came into contact 
with anything related to Chaos magic for years had reached 
out to try to drag him back. It was like an addiction; one 
very difficult to recover from.

The headache he'd claimed to placate Dawn was becoming 
truth, and Giles rubbed removed his glasses so that he 
could rub the bridge of his nose. The only way he'd 
succeeded in breaking his addiction the last time was by 
cutting himself completely off from anything to do with 
magic, then carefully retraining himself to avoid anything 
to do with Chaos. It had been a long and difficult process, 
and in one night he had undone it all. What a fool he was.

What would he do now? There was not just Dawn to consider, 
there was Willow. And while Anya was no longer a demon, 
traces of that still clung to her. Even Xander, the most 
normal of the group, had been touched by magic many times 
in the past. Too many times.

And even now he could already feel the Hellmouth. Buried in 
the remains of the old high school, it hovered at the edges 
of his awareness, pulsing like a giant heart, calling to 
him. No wonder Ethan had kept returning.

Giles lifted the mug to take a sip of the rapidly cooling 
tea and found that his hand was shaking. In fact, it was 
shaking so badly that some of the liquid spilled over the 
side to run down his hand. The cuff of his last clean shirt 
was getting stained. He set the mug down on the reproachful 
coffee table. Dear Lord, how was he going to make it 
through this again, here of all places?

The answer was immediate. And painful.

He closed his eyes for a moment, then sighed and got up to 
go do laundry. There was a lot to do.

>>>~~~<<<

The plane had been in the air for nearly an hour before 
Giles began to relax for the first time in more than a 
week. It had taken him that long to arrange matters, and 
he'd been a wreck towards the end. Getting into a brawl 
with Anya in the store; what had he been thinking?

But now he could no longer feel the energies of the 
Hellmouth vibrating around him, like a toothache impossible 
to ignore. He was surrounded now by the technology of 
flight and fellow passengers who could not be any more 
mundane.

The finger puppet Tara had given him at the impromptu 
farewell party at the airport was still on his finger, and 
he crooked it experimentally, smiling to himself. If they 
could still joke about their situation after all they'd 
been through, they would be fine without him, he told 
himself sternly.

"Cute."

"Hmm?" He glanced at his seatmate: a perfectly ordinary 
businessman who'd been thankfully silent thus far.

The man gestured to the finger puppet. "A gift from your 
kid?" he asked.

Giles looked at the tiny reminder of Sunnydale and smiled 
sadly. "Yes, you could say that."

One of his kids. He just hoped that they were ready. 
Because, like all parents before him, it was time to let 
go; time to let them face the future on their own.

He sighed, and tucked the toy into his carry bag, along 
with the handmade card. Time to let them go. Time to fix 
his own mistakes.

Time to go.

THE END