Little Wesley, Part Fourteen
Oct. 2nd, 2006 12:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elgreyMany apologies for the delay in finishing this fic. Previous parts can be found here:
Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten, Part Eleven, Part Twelve, Part Thirteen
New All Over, Part Fourteen
Wesley had insisted on returning to work the next day. He had been too long away from the Library, he said, and needed to catch up on Council Business. Despite capitalizing the latter two words, he had managed to get through the speech without sounding overly pompous and had only twice smoothed down his tie and once fidgeted self-importantly. He had, unfortunately, insisted on wearing what Buffy called his Watcher Suit – in vain had Giles pointed out that he had never worn anything quite so stuffy while he was officially her Watcher – but Giles conceded that the young man could hardly be expected to give up all his armour overnight. It was also true, as Wesley had pointed out, that there were reference books in the library in which more information about the Ascension could be found.
There was something comforting about being back in the Library. Somehow, however often it was invaded by vampires and demons, it still felt safe. Giles wondered if it was the leather-and-paper scent of the books that he found so reassuring, or just the memories of so many times when they had researched here, finding the answers they sought in crackling parchment and the imprint of old woodcuts. Even here, of course, there were now memories of the child that Wesley had so briefly been. He knew they were all finding it strange to sit at this table and know that one of them had no memory of the child who had hidden beneath it, from punishment and from vampires.
Going into lessons, when Wesley was still both physically a little drained from his cold and mentally still grappling with their changed attitude to him and his ten days of missing time, and having to deal with being back at work, was naturally not to be thought of. He had been given no choice about whether or not he had research assistants, and his feeble attempt to suggest that they should perhaps attend their classes as usual had been forcefully overruled. Although Angel and Cordelia had gone their own way – Angel presumably to brood in the borrowed splendour of his mansion, and Cordelia to actually attend lessons – that still left a recuperating Wesley with Giles, Buffy, Willow, Xander and Oz to assist him with his research. Although Wesley had gazed after Cordelia in a manner reminiscent of a sick sheep, she had been keeping her distance from him; she had told Buffy it was because her nose was still red from her cold, but Giles suspected it had more to do with having to readjust to Wesley being an adult again. Xander had looked after the girl with some sympathy but still elected to remain with the researchers.
“Because not dying in a horrible slaughter is more of a priority with me than algebra right now,” he explained, reaching for a book on the demons of Northern Germany with only a slightly martyred air.
Wesley seemed to be more, rather than less, confused today, and was also clearly battling a doozy of a headache. He kept pressing his fingers to his forehead and then, when the ever watchful Buffy demanded anxiously if he had a fever, snatching them away in embarrassment. That had not really stopped her from pressing her palm to his head to check for herself, despite Giles giving her looks which had more than suggested she stopped doing so at once.
“Buffy, Wesley isn’t eight any more,” he whispered to her urgently as he persuaded her to help him make tea for everyone out of earshot of Wesley. “You can’t keep treating him as if he were a child.”
“You’re the one who said he wasn’t safe to be let out without a keeper,” she reminded him, rather unfairly he thought, as those were words he had uttered before Wesley’s recent metamorphosis.
“That was in the past,” he protested.
“You think he’s acquired some great new Grown Up skills being a child for ten days?”
“I’m just saying, think of the poor man’s dignity. You’ve got him jumpy as a cat on a hot plate. He’s afraid to sneeze in case you start wiping his nose for him and he has no idea why you’re suddenly so concerned for him. He keeps trying to remember what happened in his missing ten days, which just seems to be giving him a buzzing pain in his head, and all of you hovering around him like clucking hens isn’t exactly reassuring him.”
“I’m not clucking!”
Giles removed his glasses so he could pinch the bridge of his nose. “Buffy, you poured the milk onto his cornflakes for the second morning running, made him drink a glass of orange juice he clearly didn’t want to keep up his Vitamin C levels, and you keep feeling his glands. He’s started to flinch whenever you come with five feet of him.”
That unfortunately only made her look woebegone. “I miss him.”
He didn’t need to ask who, of course. He missed him too. Painfully. He put his glasses back on, not meeting her eyes. “I know.”
“I keep wondering if I should have asked Ethan to try the other spell, after all.”
“There was only a one in five chance of it working. It could easily have killed him. That was never an option.” He had to say it firmly because he had been thinking exactly the same thing.
Buffy gazed across at Wesley, eyes wistful. “When he was a little boy, we could make things better for him. We could take him to the zoo, and tell him we’d keep him safe. And play games with him and feed him ice cream and make him happy, for the first time in his life, and build up his confidence.” Giles followed her gaze across to Wesley, who was trying to discreetly stifle a cough only to be met by Willow and Xander both reaching to proffer the box of tissues. Buffy sighed. “I don’t know how to help this Wesley.”
Giles said as gently as he could: “I would imagine that not treating him like a eight year old would probably help a little more with the self-confidence thing.”
“I wish he remembered,” Buffy said abruptly.
“It’s really better that he doesn’t. The poor man has enough issues as it is. The realization that we knew all about his childhood traumas would, I’m sure, in no way help him to be less self-conscious in our company.”
All the same, as Buffy sadly carried the tea back over to the table – heroically forebearing from feeling Wesley’s forehead even when he once again pressed a hand to his clearly aching head – Giles wondered how much it was doing for Wesley’s confidence to have all this mist in his mind where the last ten days should have been. Every now and then he would look around at them in confusion and Giles would see another set of questions playing on his lips. They remained unspoken though, but every now and then Wesley would give Giles a look as if pleading for enlightenment. Every time Giles had to force himself not to catch his eye and then feel thoroughly guilty about doing so. It was almost a relief when Wesley found a reference to an obscure German text, that was said to deal with the Ascension, and said that he had a friend in Berlin who might be able to help with that. On the grounds of him needing privacy to place his call, they had all retreated to Giles’s office where Xander set about chewing the skin of his thumbnail, and Willow and Buffy both gazed at Wesley anxiously.
Wesley was still disorientated, and, though doggedly holding a pen in one hand and a phone in the other as he wrote out whatever was being read to him by his friend in Berlin, was squinting painfully through what seemed to be a full strength headache.
“He looks so confused,” Willow said.
“He is confused,” Giles pointed out. “He has no memory of the last ten days and no one has furnished him with any but the most hazy explanation as to why he doesn’t remember them.”
“Which could be construed as a flaw in our strategy,” Oz observed to no one in particular.
Xander had stopped chewing the dead skin on his thumb and was now chewing less enthusiastically upon an apple. “It’s not my strategy. I’m still with the ‘let’s run away with him and never let the Council have him back’ strategy.”
Giles knew just how Wesley felt with that buzzing pain in his head on occasion. “Which could be considered behaviour more than somewhat open to misapprehension given that Wesley is now twenty-six.”
“He does seem to be having a slight case of total wig out.” Buffy gazed across at Wesley anxiously.
“Maybe we should just tell him what really happened?” Willow whispered.
Giles shook his head. “Without the memories to soften it, I think it would just sound like a terrible affront to his dignity. I think he’d be even more defensive than before.”
“So, here you are, boy.”
That whipcrack voice and the flinch and dropping of the phone from Wesley made them all look at each other in horror. A tall man with piercing blue eyes stood just inside the library doors, wearing a tweed suit.
“Father…?” With the last remnants of his presence of mind, Wesley snatched up the dropped phone and gasped: “Harry, I’ll call you back later. Must dash.” He barely had time to get the phone back on its cradle before his father’s voice was electrifying the atmosphere like lightning.
“I don’t appreciate being sent halfway around the world on a fool’s errand, just because you can’t do your job properly.”
Wesley gaped at him in confusion. “I don’t understand.”
“You were supposed to make weekly reports. You didn’t. Nor did you answer your phone or respond to the messages left on it. So, I get sent here to try to clear up yet another of your messes.”
Wesley sprang to his feet clumsily, dropping his pen and knocking the book he had been cross-referencing with onto the floor, eliciting a sharp indrawn breath from his father. Wesley scrambled to pick it back up while gabbling rapidly: “Apparently I was in some kind of…mystical coma. Mr Giles wouldn’t have known about my weekly reports or I’m sure he would have notified someone. I don’t understand why the Council didn’t contact him instead of sending you.” He smoothed out the bent pages of the book and hastily placed it on the table in the library.
His father advanced on him ominously, the light of a lamp behind him sending his shadow ahead like a herald of woe. “The man was fired for incompetence. Why would the Council think of contacting him?”
Wesley snatched a breath. “Because he’s an experienced Watcher and probably the living expert on the Hellmouth.”
Wesley’s father looked him up and down. “Are you criticizing the Council?”
“No, sir.” Wesley looked horrified by the very idea. “Certainly not.”
“Because I would be singularly unamused by you first falling down in your duties, then forcing me to make a most uncomfortable plane journey to this part of the world, only to find that you have also turned renegade and need to be replaced.”
“Replaced?” Wesley squeaked in horror. “No, Father, I assure you that everything is…working smoothly here.”
“If you think for one moment that the fact you are my son would influence me in my assessment.”
“No, Father. I would never think that. Quite the opposite.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Wesley looked completely deer in headlights. “N-nothing.” And Giles could see the little boy he had been so clearly in that instant that it was painful. He wanted to rush out and sweep that boy into his arms and punch Roger Wyndam-Pryce on the nose, and if Wesley had still been a child would have done so in an instant. He realized how much harder it was to deal with a situation where the damage had already been done two decades before.
“Well, do try to be more coherent, Wesley. You’ve barely said anything intelligent since I walked in here. But then you’ve barely said anything intelligent since you were born so I suppose that should come as no real shock. If you could act a little bit less like a drivelling idiot while I’m here though, I would appreciate it.”
In the stillness of the office, Buffy turned to Giles wide-eyed. “Giles, I have to.”
Xander had his arms folded. “And so say all of us.”
Giles rose to his feet, his gaze fixed on Roger Wyndam-Pryce. Wesley had already gone from standing upright to hunching and then getting snapped at for hunching and was now stake up his…spine upright but with his hands behind his back while clearly inwardly cringing. It was as if his body simultaneously wanted to be bolt upright as ordered and to slink as far as away as possible, and despite the fact he was a good few inches taller than his father, he was covering one hand with the other as if he at any moment expected to feel a ruler crack down on his knuckles. Giles thought of the little boy who had been so afraid to come out from under the table after he spilled his drink, but said automatically: “I absolutely forbid it.”
Buffy gave him a look of disbelief. “Giles…!”
Giles turned to her. “Absolutely forbid it, Buffy. This is the only father that Wesley is ever going to have. Alienating him further is not a plan that can possibly benefit Wesley, and if you tell him off for the way he treated his son when was a child he will assume that Wesley has told you about it. As Wesley’s never said a word to us about his father or his upbringing that would be very unfair on him.”
“I wasn’t going to tell him off,” she muttered sulkily. “I was just going to…hit him.”
“Well, I forbid that too.”
Xander glared at Giles. “So, he gets away with it? He’s allowed to treat his kid like that for all those years and no one says anything to him about it…?”
“Explain to me how you think telling Roger Wyndam-Pryce what you think of him will help Wesley?”
“Well, it might make him think twice before he….” Xander broke off. “Okay, I’m presuming he doesn’t still lock him under the stairs or send him to bed without supper but it might make him…”
“What?” Giles demanded. “Love him? Praise him? Tell him that he matters to him? Those things can’t be ordered as a right, they just are – or they’re not.”
Willow sat on Giles’s desk and slumped in defeat. “He was so mean to that little boy for all those years and he’s just out there and I want to tell him what I think of him so much…” She subsided, unclenching her fists. “But I don’t want to make things worse for Wesley.”
Oz said, “It’s only a week until the full moon.” He inclined his head in the direction of the book cage. “Sometimes padlocks come undone….”
Giles restrained a smile that had no right being on his face. “Oz, I don’t think you want a human death on your conscience, and I also suspect that, as snacks go, Roger Wyndam-Pryce would be somewhat stringy. I imagine you’d be picking him out of your teeth for days.”
“For God’s sake, boy! What do you mean you ‘think’ you know when the ascension is going to take place? You either do or your don’t!”
They all grimaced as Roger Wyndam-Pryce’s voice sounded like the crack of a whip.
By comparison Wesley sounded defensive and beaten for all his attempts at resistance: “We have reason to believe that the Mayor is going to need an amount of sustenance that the day of the students’ graduation will supply.”
“Who is this ‘we’ you’re speaking of? Are you the Watcher here or not?”
Wesley put a hand up to his head. “Yes, of course, I’m the Watcher here, but I only arrived a few weeks ago. There’s a difference between theory and practise, and Mr Giles and I...”
“Rupert Giles was fired for gross incompetence. His input is of no value or interest in this matter. Are you letting him ride roughshod over you?”
Giles thought how ironic it was that the reason why Wesley would have allowed Giles to ‘ride roughshod’ over him, if that were indeed what he had been doing, was the one asking that question.
Wesley quivered under the force of his father’s disapproval and said unconvincingly: “No, Father, of course not, but as Giles has been on the Hellmouth for so much longer than I have and has an extensive research library he has been lending me his resources to help research the coming Ascension. I only meant that I’m not the only one to think that it will be on the students’ Graduation Day, he concurs with my conclusions and so does Angel….”
Even as he said the word, Wesley’s slight cringe and pallor confirmed that he knew he had made a mistake.
His father stepped in closer and Wesley wilted until their eyes were level. “You’re consulting with Angelus…?”
“He’sawarriorforgoodnow….”
“Don’t mumble at me, boy! And stand up straight.”
Wesley did so, jolting his spine back into the upright position after his knees had so clearly wanted to sink through the floor. “I was only saying that someone with his centuries’ of experience who has proven himself as…”
“As a mass-murdering serial killer?” Roger Wyndam-Pryce turned and walked away, visibly trying to keep control. “Wesley, you are sorely trying my patience here. Are you standing there and telling me that you’re in the habit of consulting with the disgraced colleague you were sent here to replace and the most notorious vampire to ever walk the earth?”
“No, sir. I mean, yes, I am, but that’s not who they are. It’s not as simple when you’re here. Buffy is a Slayer of unusual aptitude in no small part because of Giles’s training and Angel is...”
His father wheeled on him. “I ask you again, are you criticizing the Council?”
“Just say yes, Wesley,” Buffy murmured. “Just tell him that the Council are a bunch of stuffy pompous know-nothings who…”
“No, sir.” Wesley bowed his head. “Certainly not.”
“You have to learn to take responsibility for your own decisions.”
Wesley snatched a breath and seemed to rally a little, the injustice evidently stinging him. “I do – I am, but there are hundreds of lives at stake and I’m not prepared to risk them just for the sake of following Council protocol to the letter. I’m willing to take any help I can get from any source if I think it will ultimately…”
Roger Wyndam-Pryce was looked at the piles of books on the table. “Exactly how many ‘sources’ are you seeking help from, Wesley?”
Wesley looked defeated before he even started. “I know that the Council advocates that the Slayer’s role should be kept a secret but by the time I arrived here Buffy had already decided that she would function better with a close-knit group of friends aware of her calling and although it’s not something I would have advised it does seem to have been largely beneficial to not only Buffy herself but the people of Sunnydale as a…”
“A Slayer’s job is not to strategize, Wesley. A Slayer’s job is to Slay. You are the brains, she is the muscle. That is how it works best. You’re not here to be her friend or her mentor or her confidante or to pat her on the head and tell her how clever she is for breaking protocol and ignoring Council orders. She does what you tell her, she doesn’t tell you.”
Wesley’s fingers were twisting uncomfortably behind his back now as he attempted to go on standing up straight while his natural impulse seemed to be to lean away, like a birch in a high wind, from where the criticism was coming with such stinging force. “With all due respect, Father, Buffy is a person not an automaton. The Watchers’ Council provide us all with a wonderful grounding in theory, but, when it comes to the practise, surely a good strategist is able to improvise and compromise to achieve the best results for all…”
His father threw his arms up into the air, the contempt radiating from him: “You mean spinelessly give in to every whim of a capricious teenager who has already ruined the career of one Watcher.”
“I hardly think it should be considered a crime to care whether or not these young women live or die in the execution of their duty. Of course, one accepts that the life of the Slayer must be risked and on occasion sacrificed – without being prepared to do that there is nothing between the innocents and the demons – but the fact remains that…”
Giles sighed, murmuring: “Don’t just waffle at him, Wesley. Make your arguments concisely and with some conviction.”
“What difference would it make if he did?” Xander countered. “Do you really think that guy’s going to start listening to him now.”
Buffy nodded. “Xander’s right. As far as Torquefather’s concerned, Wesley’s still that scared little kid he used to lock under the stairs.”
“How many times have I told you that it’s the cause that matters? It’s doing what is right, whatever it may cost. These young women are the front line, and like all foot soldiers they are expendable – and replaceable. They are born with the ability to kill vampires in the way that a wolf is born with the ability to tear down a deer.”
“They’re not wild animals. They’re human beings who have been placed in an invidious position by the machination of fate. They have a destiny that condemns them to a life of secrecy and the rest of us owe them at the very least the courtesy of…”
“Are you raising your voice to me, boy?”
For one glorious moment, Giles thought that Wesley might tell the old bastard that he not only was but would continue to do so, not to mention reminding him which one of them here had been chosen as the Watcher to an active Slayer and how it wasn’t Roger Wyndam-Pryce. But, of course, that was a fantasy that lasted only as Wesley drew himself up as if to strike back and then deflated like a pricked balloon, dropping his gaze and slumping his shoulders as he said meekly: “No, Father.”
Xander groaned. “You know, Wes, there comes a point when you really have to hit them back hard enough to make them realize you’re all grown up now and if they keep pushing you around you’re going to push back.”
Giles darted a glance at the boy. Normally he would have been appreciative of Xander showing such a sound psychological grasp of the situation but in this case, given all the many little notices he had been given over the last couple of years of how Xander’s parents neglected him, it made him distinctly uneasy. Given the way Willow was looking at the boy as if she were more than a little upset, he suspected his unease had good cause.
Buffy said abruptly: “I know how to handle this.”
Wincing, Giles tried to think of any way that Buffy was going to handle this that wouldn’t involve Roger Wyndam-Pryce leaving Sunnydale with a broken nose. A part of him certainly welcomed that scenario, but he knew he was right. A person got one set of parents; substitutes were sometimes a great comfort and could fill the empty space the lack of parental love had left; but if there was any way the bond between parent and child could be held together somehow, it was generally better for all parties. None of them could make Wesley’s father love him or be proud of him or give him a word of praise, but they could at least do their part to prevent the relationship from deteriorating further due to intervention of theirs. “Buffy, I rather doubt it.”
She turned on him. “It’s make-believe, isn’t it? That Watchers’ Council sit on their…rulebooks in England and expect the rest of us to play by them, and you and I have both tried to tell them that their rules don’t work in the field, and Wesley found that out for himself the hard way. There’s nothing that you or I – or Wesley – can say to convince his father that the Council’s wrong.”
Giles nodded. “Yes, with that I would have to agree.”
“And I think one more minute of his father and Wesley’s going to lose so much of his spinal cord we’re going to have to scoop him up from the floor in a jar.”
Grimacing, Giles nevertheless inclined his head. “With that I would also have to concur.”
“So, we play it their way.” Buffy smoothed down her jeans and walked out into the library. “Wesley…?”
He turned around, already looking a little greenish from close proximity with his father and not at all relieved to see her. “Ah, Buffy, would you mind…?”
She stood in front of him with a shoulders back precision that she had certainly never adopted in the past. “I’m sorry to interrupt you, Wesley, but it’s time for our morning training session. Would you like me to wait for you in the training room or should I come back later?” Her voice was polite and respectful without being a parody of the parade ground.
Giles frowned. “How come she never talks to me like that?”
“It’s make-believe, Giles, remember?” Willow murmured.
“Well, she could make-believe for me on occasion, I wouldn’t mind.”
Wesley gaped at her and then hastily collected himself. “Um, well, Buffy…. My father….”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.” Buffy held out a hand to Roger Wyndam-Pryce. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Wyndam-Pryce. I’m Buffy Summers.”
“I’m sure my son was about to introduce us.” Roger gave Wesley a look of exasperation, and Giles realized that his annoyance with Wesley was entirely genuine. The young man clearly was a great disappointment to him. He wondered if he actually craved the moment when Wesley would stand up to him, and if so how ironic it was that he had doomed himself to disappointment by terrorising the boy so completely and at such a young age that he had absolutely guaranteed that the only child he was ever going to have could never be the son he evidently wanted. If that ironic equation had involved only Roger, Giles would have said the man had got exactly what he deserved, but Wesley hadn’t deserved to be the victim of Roger’s unsuccessful foray into parenting, and he was the one who had grown up waiting to hear the words of affection that had never come.
Buffy was being a combination of businesslike and demure that was disturbingly…unBuffy-like. She had lowered her voice and was gazing seriously at Wesley as she shook his father’s hand and answered his questions about their training regime if she had never had a frivolous thought in her life and pretty much lived to take his son’s orders and do as he suggested.
“Wesley thought I should work on my…preparation so I’m presuming that’s what we were going to do today, but of course if he has family visiting, I can work out by myself and then report to him later as usual for his instructions for the night’s patrol….”
“Obedient!Buffy is kind of creepy.” Xander adjusted his shirt. “Also kind of hot.”
Giles waited for Wesley to get that he wasn’t being set up for some particularly humiliating fall. The way Buffy kept gazing at him steadily, with that warm supportive expression finally seemed to clue him in, and he saw him give a jolt of emotion as he realized what she was doing for him. There was the tiniest tremor in his voice as he said: “Jolly good, Buffy. Perhaps we could focus on energy saving methods of despatch? Try out a scenario where you have to conserve your strength due to an injury and work together to find the shortest distance between two points as it were.” His voice was reasonably steady but his eyes were at once thanking her and pleading with her to let him just pretend that this was how things were between them for a little bit longer.
Buffy nodded solemnly. “Point A being me and Point B being dead vampire, yes?”
Wesley managed a nervous smile. “Exactly. We have been concentrating recently on scenarios that depend upon you being in full physical fitness and perhaps we should….”
“Oh, absolutely.” Buffy nodded again. “How about if I start doing a work out and then maybe put my right arm in a sling…?”
“Perfect, yes.” Wesley turned to his father with a straight back, his upper body movement still oddly constricted around the man, but at least with his shoulders back and a readiness to meet his gaze. “Father, would you mind excusing me for an hour? I would prefer not to disrupt Buffy’s routine if at all possible. With the Ascension coming up it’s particularly important that I give her all the assistance she deserves.”
Roger nodded at once. “Absolutely. Good to see the girl has such a focused attitude. I thought with first that hellraiser Giles and then you for her Watcher, she’d been running wild with no idea of discipline.”
Wesley stiffened. “Discipline isn’t the answer to everything, Father. Sometimes, it’s amazing what a little praise and basic respect can achieve.” He turned on his heel and his father watched him walk off in some surprise.
“Go, Wes,” Xander said quietly. He turned to Giles. “I’m totally taking credit for that. That was all down to the way I bought him an ice cream at the zoo.”
“An event of which he has no memory,” Giles reminded him. He was still watching Roger watch his son walk out of the room, thinking about his own emotions when he had nursed Wesley through that illness, those little moments of confidences shared, and the boy so trusting and so fragile. It was impossible to believe that there wasn’t somewhere some spark of affection for the boy in his father’s breast. Perhaps it was buried impossibly deep but surely it must exist? He turned to the others. “Would you mind clearing off for an hour or so. I want to talk to Wesley’s father and I can’t do that if there are witnesses.”
Willow’s eyes widened. “Oh, are you going to…?” She drew a finger across her throat. “Because I found this spell that would….” Seeing Giles expression she turned the end of her sentence into a cough. “Give him a sore throat and also a slight sniffle. And I think we should leave now.”
“Don’t do anything that I wouldn’t do,” Oz observed.
Xander looked at him sideways. “Weren’t you planning to rip his throat out and splinter his bones at the next full moon?”
Oz shrugged. “Pretty much.”
“So, when you say things that you wouldn’t do, you were thinking…?”
“Well, I draw the line at ritual dismemberment. Apart from that – I’m easy.”
Willow slipped her hand through his. “But I like that about you, sweetie.”
“And we’re into the too much information place,” Xander grimaced.
“Wesley, are you…?”
They all froze in horror as Cordelia breezed into the room, wearing her hair pinned back neatly but a skirt that was definitely on the revealing side. She took in Roger with a steady gaze and then stepped forward. “Hello, I’m Cordelia Chase.”
He held out a hand, disapproving and yet unfailingly polite. “Roger Wyndam-Pryce.”
“Wyndam-Pryce?” Cordelia’s voice was unexpectedly cool and measured and Giles wondered just how much she had heard. “Are you Wesley’s father?”
“I am. Are you a…friend of his?” His tone dripped with disapproval.
Cordelia faced him levelly. “I’m a friend of Buffy’s. I don’t really know Wesley well enough to call him a friend, yet. He’s been working pretty hard trying to find a way to stop the Mayor eating all of us. I’d like to get to know him better, of course. I always do when someone saves my life.”
Roger hardly troubled to hide his cynicism: “My son saved your life?”
“Yes, I was being chased by a vampire and it cornered me. He got rid of it with some Holy water. I suppose that’s all in a day’s work for you Watchers, but this is the only life I have and I was grateful to be able to keep it. Does Wesley know you’re here or would you like me to try to find him for you?”
“He knows I’m here. He’s training with Buffy at the moment.”
“He does that a lot.” She nodded to him. “Well, it was nice to meet you. Please tell Wesley I was asking for him.”
Giles had often heard Cordelia mention that she wanted to be an actress, and thought that someone who had never learned to lie or even employ a modicum of tact would be at something of a disadvantage in that profession, but she had certainly carried off the attractive-student-with-a-crush-on-fearless-efficient-young-Watcher thing rather well. Apart from the fact that Wesley was neither fearless nor particularly efficient, she was probably playing no more than a toned down version of herself, but she had still done it with conviction.
Roger watched her go with a frown on his face and Giles took that opportunity to shoo away the others and go out to meet the man.
“I’m Rupert Giles.”
As the man spun around to glower at him, Giles kept his tone even and his face as neutral as he could get it. He kept seeing that little boy in his mind’s eye, crying as he gulped with fear at the thought of the punishment he believed he was about to receive, and clearly had always received in the past. But then he thought of adult Wesley squirming with misery under his father’s disapproving eye, and swallowed down the first half a dozen things he wanted to say. “Would you like a cup of tea while you’re waiting?”
For a moment he thought Roger was going to be an insufferable ass to the end, but the man surprised him. “English Breakfast?”
“Certainly.”
“Twinings?”
“Of course.” Giles didn’t have to pretend to be a little affronted.
“Made in the pot, I presume?”
“Naturally.” Giles led the way to his office – the one that he should at least try to pretend was now Wesley’s.
“Is that young woman setting her cap at my son?”
Giles pushed out a chair for him and switched on the kettle. “Cordelia? Yes, she is, with a conspicuous lack of success.”
Roger snorted. “He always was fairly idiotic around women.”
“Well, I doubt he’s met that many, given the institutions in which he was educated, but I think he just has his mind on the more pressing matter of trying to save a lot of people from dying at the moment. I imagine that Cordelia will eventually prevail. She’s a young woman of strong character.”
“Then she’d be wasted on him. The last thing Wesley has is a strong character.”
Giles had to bite his lip quite hard not to lash out with an instinctive: And whose fault is that? Instead he poured out the tea, handed Roger his cup and saucer and said conversationally: “I can’t say I agree with you on that. I’ve found him to be a young man with a very strong sense of duty. He takes his role here very seriously indeed.”
“Oh, he’s hard working enough. He just doesn’t have what it takes.” Roger sipped his tea aggrievedly. “And don’t think it doesn’t grieve me to say it, but I have a responsibility to the Council and I know my own son.”
“Do you?” Giles couldn’t prevent that edge creeping into his voice as he met the man’s gaze. “Do you really?”
Roger sat back in his chair. “Oh, I see, this is what this is. You think you know him? You’ve seen the real Wesley, the wonderful human being that I’ve never taken the time to get to know?”
“Is that what you think?” Giles countered. “That your son is someone you’ve never taken the time to get to know?”
“It’s probably what Wesley believes. The truth is I know him better than he knows himself, and he’s not cut out for this job, whatever his teachers at the academy may say.”
“You don’t want him to be a Watcher?”
“Of course I do,” Roger snapped back. “But I want him to be good at it, and he never will be. I’ve tried, God knows, I’ve tried, to turn him into the kind of man who has what it takes, and he doesn’t.”
“Well, thank goodness you were there to build up his self-confidence so that he’d be all the better fitted for the task in hand.” Giles hadn’t meant those words to snap out of him and he knew he should take a breath and a moment and then apologize, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it.
Roger snorted. “Been whining to you, has he?”
Giles gritted his teeth. “Certainly not. Wesley hasn’t uttered a word about his upbringing, but it doesn’t take Freud to see that he’s known a great deal more criticism in his life than praise. Given the excellence of his reports from the Academy I would have expected him to be a little more confident of his undoubted abilities, but on every occasion when I’ve had reason to offer him even a ‘well done’ he’s looked quite astonished.” Even as he said it, Giles wished that there had been a few more of those ‘well done’s. His resentment of the interloper, which had felt so justified at the time, now seemed petty and unworthy of him.
“All this modern tomfoolery in education makes me tired. Boys don’t need praise, they need discipline and training. Do you think a vampire or a demon is going to give him a ‘well done’?” Roger sipped his tea and Giles noticed the scar on his hand. Roger had been bitten by a vampire there, Giles remembered, although the worst of his injuries had been in places now concealed by his many layers of tailored clothing. It had been an epic struggle, Roger had been badly injured, several ribs broken and his arm mauled, yet the man had hung onto consciousness through what must have been excruciating pain, and had managed to thrust a snapped branch into the vampire’s breast before staggering to his car, coughing blood as he did so from a rib through his lung, and had driven himself to the nearest hospital, managing to give his name and the number of the Council for which he worked, before passing out from pain and blood loss. A man of character, undoubtedly, and courage.
He thought of that fragile child, so physically insubstantial-looking, and needing glasses even at an early age, whereas Roger didn’t seem to need them even now. Roger had never seemed to lack confidence in his own opinion, forthright and unshakeable in his convictions, whereas Wesley’s belief could be overturned by a frown. Holding that thin child in his arms, feeling the wetness of his long lashes against his neck, Giles had thought of the man now sitting opposite him as a sadist; someone who had been cruel simply because he could, enjoying the power, like some scientist in a laboratory sending rats scuttling along tunnels in which they would find electric shocks instead of food. Now he wondered if Wesley had been an experiment in parenting gone horribly awry; attempts to make him secure in his opinions simply undermining his confidence to the point where he would dither when questioned and fall apart under scrutiny; attempts to cure him of his fears only begetting more nightmares that in turn begat more punishments. Giles had always presumed that one knew instinctively the way to get the best out of a child, but perhaps Roger simply hadn’t known, or had tried to raise his son as he had been raised, and the boy had been so unlike him that when he found his methods failing, had not known how else to proceed except with more discipline and exasperation; his increasing frustration building until he gave way to what he had perhaps never realized was tantamount to cruelty.
“You don’t even have children,” Roger added, and the irritation in his voice was at least a chink in his armour. Giles wondered if Roger was aware on some level that his son had not turned out as he wished because of rather than despite of his training, or if he was still refusing to accept any part of the blame.
“No, I don’t, and I certainly don’t mean to sound as if I’m sitting in judgement on you. I can imagine that raising a child for a specific profession can be emotionally very demanding. I know how I’ve felt on occasion when Buffy has been faced with….”
“So, we’re sharing now, are we?” Roger rolled his eyes. “You tell me about your problems as a surrogate parent, I tell you about mine as an actual one, and we end up sharing a bottle of single malt and singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ with mawkish sentimentality and dubious tunefulness?”
“I don’t actually know the words to ‘Auld Lang Syne’,” Giles admitted. “I wouldn’t say no to a single malt if you happen to have one with you though.”
“The fact is that the boy doesn’t have what it takes. God knows I wish it were different, but he’s not made of the…right stuff – to borrow a vulgar American phrase. I admit it’s not all the fault of his mother’s breeding. They’re not out of the top drawer but they’re sensible enough. No, it’s my mother’s side of the family where the weakness of character comes in. She had a brother who had to be sent home from the front with neurasthenia. Said the men he’d seen die were talking to him. Terrible shame to his family, of course.”
Giles said, in some annoyance: “A lot of very brave men suffered from shell shock, and, whatever we may face in the way of vampires and demons as an occupational hazard, I somehow doubt that even they can compete with the horror of the trenches.”
“There’s a lot of madness in that side of the family, and what is madness except an inability to deal with reality? People side-stepping uncomfortable truths by shuffling their way into insanity. I always thought my father was a fool to marry into the Oakeshott clan. He knew he had a duty to uphold and that meant choosing a wife carefully. My mother was a woman of no inconsiderable beauty but she was also flighty, nervous, and at times positively unstable. I was careful to marry into a family of sensible farming stock with several war heroes in its background. Not Watchers, of course – in the old days they would never have chosen a Watcher from any family that couldn’t trace itself back to the Norman Conquest – but good yeoman blood all the same. My wife is an admirable woman of little imagination, which was just what the family needed. But, knowing about the inherent instability from the Oakeshott blood, I was afraid those characteristics might come out in Wesley, and, although I did my best from the beginning to offset those tendencies, I know he has them. Had I been given a say in the matter, much as I long for him to make me proud of him, I would never have selected him as a Watcher, and certainly not yet. Whatever his reports may say, he’s quite simply unready for the task and he doesn’t have the strength of character to deal with crises or opposition. That girl will just ride roughshod over him.” Roger gave Giles a level stare. “Now, is that enough sharing or do you feel the urge to tell me about your first kiss or that your mother never loved you?”
Giles said quietly: “What is it that you want him to be that you don’t think he is? By what yardstick are you judging him to decide already that he can’t ever match up to your aspirations for him?”
“I know my son.” Roger took another sip of tea. “He’s never been good at making friends because other children can sense weakness and he’s riddled with it. When he’s picked on – as he always invariably is – he whines instead of standing up for himself, and has never yet learned how to deal with a bully. He’s half a coward and at times entirely a fool. He dithers when he needs to be decisive and he fumbles when he needs to be efficient. As a Watcher he’d make an excellent librarian.” His blue gaze flickered dismissively across Giles. “He’s quite efficient at cross-referencing.”
Giles had to look down so that Roger wouldn’t see his anger. He kept thinking of the weight and warmth of that child in his arms, so unused to praise or cuddles or tenderness, so grateful for all of those things, so desperate to please and to be no trouble and to be loved. He had been so eager for Giles’ approval and so touched when he received it; something he had evidently longed for yet so rarely received at home. “Couldn’t you have been a little kinder?” he asked quietly. “Just a little?”
Roger looked as if he had slapped him. His voice roughened. “You’ve been a Watcher to an active Slayer, man. You know what it involves. You know how much preparation is needed, how much strength of character a man needs to possess. If you were raising your son for such a role would it be kindness you felt he needed or discipline?”
“I like to think I could have found a place for both.”
“My father knew the importance of discipline. Our mother was wayward and sentimental, given to ridiculous flutterings of emotion. She spoiled my brother, insisting that, as my father had the raising of me, she should be allowed to do as she liked with Richard. Of course my father put his foot down – he saw the danger of her interference as anyone could, but he was probably less diligent than he should have been at keeping my brother out of her sphere of influence. He was sickly as a child and kept at home when he should have been away at school getting the corners knocked off him. But he was a brilliant scholar and a man of great courage. He should have been a great Watcher, but he never got the chance because our mother’s lack of discipline meant that he died before he was thirty.”
Giles thought of the photograph Wesley had in his possession. “Death isn’t always proof of failure. Sometimes it finds you however efficient you may be. And is that what you’re judging Wesley against? Some mythical Watcher who’s so good at his job that he never makes a mistake? Never dies? Is that what you’ve been measuring him against all this time? Trying to get him to match up to someone who’s never existed?”
“I have a responsibility to the Council. I tried to raise him to be good enough and I failed, and I regret it, but the fact remains that he isn’t good enough. You can’t be soft in this calling. You can’t indulge yourself. You made that mistake with your Slayer. They’re not a child in need of a father, they’re a weapon that needs to be honed in the service of mankind. Of course, if things were different, one would employ a different approach, but these are soldiers we’re training, you from your position and me from mine. One can’t indulge oneself with…”
“Basic human affection? Basic human kindness?”
“Sentimental twaddle doesn’t kill demons.”
“Perhaps sometimes it does. Perhaps sometimes what a young girl, who could be overwhelmed by the weight of her calling, or a young boy who has found out – at an age when most children are unaware even of their own mortality – that there are demons sharing the world that he inhabits, needs isn’t just discipline and training, but to know that she or he is loved.”
“A good Watcher doesn’t want his Slayer to be a substitute for the child he never had, he wants her to see her twenty-fifth birthday. Do you know how many members of my family have died at the hands of vampires and demons? I can’t remember the last Wyndam-Pryce who died in his bed. It was never an option to shower the boy with balloons and toy trainsets on his birthday. I could have made him my friend or I could have tried to keep him alive. My wife never understood it either but I would think that you, of all people would know….”
To Giles’ surprise, Roger abruptly shoved back his chair and walked away in agitation before saying more quietly: “I wanted to keep him alive! Is that too difficult a concept for you to grasp? Do you know how Lehane’s Watcher died?
“Yes.” Giles winced. “I do.”
“Would you want that to happen to a child of yours? There’s always a mistake that was made. One can make excuses for them, say they were in a difficult situation, they made the wrong choice, but the fact is that every Watcher who has ever died since the dawn of time has died because he or she made a mistake. They hadn’t read enough or studied hard enough. They weren’t prepared or they weren’t knowledgeable enough. I knew from the moment my son was born what his profession would be and the risks inherent to it. Only a fool would allow himself to…”
“Love a child that he may well outlive?”
“Let himself be blinded by sentiment.”
Giles rose to his feet. Sorry for the man and yet so much more sorry for the child who he had held in his arms a few days before. “Who were you really protecting, Roger? Wesley from the dangers out there that you knew he was going to face, or yourself from the pain of losing a child you loved?”
“That’s so much sentimental nonsense.”
“It’s natural to love your children, and it’s painful. And it hurts when they die. And trust me, I know.”
“You don’t know! Do you think that Slayer of yours is your own flesh and blood? Are you so deluded?”
“I know how it felt when I read the prophecy that said she was going to die.”
“And your judgement was clouded! We don’t have jobs, we have a calling. We have a duty and an obligation to others that can’t be muddied by sentiment. Wesley has a job to do. It was my duty to prepare him for it as best as I was able. It’s unfortunate for both of us that he has an inherent weakness of character that makes him unfitted to his calling. I’ve tried to overcome that weakness with training. Unfortunately, I seem be doomed to failure where he’s concerned.”
Giles shook his head in disbelief. “You know, it’s ironic, given all the courage you’ve shown over the years facing up to all manner of vampires and demons, that the son you dismiss as being so much less than you should have turned out to be so very much braver than you are. Unlike you, he’s not afraid to love.”
Roger curled his lip. “You’ve spent too long in California, Giles. You’re starting to sound like a Hallmark card.”
He was too close to the child Wesley had been; could still remember the weight of him in his arms, that thin body clinging to him. He knew that if he had been given the chance to raise that child that he would have made mistakes, as every parent did, but he would not have done to him what Roger Wyndam-Pryce had done; would not have crushed his confidence and eroded his courage until he was too riddled with insecurities to make a decision. He rose to his feet, on the point of telling Wesley’s father that he thought it was high time that he left, and then remembered that this was meant to be Wesley’s office now, and he should therefore be the one to go out and snatch in a few lungfuls of fresh air.
Clinging to his temper only barely he said tautly: “Well, if you’re in the mood for quotes, Pryce, here’s one from Austin O’Malley that seems to fit the bill: ‘Before you beat a child, be sure yourself are not the cause of the offense.’ ”
Giles walked out with what he hoped was considerable self-possession, but he knew it was hopeless. He had given getting through to the man his best shot, but Roger had invested too much time and too much of himself in his own manner of child rearing. He could not now turn around and admit that he had made mistakes, that he could perhaps have allowed himself to be loving and encouraging instead of distant and critical; that would undo too much of who he was, and the regret, perhaps, would be unbearable. Easier by far for him to continue to blame Wesley for Roger’s mistakes in child rearing, and never admit that any of the faults were his.
But as he stepped out into the sunlight, Giles realized that he didn’t care if Wesley’s dignity was affronted; his dignity would recover. What he wanted was for Wesley to remember that he had, after all, had a period of his childhood where no one had considered him a failure or a coward, and in which he had been loved by everyone who knew him. Perhaps it had only lasted for a few days, but nevertheless the experience had been Wesley’s own, won by him on his own merits, and perhaps if only he had remembered those days of ice cream and kite-flying it might have armed him a little, against those other memories of praise withheld and punishments inflicted. Perhaps, if only the spell had not vanished so completely, it might have given Wesley an aftermath of warmth inside to offset his father’s criticism. For the first time, Giles admitted to himself that he bitterly regretted that Wesley did not remember his second childhood in Sunnydale, and would never now know how it felt to be a child who was unconditionally loved.
***
Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten, Part Eleven, Part Twelve, Part Thirteen
New All Over, Part Fourteen
Wesley had insisted on returning to work the next day. He had been too long away from the Library, he said, and needed to catch up on Council Business. Despite capitalizing the latter two words, he had managed to get through the speech without sounding overly pompous and had only twice smoothed down his tie and once fidgeted self-importantly. He had, unfortunately, insisted on wearing what Buffy called his Watcher Suit – in vain had Giles pointed out that he had never worn anything quite so stuffy while he was officially her Watcher – but Giles conceded that the young man could hardly be expected to give up all his armour overnight. It was also true, as Wesley had pointed out, that there were reference books in the library in which more information about the Ascension could be found.
There was something comforting about being back in the Library. Somehow, however often it was invaded by vampires and demons, it still felt safe. Giles wondered if it was the leather-and-paper scent of the books that he found so reassuring, or just the memories of so many times when they had researched here, finding the answers they sought in crackling parchment and the imprint of old woodcuts. Even here, of course, there were now memories of the child that Wesley had so briefly been. He knew they were all finding it strange to sit at this table and know that one of them had no memory of the child who had hidden beneath it, from punishment and from vampires.
Going into lessons, when Wesley was still both physically a little drained from his cold and mentally still grappling with their changed attitude to him and his ten days of missing time, and having to deal with being back at work, was naturally not to be thought of. He had been given no choice about whether or not he had research assistants, and his feeble attempt to suggest that they should perhaps attend their classes as usual had been forcefully overruled. Although Angel and Cordelia had gone their own way – Angel presumably to brood in the borrowed splendour of his mansion, and Cordelia to actually attend lessons – that still left a recuperating Wesley with Giles, Buffy, Willow, Xander and Oz to assist him with his research. Although Wesley had gazed after Cordelia in a manner reminiscent of a sick sheep, she had been keeping her distance from him; she had told Buffy it was because her nose was still red from her cold, but Giles suspected it had more to do with having to readjust to Wesley being an adult again. Xander had looked after the girl with some sympathy but still elected to remain with the researchers.
“Because not dying in a horrible slaughter is more of a priority with me than algebra right now,” he explained, reaching for a book on the demons of Northern Germany with only a slightly martyred air.
Wesley seemed to be more, rather than less, confused today, and was also clearly battling a doozy of a headache. He kept pressing his fingers to his forehead and then, when the ever watchful Buffy demanded anxiously if he had a fever, snatching them away in embarrassment. That had not really stopped her from pressing her palm to his head to check for herself, despite Giles giving her looks which had more than suggested she stopped doing so at once.
“Buffy, Wesley isn’t eight any more,” he whispered to her urgently as he persuaded her to help him make tea for everyone out of earshot of Wesley. “You can’t keep treating him as if he were a child.”
“You’re the one who said he wasn’t safe to be let out without a keeper,” she reminded him, rather unfairly he thought, as those were words he had uttered before Wesley’s recent metamorphosis.
“That was in the past,” he protested.
“You think he’s acquired some great new Grown Up skills being a child for ten days?”
“I’m just saying, think of the poor man’s dignity. You’ve got him jumpy as a cat on a hot plate. He’s afraid to sneeze in case you start wiping his nose for him and he has no idea why you’re suddenly so concerned for him. He keeps trying to remember what happened in his missing ten days, which just seems to be giving him a buzzing pain in his head, and all of you hovering around him like clucking hens isn’t exactly reassuring him.”
“I’m not clucking!”
Giles removed his glasses so he could pinch the bridge of his nose. “Buffy, you poured the milk onto his cornflakes for the second morning running, made him drink a glass of orange juice he clearly didn’t want to keep up his Vitamin C levels, and you keep feeling his glands. He’s started to flinch whenever you come with five feet of him.”
That unfortunately only made her look woebegone. “I miss him.”
He didn’t need to ask who, of course. He missed him too. Painfully. He put his glasses back on, not meeting her eyes. “I know.”
“I keep wondering if I should have asked Ethan to try the other spell, after all.”
“There was only a one in five chance of it working. It could easily have killed him. That was never an option.” He had to say it firmly because he had been thinking exactly the same thing.
Buffy gazed across at Wesley, eyes wistful. “When he was a little boy, we could make things better for him. We could take him to the zoo, and tell him we’d keep him safe. And play games with him and feed him ice cream and make him happy, for the first time in his life, and build up his confidence.” Giles followed her gaze across to Wesley, who was trying to discreetly stifle a cough only to be met by Willow and Xander both reaching to proffer the box of tissues. Buffy sighed. “I don’t know how to help this Wesley.”
Giles said as gently as he could: “I would imagine that not treating him like a eight year old would probably help a little more with the self-confidence thing.”
“I wish he remembered,” Buffy said abruptly.
“It’s really better that he doesn’t. The poor man has enough issues as it is. The realization that we knew all about his childhood traumas would, I’m sure, in no way help him to be less self-conscious in our company.”
All the same, as Buffy sadly carried the tea back over to the table – heroically forebearing from feeling Wesley’s forehead even when he once again pressed a hand to his clearly aching head – Giles wondered how much it was doing for Wesley’s confidence to have all this mist in his mind where the last ten days should have been. Every now and then he would look around at them in confusion and Giles would see another set of questions playing on his lips. They remained unspoken though, but every now and then Wesley would give Giles a look as if pleading for enlightenment. Every time Giles had to force himself not to catch his eye and then feel thoroughly guilty about doing so. It was almost a relief when Wesley found a reference to an obscure German text, that was said to deal with the Ascension, and said that he had a friend in Berlin who might be able to help with that. On the grounds of him needing privacy to place his call, they had all retreated to Giles’s office where Xander set about chewing the skin of his thumbnail, and Willow and Buffy both gazed at Wesley anxiously.
Wesley was still disorientated, and, though doggedly holding a pen in one hand and a phone in the other as he wrote out whatever was being read to him by his friend in Berlin, was squinting painfully through what seemed to be a full strength headache.
“He looks so confused,” Willow said.
“He is confused,” Giles pointed out. “He has no memory of the last ten days and no one has furnished him with any but the most hazy explanation as to why he doesn’t remember them.”
“Which could be construed as a flaw in our strategy,” Oz observed to no one in particular.
Xander had stopped chewing the dead skin on his thumb and was now chewing less enthusiastically upon an apple. “It’s not my strategy. I’m still with the ‘let’s run away with him and never let the Council have him back’ strategy.”
Giles knew just how Wesley felt with that buzzing pain in his head on occasion. “Which could be considered behaviour more than somewhat open to misapprehension given that Wesley is now twenty-six.”
“He does seem to be having a slight case of total wig out.” Buffy gazed across at Wesley anxiously.
“Maybe we should just tell him what really happened?” Willow whispered.
Giles shook his head. “Without the memories to soften it, I think it would just sound like a terrible affront to his dignity. I think he’d be even more defensive than before.”
“So, here you are, boy.”
That whipcrack voice and the flinch and dropping of the phone from Wesley made them all look at each other in horror. A tall man with piercing blue eyes stood just inside the library doors, wearing a tweed suit.
“Father…?” With the last remnants of his presence of mind, Wesley snatched up the dropped phone and gasped: “Harry, I’ll call you back later. Must dash.” He barely had time to get the phone back on its cradle before his father’s voice was electrifying the atmosphere like lightning.
“I don’t appreciate being sent halfway around the world on a fool’s errand, just because you can’t do your job properly.”
Wesley gaped at him in confusion. “I don’t understand.”
“You were supposed to make weekly reports. You didn’t. Nor did you answer your phone or respond to the messages left on it. So, I get sent here to try to clear up yet another of your messes.”
Wesley sprang to his feet clumsily, dropping his pen and knocking the book he had been cross-referencing with onto the floor, eliciting a sharp indrawn breath from his father. Wesley scrambled to pick it back up while gabbling rapidly: “Apparently I was in some kind of…mystical coma. Mr Giles wouldn’t have known about my weekly reports or I’m sure he would have notified someone. I don’t understand why the Council didn’t contact him instead of sending you.” He smoothed out the bent pages of the book and hastily placed it on the table in the library.
His father advanced on him ominously, the light of a lamp behind him sending his shadow ahead like a herald of woe. “The man was fired for incompetence. Why would the Council think of contacting him?”
Wesley snatched a breath. “Because he’s an experienced Watcher and probably the living expert on the Hellmouth.”
Wesley’s father looked him up and down. “Are you criticizing the Council?”
“No, sir.” Wesley looked horrified by the very idea. “Certainly not.”
“Because I would be singularly unamused by you first falling down in your duties, then forcing me to make a most uncomfortable plane journey to this part of the world, only to find that you have also turned renegade and need to be replaced.”
“Replaced?” Wesley squeaked in horror. “No, Father, I assure you that everything is…working smoothly here.”
“If you think for one moment that the fact you are my son would influence me in my assessment.”
“No, Father. I would never think that. Quite the opposite.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Wesley looked completely deer in headlights. “N-nothing.” And Giles could see the little boy he had been so clearly in that instant that it was painful. He wanted to rush out and sweep that boy into his arms and punch Roger Wyndam-Pryce on the nose, and if Wesley had still been a child would have done so in an instant. He realized how much harder it was to deal with a situation where the damage had already been done two decades before.
“Well, do try to be more coherent, Wesley. You’ve barely said anything intelligent since I walked in here. But then you’ve barely said anything intelligent since you were born so I suppose that should come as no real shock. If you could act a little bit less like a drivelling idiot while I’m here though, I would appreciate it.”
In the stillness of the office, Buffy turned to Giles wide-eyed. “Giles, I have to.”
Xander had his arms folded. “And so say all of us.”
Giles rose to his feet, his gaze fixed on Roger Wyndam-Pryce. Wesley had already gone from standing upright to hunching and then getting snapped at for hunching and was now stake up his…spine upright but with his hands behind his back while clearly inwardly cringing. It was as if his body simultaneously wanted to be bolt upright as ordered and to slink as far as away as possible, and despite the fact he was a good few inches taller than his father, he was covering one hand with the other as if he at any moment expected to feel a ruler crack down on his knuckles. Giles thought of the little boy who had been so afraid to come out from under the table after he spilled his drink, but said automatically: “I absolutely forbid it.”
Buffy gave him a look of disbelief. “Giles…!”
Giles turned to her. “Absolutely forbid it, Buffy. This is the only father that Wesley is ever going to have. Alienating him further is not a plan that can possibly benefit Wesley, and if you tell him off for the way he treated his son when was a child he will assume that Wesley has told you about it. As Wesley’s never said a word to us about his father or his upbringing that would be very unfair on him.”
“I wasn’t going to tell him off,” she muttered sulkily. “I was just going to…hit him.”
“Well, I forbid that too.”
Xander glared at Giles. “So, he gets away with it? He’s allowed to treat his kid like that for all those years and no one says anything to him about it…?”
“Explain to me how you think telling Roger Wyndam-Pryce what you think of him will help Wesley?”
“Well, it might make him think twice before he….” Xander broke off. “Okay, I’m presuming he doesn’t still lock him under the stairs or send him to bed without supper but it might make him…”
“What?” Giles demanded. “Love him? Praise him? Tell him that he matters to him? Those things can’t be ordered as a right, they just are – or they’re not.”
Willow sat on Giles’s desk and slumped in defeat. “He was so mean to that little boy for all those years and he’s just out there and I want to tell him what I think of him so much…” She subsided, unclenching her fists. “But I don’t want to make things worse for Wesley.”
Oz said, “It’s only a week until the full moon.” He inclined his head in the direction of the book cage. “Sometimes padlocks come undone….”
Giles restrained a smile that had no right being on his face. “Oz, I don’t think you want a human death on your conscience, and I also suspect that, as snacks go, Roger Wyndam-Pryce would be somewhat stringy. I imagine you’d be picking him out of your teeth for days.”
“For God’s sake, boy! What do you mean you ‘think’ you know when the ascension is going to take place? You either do or your don’t!”
They all grimaced as Roger Wyndam-Pryce’s voice sounded like the crack of a whip.
By comparison Wesley sounded defensive and beaten for all his attempts at resistance: “We have reason to believe that the Mayor is going to need an amount of sustenance that the day of the students’ graduation will supply.”
“Who is this ‘we’ you’re speaking of? Are you the Watcher here or not?”
Wesley put a hand up to his head. “Yes, of course, I’m the Watcher here, but I only arrived a few weeks ago. There’s a difference between theory and practise, and Mr Giles and I...”
“Rupert Giles was fired for gross incompetence. His input is of no value or interest in this matter. Are you letting him ride roughshod over you?”
Giles thought how ironic it was that the reason why Wesley would have allowed Giles to ‘ride roughshod’ over him, if that were indeed what he had been doing, was the one asking that question.
Wesley quivered under the force of his father’s disapproval and said unconvincingly: “No, Father, of course not, but as Giles has been on the Hellmouth for so much longer than I have and has an extensive research library he has been lending me his resources to help research the coming Ascension. I only meant that I’m not the only one to think that it will be on the students’ Graduation Day, he concurs with my conclusions and so does Angel….”
Even as he said the word, Wesley’s slight cringe and pallor confirmed that he knew he had made a mistake.
His father stepped in closer and Wesley wilted until their eyes were level. “You’re consulting with Angelus…?”
“He’sawarriorforgoodnow….”
“Don’t mumble at me, boy! And stand up straight.”
Wesley did so, jolting his spine back into the upright position after his knees had so clearly wanted to sink through the floor. “I was only saying that someone with his centuries’ of experience who has proven himself as…”
“As a mass-murdering serial killer?” Roger Wyndam-Pryce turned and walked away, visibly trying to keep control. “Wesley, you are sorely trying my patience here. Are you standing there and telling me that you’re in the habit of consulting with the disgraced colleague you were sent here to replace and the most notorious vampire to ever walk the earth?”
“No, sir. I mean, yes, I am, but that’s not who they are. It’s not as simple when you’re here. Buffy is a Slayer of unusual aptitude in no small part because of Giles’s training and Angel is...”
His father wheeled on him. “I ask you again, are you criticizing the Council?”
“Just say yes, Wesley,” Buffy murmured. “Just tell him that the Council are a bunch of stuffy pompous know-nothings who…”
“No, sir.” Wesley bowed his head. “Certainly not.”
“You have to learn to take responsibility for your own decisions.”
Wesley snatched a breath and seemed to rally a little, the injustice evidently stinging him. “I do – I am, but there are hundreds of lives at stake and I’m not prepared to risk them just for the sake of following Council protocol to the letter. I’m willing to take any help I can get from any source if I think it will ultimately…”
Roger Wyndam-Pryce was looked at the piles of books on the table. “Exactly how many ‘sources’ are you seeking help from, Wesley?”
Wesley looked defeated before he even started. “I know that the Council advocates that the Slayer’s role should be kept a secret but by the time I arrived here Buffy had already decided that she would function better with a close-knit group of friends aware of her calling and although it’s not something I would have advised it does seem to have been largely beneficial to not only Buffy herself but the people of Sunnydale as a…”
“A Slayer’s job is not to strategize, Wesley. A Slayer’s job is to Slay. You are the brains, she is the muscle. That is how it works best. You’re not here to be her friend or her mentor or her confidante or to pat her on the head and tell her how clever she is for breaking protocol and ignoring Council orders. She does what you tell her, she doesn’t tell you.”
Wesley’s fingers were twisting uncomfortably behind his back now as he attempted to go on standing up straight while his natural impulse seemed to be to lean away, like a birch in a high wind, from where the criticism was coming with such stinging force. “With all due respect, Father, Buffy is a person not an automaton. The Watchers’ Council provide us all with a wonderful grounding in theory, but, when it comes to the practise, surely a good strategist is able to improvise and compromise to achieve the best results for all…”
His father threw his arms up into the air, the contempt radiating from him: “You mean spinelessly give in to every whim of a capricious teenager who has already ruined the career of one Watcher.”
“I hardly think it should be considered a crime to care whether or not these young women live or die in the execution of their duty. Of course, one accepts that the life of the Slayer must be risked and on occasion sacrificed – without being prepared to do that there is nothing between the innocents and the demons – but the fact remains that…”
Giles sighed, murmuring: “Don’t just waffle at him, Wesley. Make your arguments concisely and with some conviction.”
“What difference would it make if he did?” Xander countered. “Do you really think that guy’s going to start listening to him now.”
Buffy nodded. “Xander’s right. As far as Torquefather’s concerned, Wesley’s still that scared little kid he used to lock under the stairs.”
“How many times have I told you that it’s the cause that matters? It’s doing what is right, whatever it may cost. These young women are the front line, and like all foot soldiers they are expendable – and replaceable. They are born with the ability to kill vampires in the way that a wolf is born with the ability to tear down a deer.”
“They’re not wild animals. They’re human beings who have been placed in an invidious position by the machination of fate. They have a destiny that condemns them to a life of secrecy and the rest of us owe them at the very least the courtesy of…”
“Are you raising your voice to me, boy?”
For one glorious moment, Giles thought that Wesley might tell the old bastard that he not only was but would continue to do so, not to mention reminding him which one of them here had been chosen as the Watcher to an active Slayer and how it wasn’t Roger Wyndam-Pryce. But, of course, that was a fantasy that lasted only as Wesley drew himself up as if to strike back and then deflated like a pricked balloon, dropping his gaze and slumping his shoulders as he said meekly: “No, Father.”
Xander groaned. “You know, Wes, there comes a point when you really have to hit them back hard enough to make them realize you’re all grown up now and if they keep pushing you around you’re going to push back.”
Giles darted a glance at the boy. Normally he would have been appreciative of Xander showing such a sound psychological grasp of the situation but in this case, given all the many little notices he had been given over the last couple of years of how Xander’s parents neglected him, it made him distinctly uneasy. Given the way Willow was looking at the boy as if she were more than a little upset, he suspected his unease had good cause.
Buffy said abruptly: “I know how to handle this.”
Wincing, Giles tried to think of any way that Buffy was going to handle this that wouldn’t involve Roger Wyndam-Pryce leaving Sunnydale with a broken nose. A part of him certainly welcomed that scenario, but he knew he was right. A person got one set of parents; substitutes were sometimes a great comfort and could fill the empty space the lack of parental love had left; but if there was any way the bond between parent and child could be held together somehow, it was generally better for all parties. None of them could make Wesley’s father love him or be proud of him or give him a word of praise, but they could at least do their part to prevent the relationship from deteriorating further due to intervention of theirs. “Buffy, I rather doubt it.”
She turned on him. “It’s make-believe, isn’t it? That Watchers’ Council sit on their…rulebooks in England and expect the rest of us to play by them, and you and I have both tried to tell them that their rules don’t work in the field, and Wesley found that out for himself the hard way. There’s nothing that you or I – or Wesley – can say to convince his father that the Council’s wrong.”
Giles nodded. “Yes, with that I would have to agree.”
“And I think one more minute of his father and Wesley’s going to lose so much of his spinal cord we’re going to have to scoop him up from the floor in a jar.”
Grimacing, Giles nevertheless inclined his head. “With that I would also have to concur.”
“So, we play it their way.” Buffy smoothed down her jeans and walked out into the library. “Wesley…?”
He turned around, already looking a little greenish from close proximity with his father and not at all relieved to see her. “Ah, Buffy, would you mind…?”
She stood in front of him with a shoulders back precision that she had certainly never adopted in the past. “I’m sorry to interrupt you, Wesley, but it’s time for our morning training session. Would you like me to wait for you in the training room or should I come back later?” Her voice was polite and respectful without being a parody of the parade ground.
Giles frowned. “How come she never talks to me like that?”
“It’s make-believe, Giles, remember?” Willow murmured.
“Well, she could make-believe for me on occasion, I wouldn’t mind.”
Wesley gaped at her and then hastily collected himself. “Um, well, Buffy…. My father….”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.” Buffy held out a hand to Roger Wyndam-Pryce. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Wyndam-Pryce. I’m Buffy Summers.”
“I’m sure my son was about to introduce us.” Roger gave Wesley a look of exasperation, and Giles realized that his annoyance with Wesley was entirely genuine. The young man clearly was a great disappointment to him. He wondered if he actually craved the moment when Wesley would stand up to him, and if so how ironic it was that he had doomed himself to disappointment by terrorising the boy so completely and at such a young age that he had absolutely guaranteed that the only child he was ever going to have could never be the son he evidently wanted. If that ironic equation had involved only Roger, Giles would have said the man had got exactly what he deserved, but Wesley hadn’t deserved to be the victim of Roger’s unsuccessful foray into parenting, and he was the one who had grown up waiting to hear the words of affection that had never come.
Buffy was being a combination of businesslike and demure that was disturbingly…unBuffy-like. She had lowered her voice and was gazing seriously at Wesley as she shook his father’s hand and answered his questions about their training regime if she had never had a frivolous thought in her life and pretty much lived to take his son’s orders and do as he suggested.
“Wesley thought I should work on my…preparation so I’m presuming that’s what we were going to do today, but of course if he has family visiting, I can work out by myself and then report to him later as usual for his instructions for the night’s patrol….”
“Obedient!Buffy is kind of creepy.” Xander adjusted his shirt. “Also kind of hot.”
Giles waited for Wesley to get that he wasn’t being set up for some particularly humiliating fall. The way Buffy kept gazing at him steadily, with that warm supportive expression finally seemed to clue him in, and he saw him give a jolt of emotion as he realized what she was doing for him. There was the tiniest tremor in his voice as he said: “Jolly good, Buffy. Perhaps we could focus on energy saving methods of despatch? Try out a scenario where you have to conserve your strength due to an injury and work together to find the shortest distance between two points as it were.” His voice was reasonably steady but his eyes were at once thanking her and pleading with her to let him just pretend that this was how things were between them for a little bit longer.
Buffy nodded solemnly. “Point A being me and Point B being dead vampire, yes?”
Wesley managed a nervous smile. “Exactly. We have been concentrating recently on scenarios that depend upon you being in full physical fitness and perhaps we should….”
“Oh, absolutely.” Buffy nodded again. “How about if I start doing a work out and then maybe put my right arm in a sling…?”
“Perfect, yes.” Wesley turned to his father with a straight back, his upper body movement still oddly constricted around the man, but at least with his shoulders back and a readiness to meet his gaze. “Father, would you mind excusing me for an hour? I would prefer not to disrupt Buffy’s routine if at all possible. With the Ascension coming up it’s particularly important that I give her all the assistance she deserves.”
Roger nodded at once. “Absolutely. Good to see the girl has such a focused attitude. I thought with first that hellraiser Giles and then you for her Watcher, she’d been running wild with no idea of discipline.”
Wesley stiffened. “Discipline isn’t the answer to everything, Father. Sometimes, it’s amazing what a little praise and basic respect can achieve.” He turned on his heel and his father watched him walk off in some surprise.
“Go, Wes,” Xander said quietly. He turned to Giles. “I’m totally taking credit for that. That was all down to the way I bought him an ice cream at the zoo.”
“An event of which he has no memory,” Giles reminded him. He was still watching Roger watch his son walk out of the room, thinking about his own emotions when he had nursed Wesley through that illness, those little moments of confidences shared, and the boy so trusting and so fragile. It was impossible to believe that there wasn’t somewhere some spark of affection for the boy in his father’s breast. Perhaps it was buried impossibly deep but surely it must exist? He turned to the others. “Would you mind clearing off for an hour or so. I want to talk to Wesley’s father and I can’t do that if there are witnesses.”
Willow’s eyes widened. “Oh, are you going to…?” She drew a finger across her throat. “Because I found this spell that would….” Seeing Giles expression she turned the end of her sentence into a cough. “Give him a sore throat and also a slight sniffle. And I think we should leave now.”
“Don’t do anything that I wouldn’t do,” Oz observed.
Xander looked at him sideways. “Weren’t you planning to rip his throat out and splinter his bones at the next full moon?”
Oz shrugged. “Pretty much.”
“So, when you say things that you wouldn’t do, you were thinking…?”
“Well, I draw the line at ritual dismemberment. Apart from that – I’m easy.”
Willow slipped her hand through his. “But I like that about you, sweetie.”
“And we’re into the too much information place,” Xander grimaced.
“Wesley, are you…?”
They all froze in horror as Cordelia breezed into the room, wearing her hair pinned back neatly but a skirt that was definitely on the revealing side. She took in Roger with a steady gaze and then stepped forward. “Hello, I’m Cordelia Chase.”
He held out a hand, disapproving and yet unfailingly polite. “Roger Wyndam-Pryce.”
“Wyndam-Pryce?” Cordelia’s voice was unexpectedly cool and measured and Giles wondered just how much she had heard. “Are you Wesley’s father?”
“I am. Are you a…friend of his?” His tone dripped with disapproval.
Cordelia faced him levelly. “I’m a friend of Buffy’s. I don’t really know Wesley well enough to call him a friend, yet. He’s been working pretty hard trying to find a way to stop the Mayor eating all of us. I’d like to get to know him better, of course. I always do when someone saves my life.”
Roger hardly troubled to hide his cynicism: “My son saved your life?”
“Yes, I was being chased by a vampire and it cornered me. He got rid of it with some Holy water. I suppose that’s all in a day’s work for you Watchers, but this is the only life I have and I was grateful to be able to keep it. Does Wesley know you’re here or would you like me to try to find him for you?”
“He knows I’m here. He’s training with Buffy at the moment.”
“He does that a lot.” She nodded to him. “Well, it was nice to meet you. Please tell Wesley I was asking for him.”
Giles had often heard Cordelia mention that she wanted to be an actress, and thought that someone who had never learned to lie or even employ a modicum of tact would be at something of a disadvantage in that profession, but she had certainly carried off the attractive-student-with-a-crush-on-fearless-efficient-young-Watcher thing rather well. Apart from the fact that Wesley was neither fearless nor particularly efficient, she was probably playing no more than a toned down version of herself, but she had still done it with conviction.
Roger watched her go with a frown on his face and Giles took that opportunity to shoo away the others and go out to meet the man.
“I’m Rupert Giles.”
As the man spun around to glower at him, Giles kept his tone even and his face as neutral as he could get it. He kept seeing that little boy in his mind’s eye, crying as he gulped with fear at the thought of the punishment he believed he was about to receive, and clearly had always received in the past. But then he thought of adult Wesley squirming with misery under his father’s disapproving eye, and swallowed down the first half a dozen things he wanted to say. “Would you like a cup of tea while you’re waiting?”
For a moment he thought Roger was going to be an insufferable ass to the end, but the man surprised him. “English Breakfast?”
“Certainly.”
“Twinings?”
“Of course.” Giles didn’t have to pretend to be a little affronted.
“Made in the pot, I presume?”
“Naturally.” Giles led the way to his office – the one that he should at least try to pretend was now Wesley’s.
“Is that young woman setting her cap at my son?”
Giles pushed out a chair for him and switched on the kettle. “Cordelia? Yes, she is, with a conspicuous lack of success.”
Roger snorted. “He always was fairly idiotic around women.”
“Well, I doubt he’s met that many, given the institutions in which he was educated, but I think he just has his mind on the more pressing matter of trying to save a lot of people from dying at the moment. I imagine that Cordelia will eventually prevail. She’s a young woman of strong character.”
“Then she’d be wasted on him. The last thing Wesley has is a strong character.”
Giles had to bite his lip quite hard not to lash out with an instinctive: And whose fault is that? Instead he poured out the tea, handed Roger his cup and saucer and said conversationally: “I can’t say I agree with you on that. I’ve found him to be a young man with a very strong sense of duty. He takes his role here very seriously indeed.”
“Oh, he’s hard working enough. He just doesn’t have what it takes.” Roger sipped his tea aggrievedly. “And don’t think it doesn’t grieve me to say it, but I have a responsibility to the Council and I know my own son.”
“Do you?” Giles couldn’t prevent that edge creeping into his voice as he met the man’s gaze. “Do you really?”
Roger sat back in his chair. “Oh, I see, this is what this is. You think you know him? You’ve seen the real Wesley, the wonderful human being that I’ve never taken the time to get to know?”
“Is that what you think?” Giles countered. “That your son is someone you’ve never taken the time to get to know?”
“It’s probably what Wesley believes. The truth is I know him better than he knows himself, and he’s not cut out for this job, whatever his teachers at the academy may say.”
“You don’t want him to be a Watcher?”
“Of course I do,” Roger snapped back. “But I want him to be good at it, and he never will be. I’ve tried, God knows, I’ve tried, to turn him into the kind of man who has what it takes, and he doesn’t.”
“Well, thank goodness you were there to build up his self-confidence so that he’d be all the better fitted for the task in hand.” Giles hadn’t meant those words to snap out of him and he knew he should take a breath and a moment and then apologize, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it.
Roger snorted. “Been whining to you, has he?”
Giles gritted his teeth. “Certainly not. Wesley hasn’t uttered a word about his upbringing, but it doesn’t take Freud to see that he’s known a great deal more criticism in his life than praise. Given the excellence of his reports from the Academy I would have expected him to be a little more confident of his undoubted abilities, but on every occasion when I’ve had reason to offer him even a ‘well done’ he’s looked quite astonished.” Even as he said it, Giles wished that there had been a few more of those ‘well done’s. His resentment of the interloper, which had felt so justified at the time, now seemed petty and unworthy of him.
“All this modern tomfoolery in education makes me tired. Boys don’t need praise, they need discipline and training. Do you think a vampire or a demon is going to give him a ‘well done’?” Roger sipped his tea and Giles noticed the scar on his hand. Roger had been bitten by a vampire there, Giles remembered, although the worst of his injuries had been in places now concealed by his many layers of tailored clothing. It had been an epic struggle, Roger had been badly injured, several ribs broken and his arm mauled, yet the man had hung onto consciousness through what must have been excruciating pain, and had managed to thrust a snapped branch into the vampire’s breast before staggering to his car, coughing blood as he did so from a rib through his lung, and had driven himself to the nearest hospital, managing to give his name and the number of the Council for which he worked, before passing out from pain and blood loss. A man of character, undoubtedly, and courage.
He thought of that fragile child, so physically insubstantial-looking, and needing glasses even at an early age, whereas Roger didn’t seem to need them even now. Roger had never seemed to lack confidence in his own opinion, forthright and unshakeable in his convictions, whereas Wesley’s belief could be overturned by a frown. Holding that thin child in his arms, feeling the wetness of his long lashes against his neck, Giles had thought of the man now sitting opposite him as a sadist; someone who had been cruel simply because he could, enjoying the power, like some scientist in a laboratory sending rats scuttling along tunnels in which they would find electric shocks instead of food. Now he wondered if Wesley had been an experiment in parenting gone horribly awry; attempts to make him secure in his opinions simply undermining his confidence to the point where he would dither when questioned and fall apart under scrutiny; attempts to cure him of his fears only begetting more nightmares that in turn begat more punishments. Giles had always presumed that one knew instinctively the way to get the best out of a child, but perhaps Roger simply hadn’t known, or had tried to raise his son as he had been raised, and the boy had been so unlike him that when he found his methods failing, had not known how else to proceed except with more discipline and exasperation; his increasing frustration building until he gave way to what he had perhaps never realized was tantamount to cruelty.
“You don’t even have children,” Roger added, and the irritation in his voice was at least a chink in his armour. Giles wondered if Roger was aware on some level that his son had not turned out as he wished because of rather than despite of his training, or if he was still refusing to accept any part of the blame.
“No, I don’t, and I certainly don’t mean to sound as if I’m sitting in judgement on you. I can imagine that raising a child for a specific profession can be emotionally very demanding. I know how I’ve felt on occasion when Buffy has been faced with….”
“So, we’re sharing now, are we?” Roger rolled his eyes. “You tell me about your problems as a surrogate parent, I tell you about mine as an actual one, and we end up sharing a bottle of single malt and singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ with mawkish sentimentality and dubious tunefulness?”
“I don’t actually know the words to ‘Auld Lang Syne’,” Giles admitted. “I wouldn’t say no to a single malt if you happen to have one with you though.”
“The fact is that the boy doesn’t have what it takes. God knows I wish it were different, but he’s not made of the…right stuff – to borrow a vulgar American phrase. I admit it’s not all the fault of his mother’s breeding. They’re not out of the top drawer but they’re sensible enough. No, it’s my mother’s side of the family where the weakness of character comes in. She had a brother who had to be sent home from the front with neurasthenia. Said the men he’d seen die were talking to him. Terrible shame to his family, of course.”
Giles said, in some annoyance: “A lot of very brave men suffered from shell shock, and, whatever we may face in the way of vampires and demons as an occupational hazard, I somehow doubt that even they can compete with the horror of the trenches.”
“There’s a lot of madness in that side of the family, and what is madness except an inability to deal with reality? People side-stepping uncomfortable truths by shuffling their way into insanity. I always thought my father was a fool to marry into the Oakeshott clan. He knew he had a duty to uphold and that meant choosing a wife carefully. My mother was a woman of no inconsiderable beauty but she was also flighty, nervous, and at times positively unstable. I was careful to marry into a family of sensible farming stock with several war heroes in its background. Not Watchers, of course – in the old days they would never have chosen a Watcher from any family that couldn’t trace itself back to the Norman Conquest – but good yeoman blood all the same. My wife is an admirable woman of little imagination, which was just what the family needed. But, knowing about the inherent instability from the Oakeshott blood, I was afraid those characteristics might come out in Wesley, and, although I did my best from the beginning to offset those tendencies, I know he has them. Had I been given a say in the matter, much as I long for him to make me proud of him, I would never have selected him as a Watcher, and certainly not yet. Whatever his reports may say, he’s quite simply unready for the task and he doesn’t have the strength of character to deal with crises or opposition. That girl will just ride roughshod over him.” Roger gave Giles a level stare. “Now, is that enough sharing or do you feel the urge to tell me about your first kiss or that your mother never loved you?”
Giles said quietly: “What is it that you want him to be that you don’t think he is? By what yardstick are you judging him to decide already that he can’t ever match up to your aspirations for him?”
“I know my son.” Roger took another sip of tea. “He’s never been good at making friends because other children can sense weakness and he’s riddled with it. When he’s picked on – as he always invariably is – he whines instead of standing up for himself, and has never yet learned how to deal with a bully. He’s half a coward and at times entirely a fool. He dithers when he needs to be decisive and he fumbles when he needs to be efficient. As a Watcher he’d make an excellent librarian.” His blue gaze flickered dismissively across Giles. “He’s quite efficient at cross-referencing.”
Giles had to look down so that Roger wouldn’t see his anger. He kept thinking of the weight and warmth of that child in his arms, so unused to praise or cuddles or tenderness, so grateful for all of those things, so desperate to please and to be no trouble and to be loved. He had been so eager for Giles’ approval and so touched when he received it; something he had evidently longed for yet so rarely received at home. “Couldn’t you have been a little kinder?” he asked quietly. “Just a little?”
Roger looked as if he had slapped him. His voice roughened. “You’ve been a Watcher to an active Slayer, man. You know what it involves. You know how much preparation is needed, how much strength of character a man needs to possess. If you were raising your son for such a role would it be kindness you felt he needed or discipline?”
“I like to think I could have found a place for both.”
“My father knew the importance of discipline. Our mother was wayward and sentimental, given to ridiculous flutterings of emotion. She spoiled my brother, insisting that, as my father had the raising of me, she should be allowed to do as she liked with Richard. Of course my father put his foot down – he saw the danger of her interference as anyone could, but he was probably less diligent than he should have been at keeping my brother out of her sphere of influence. He was sickly as a child and kept at home when he should have been away at school getting the corners knocked off him. But he was a brilliant scholar and a man of great courage. He should have been a great Watcher, but he never got the chance because our mother’s lack of discipline meant that he died before he was thirty.”
Giles thought of the photograph Wesley had in his possession. “Death isn’t always proof of failure. Sometimes it finds you however efficient you may be. And is that what you’re judging Wesley against? Some mythical Watcher who’s so good at his job that he never makes a mistake? Never dies? Is that what you’ve been measuring him against all this time? Trying to get him to match up to someone who’s never existed?”
“I have a responsibility to the Council. I tried to raise him to be good enough and I failed, and I regret it, but the fact remains that he isn’t good enough. You can’t be soft in this calling. You can’t indulge yourself. You made that mistake with your Slayer. They’re not a child in need of a father, they’re a weapon that needs to be honed in the service of mankind. Of course, if things were different, one would employ a different approach, but these are soldiers we’re training, you from your position and me from mine. One can’t indulge oneself with…”
“Basic human affection? Basic human kindness?”
“Sentimental twaddle doesn’t kill demons.”
“Perhaps sometimes it does. Perhaps sometimes what a young girl, who could be overwhelmed by the weight of her calling, or a young boy who has found out – at an age when most children are unaware even of their own mortality – that there are demons sharing the world that he inhabits, needs isn’t just discipline and training, but to know that she or he is loved.”
“A good Watcher doesn’t want his Slayer to be a substitute for the child he never had, he wants her to see her twenty-fifth birthday. Do you know how many members of my family have died at the hands of vampires and demons? I can’t remember the last Wyndam-Pryce who died in his bed. It was never an option to shower the boy with balloons and toy trainsets on his birthday. I could have made him my friend or I could have tried to keep him alive. My wife never understood it either but I would think that you, of all people would know….”
To Giles’ surprise, Roger abruptly shoved back his chair and walked away in agitation before saying more quietly: “I wanted to keep him alive! Is that too difficult a concept for you to grasp? Do you know how Lehane’s Watcher died?
“Yes.” Giles winced. “I do.”
“Would you want that to happen to a child of yours? There’s always a mistake that was made. One can make excuses for them, say they were in a difficult situation, they made the wrong choice, but the fact is that every Watcher who has ever died since the dawn of time has died because he or she made a mistake. They hadn’t read enough or studied hard enough. They weren’t prepared or they weren’t knowledgeable enough. I knew from the moment my son was born what his profession would be and the risks inherent to it. Only a fool would allow himself to…”
“Love a child that he may well outlive?”
“Let himself be blinded by sentiment.”
Giles rose to his feet. Sorry for the man and yet so much more sorry for the child who he had held in his arms a few days before. “Who were you really protecting, Roger? Wesley from the dangers out there that you knew he was going to face, or yourself from the pain of losing a child you loved?”
“That’s so much sentimental nonsense.”
“It’s natural to love your children, and it’s painful. And it hurts when they die. And trust me, I know.”
“You don’t know! Do you think that Slayer of yours is your own flesh and blood? Are you so deluded?”
“I know how it felt when I read the prophecy that said she was going to die.”
“And your judgement was clouded! We don’t have jobs, we have a calling. We have a duty and an obligation to others that can’t be muddied by sentiment. Wesley has a job to do. It was my duty to prepare him for it as best as I was able. It’s unfortunate for both of us that he has an inherent weakness of character that makes him unfitted to his calling. I’ve tried to overcome that weakness with training. Unfortunately, I seem be doomed to failure where he’s concerned.”
Giles shook his head in disbelief. “You know, it’s ironic, given all the courage you’ve shown over the years facing up to all manner of vampires and demons, that the son you dismiss as being so much less than you should have turned out to be so very much braver than you are. Unlike you, he’s not afraid to love.”
Roger curled his lip. “You’ve spent too long in California, Giles. You’re starting to sound like a Hallmark card.”
He was too close to the child Wesley had been; could still remember the weight of him in his arms, that thin body clinging to him. He knew that if he had been given the chance to raise that child that he would have made mistakes, as every parent did, but he would not have done to him what Roger Wyndam-Pryce had done; would not have crushed his confidence and eroded his courage until he was too riddled with insecurities to make a decision. He rose to his feet, on the point of telling Wesley’s father that he thought it was high time that he left, and then remembered that this was meant to be Wesley’s office now, and he should therefore be the one to go out and snatch in a few lungfuls of fresh air.
Clinging to his temper only barely he said tautly: “Well, if you’re in the mood for quotes, Pryce, here’s one from Austin O’Malley that seems to fit the bill: ‘Before you beat a child, be sure yourself are not the cause of the offense.’ ”
Giles walked out with what he hoped was considerable self-possession, but he knew it was hopeless. He had given getting through to the man his best shot, but Roger had invested too much time and too much of himself in his own manner of child rearing. He could not now turn around and admit that he had made mistakes, that he could perhaps have allowed himself to be loving and encouraging instead of distant and critical; that would undo too much of who he was, and the regret, perhaps, would be unbearable. Easier by far for him to continue to blame Wesley for Roger’s mistakes in child rearing, and never admit that any of the faults were his.
But as he stepped out into the sunlight, Giles realized that he didn’t care if Wesley’s dignity was affronted; his dignity would recover. What he wanted was for Wesley to remember that he had, after all, had a period of his childhood where no one had considered him a failure or a coward, and in which he had been loved by everyone who knew him. Perhaps it had only lasted for a few days, but nevertheless the experience had been Wesley’s own, won by him on his own merits, and perhaps if only he had remembered those days of ice cream and kite-flying it might have armed him a little, against those other memories of praise withheld and punishments inflicted. Perhaps, if only the spell had not vanished so completely, it might have given Wesley an aftermath of warmth inside to offset his father’s criticism. For the first time, Giles admitted to himself that he bitterly regretted that Wesley did not remember his second childhood in Sunnydale, and would never now know how it felt to be a child who was unconditionally loved.
***
no subject
Date: 2008-01-25 07:16 pm (UTC)I have to say though, I was oddly sympathetic towards him. I like how you don't entirely make him the bad guy. Just a truly, sadly misunderstood man who wasn't able to transfer what he wanted correctly and it went all totally awry.
While I still feel bad for him, in a way I think he's worse than a plainly cruel parent, whose clear intention is hurt. It's like you had in Giles thoughts, the man did this to himself. He was so close-minded he ended making Wesley all the things he didn't want just because he's too afraid to see the potential in Wes to be something greater.
Wonderful writing. Shame he didn't punch Roger, though I get why, and I hope they finally tell Wes the truth about those ten days.
~Tai
no subject
Date: 2008-01-26 11:29 am (UTC)Part Fifteen is here http://elgrey.livejournal.com/42853.html
and Part Sixteen (the final part) is here: http://elgrey.livejournal.com/43101.html
Thank again so much!