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[elgrey]

Closing the Cupboard Door, Part Two

Arrived in Sunnydale where I met the man I was replacing, Rupert Giles, and the two Slayers who will be under my command. Buffy Summers is wilful insolent and undisciplined while Faith seems even more wayward. Mr Giles is evidently not a disciplinarian. I also see no evidence of either Buffy or Faith ever having studied the Slayer’s Handbook and I suspect that giving them a copy now will be a futile gesture....

Giles sighed. Just what he’d expected. Dry, self-justifying, pompous. Still, it was hard to believe that Wesley had managed to fill two notebooks already. That was anally retentive even for a Watcher.

He opened the red notebook and scanned it briefly then stopped and read every word:

...believe the Council are asking me to assess the competence of the man I’m replacing. How can that possibly be a fair or unbiased system? I have been born and bred to be a Watcher. How likely is it that I’m going to give a fair report on Rupert Giles when it is only his dismissal that has made it possible for me to carry out my hereditary duty in the first place? The truth is I think he is too emotionally connected to his Slayer and that his affection for her and her tribe of friends does indeed cloud his judgement. I think he has lost his sense of perspective and has become incapable of seeing the bigger picture or what needs to be done for the greater good. However, I also can’t deny that I have been here several weeks and I have entirely failed to win the trust, respect or affection of anyone here. I may be the best Watcher in the world and Giles the worst but if Buffy thinks I’m a cowardly incompetent idiot and Giles everything that is wise and worthy then which one of is the most likely to get the best out of her?

I really have done my best to be a good Watcher to Buffy and to Faith and the end result is that Faith has defected to the other side and Buffy despises and dislikes me. She ignores my advice and refuses to listen to my suggestions – I can hardly call them ‘orders’ as she certainly doesn’t follow them. Buffy is here to guard a Hellmouth, a chasm between this world and the demonic dimensions below. Sunnydale is a place from which all manner of fiends are regularly disgorged and the only protection for the people here and the wider world beyond is Buffy. So which is the greatest handicap to her efficiency – a Watcher she believes in whose judgement is faulty or a Watcher whose judgement may not be faulty but whose experience is so much less than hers that she seems incapable of taking him seriously? In the long term perhaps I would be a better Watcher to Buffy as I really can’t see myself ever becoming too fond of her to see the big picture. In the short term I am a disaster. Perhaps Giles should have been dismissed but he and Buffy made a team that managed to keep Buffy alive and the world a safer place for two and a half years. I’ve been here two months and have achieved precisely bugger all. I think the Council just want to pass the buck to me so that if they have to admit they’ve made a mistake and reinstate Giles they can say I was the one who told them he wasn’t competent, and – despite the opinion of everyone here – I don’t really see myself as a mindless Council stooge.

I’ve returned the assessment form to the Council with a note saying that I don’t consider myself equipped to comment on my predecessor’s competence and if they are contemplating making further changes I suggest they send in an independent assessment team. As I have no doubt that any independent assessment team would decide that I am indeed the complete waste of space everyone here believes me to be and Giles everything that is efficient and wonderful I have probably just shot myself in the foot but I think the guidance of the only Slayer left on the side of Good is a little too important to be decided by office politics and personality clashes....

“Something interesting?”

Giles looked up guiltily to find Angel gazing at him curiously. He cleared his throat. “I think Wesley kept two different diaries. An official one and an unofficial one. The unofficial one appears to give a rather fuller picture of his true state of mind.”

“Oh.” Angel frowned. “Does he mention me?”

Giles flicked through the pages until he found Angel’s name.

One of the most extraordinary allies of our very unsecret Slayer is the vampire formerly known as Angelus. This is another area where I feel Giles is entirely failing to do his job to the best of his ability. Angel – as Angelus now prefers to be known – is a unique and fascinating case study, a vampire with a soul. He may hold the key to so much about the nature of vampires that we have never understood before. He remembers being human and – rather traumatically for him as I understand it – also remembers being the soulless killer he became when sired by Darla. Cursed by gypsies to have his soul returned to him he was haunted with remorse for decades before deciding to fight on the side of Good. He could no doubt tell us how it feels to be a vampire, how much of the previous personality exists within the demon, and crucially, what the function of the soul actually is. He is the answer to a philosopher’s dream and yet as far as I can tell Giles has asked him precisely…nothing.

Even though the Council are aware of Angel’s presence here they don’t appear to be taking much interest either, and yet, surely this is an entity every bit as important as the Slayer? Surely something so extraordinary and unique as a vampire with a soul could not come about without there being some higher purpose intended for him? So many Council members have been turned into demons over the years, so many Watchers made vampires so that the Slayer is forced to take their unlives when perhaps re-ensoulment should have been considered as a possibility. There are questions, certainly. Every human serial killer has a soul so one cannot claim the soul as a brake to all antisocial behaviour, yet it did prove enough to turn Angelus from one of the most sadistic and bestial of monsters into a self-sacrificing hero of the defenceless. Is it conscience or remorse that has worked this alteration? In other words if Angelus had killed no one would Angel now be such a useful tool for the powers of Good? If his soul had been restored to as he arose from the grave, before he had claimed a single human life, would he simply have become an ordinary vampire of neither great evil nor great good? It would be nice if someone asked Angel these kinds of questions but apparently everyone is too worried about hurting his feelings to do so. Ironic that I’m the only person here who doesn’t care about his feelings but I’m also the only one too afraid of him to ask him anything, including the time of day.

I was at school with Neville Taylor. We were on the same cricket team. I remember how proud he was of getting that position in Bulgaria. He was captured and tortured by a nest of vampires who turned him after four days of torment. The Council staked him three weeks later. I used to think that was the best they could do for him, now I’m wondering why there is no record in the Council library of the gypsy spell Willow used to give Angel back his soul. It should have been recorded for a century and it was comprehensible to a seventeen year-old girl. Why didn’t we know about it? Doesn’t anyone want to know if something of the human a vampire once was survives? If the vampire has their memories and their bodies and the soul contains their conscience, that spark of humanity that makes us something other than demon, what does that make a vampire with a soul? Isn’t it something with the memories, appearance and conscience of a human trapped inside a demon’s physiognomy? Because holy water will always burn him does that really mean that Angel is eternally damned?

He was sent back from Hell. Why? Doesn’t anyone want to know? All he seems to be in Sunnydale is Buffy’s somewhat problematic boyfriend but am I the only one who thinks that he was perhaps destined to be something rather more significant even than the tragic love interest of the Slayer? I don’t even know what Angel thinks his purpose is and I’m too afraid of him to ask. I know the Council would disapprove of his presence here but I can’t help feeling that an opportunity is being wasted here to improve our understanding not only of vampires but humanity as well, and the spark of humanity that does indeed appear to be trapped within that intangible thing that gypsy curse managed to identify and separate as a ‘soul’.

Giles held out the notebook. “He thinks you’re a fascinating case study and the key to unlocking the philosophical significance of the human soul.”

Angel took the book and read the entry with a frown. “Wesley’s afraid of me.”

“Wesley’s afraid of everything, particularly looking foolish,” Giles sighed. “But if he spent a little less time worrying about looking like an idiot he might not actually do it so often.”

“Difficult not to be self-conscious when your self-esteem is down by your ankles.”

Giles looked at Angel in surprise. He didn’t expect insight from a vampire about the human condition, but of course Angel had been alive for two and a half centuries. He conceded the point with a sigh. “His father seems to like it there.”

“I remember how that feels. Needing to be loved unconditionally, doing everything I could to make my father prove to me that he would love me whatever I did, only to find that he didn’t. Except, ironically, I think he did. He was just trying to stop me wasting my life. Just didn’t feel that way at the time – it felt more like all he wanted was to make me feel bad about myself.”

“I think Wesley’s approach was somewhat different.” Giles thought of that letter from his father. “As was that of Wesley’s father.”

Angel looked at the letter on the notebooks. “May I?”

Giles sighed. “I don’t think Wesley would want you to but I can’t exactly stop you, can I?”

Angel was already reading the letter. After he’d finished, he put it back in the envelope and tapped it against the stack of books. “Yes. Wesley turns cartwheels to try and make his father proud of him from the day he was born, does everything he’s told, never answers back, gets made Head Boy, qualifies as a Watcher, gets given care of a Slayer, and his father tells him he’s a useless failure who’ll never amount to anything. Heads Wesley loses, tails his father wins.”

“I must confess that Wesley is making rather more sense to me right now.”

“Why do fathers do that to their sons anyway? Do they resent them getting a second chance they’re not going to have? Do they hate seeing their own faults reflected in someone else?” Angel looked towards the operating theatre. “My father was always telling me I’d go to hell and all he did was buy the ticket to send me there. I hadn’t even tasted ale until I was seventeen and yet from when I could crawl he was telling me that boys were useless drunken sots always whoring and cursing and defiling their bodies and their souls. It wasn’t until a hundred and fifty years after he was dead that I even realized that he loved me. A little on the late side by then.”

“I was furious about being given a sacred trust that I didn’t ask for and didn’t want. I had other things I wanted to do with my life that had nothing to do with vampires and Slayers.” Giles shrugged. “I suppose I can understand both the need to rebel and the need to conform. And I also suppose I should have realized that while someone as annoying as Wesley must indeed be compensating for something that knowing that really isn’t to know everything about him. I should have asked why he felt the need to compensate instead of just reaching that conclusion and stopping.”

“Why should you?” Angel countered. “Wesley is your replacement, not your responsibility.”

“He’s still a fellow human being. And one who doesn’t understand this place any better than I did when I first arrived here. I could have at least offered to show him around the town or suggested that we went out for a drink, asked him if he was settling in all right. Something other than sighing with irritation every time he arrived and feeling that I was exercising extraordinary patience in not actually saying most of those snide little remarks he always makes me want to voice.”

“So, even English people find English people annoying?” Angel concealed a smile with difficulty. “Who knew?”

Giles narrowed his eyes. “Shouldn’t you be brooding about your mythic destiny around now? I don’t really see little quips as part of your whole dark avenger personae, Angel.”

“People change,” Angel shrugged. “Sometimes even long after they’re dead.”

Giles reached across and plucked the notebook from his fingers. “Some of us would prefer to stay this side of the grave.” He looked at the operating theatre again. “And would prefer others to stay that way also.”


“Giles…?”

He woke with a jolt to find a vampire whispering to him urgently. That was definitely not supposed to be part of the whole Watcher package he’d so reluctantly signed up for. Ex-Watcher package. He hadn’t really taken that in until now, this very moment. It was reading Wesley’s notebook that had done it. All those references to what a Watcher was meant to be, how important it was to do it well; practically able to taste the painful desperation from Wesley because this was what he was – all he was – and he wasn’t doing it well enough. The fear of being fired like the carbine scent a bullet left in the empty chamber, because it had happened to Giles and could happen to him, and that would be the most crushing terrifying failure ever, because if he wasn’t a Watcher, he wasn’t anything.

He had read it with a combination of exasperation and pity, that Wesley could have so resolutely put all his eggs into one such fragile basket. But was he really any different? He had thought he had taken being fired so much better than Wesley would because he was stronger, better balanced, had other things in his life, but wasn’t the truth that he had taken it so well only because he had continued to be Buffy’s Watcher? Wesley’s youth and inexperience had made it possible for him to simply wait the man out and still be treated by everyone else as if he were still the one who Watched for Buffy while Wesley had to put up with it. Wesley had made a few half-hearted attempts to convince everyone that Giles had been supplanted certainly, but he simply didn’t have the authority to make it stick. So, Giles was still Buffy’s Watcher in everything but name and wages. No one was going to show that kind of loyalty to Wesley if the Council fired him. He’d be sent home in disgrace to some lowly research position in the Council library; a failed Watcher; something his father could mention in front of relatives at every family gathering. Giles shuddered at the prospect. Perhaps after all there was something very reasonable about Wesley’s fear.

“Giles…?”

He forced his eyes open again, realizing he had cricked his neck painfully falling asleep in this uncomfortable chair.

“He’s out of surgery.”

He sat bolt upright, reaching for his glasses as he did so. “What? How is he?”

“Still alive. Not out of danger yet. But at least he’s made it this far.” Angel looked as he if he actually cared and Giles realized that Angel must still be able to smell Wesley’s blood all over both of them. He wondered which was the stronger feeling it elicited in Angel – pity or hunger? That would be one of those crass questions that no doubt Wesley thought they should be asking Angel.

“What time is it?”

“Four a.m.”

Giles frowned. “You need to go. Get home before the sun comes up.”

Angel looked in the direction of the wards. “I just want....”

“He’ll make it or he won’t, Angel. There’s really no more you can do. I’ll stay.”

Angel looked back at the room. “I wouldn’t want him to wake up and think....”

“No one in Sunnydale gives a damn about him?” Giles nodded. “No, I wouldn’t want him to think that either. Which is why I’ll stay until he’s out of the woods or....” He decided not to finish that ‘or’.

“I’ll be back this evening.” Angel rose to his feet, looking annoying uncrumpled despite a night spent on an uncomfortable hospital chair. “Tell Wesley I told him to hang in there.”

“I’ll tell him.”


Wesley looked small and lost and horribly young in that Intensive Care unit, tubes in and out of him, wired up to machinery that bleeped a rhythmic beat presumably in time to his heart.

Pneumonia, the doctor said, not unusual after that kind of physical trauma or a long operation. In the meantime the good news was that the infection in his wounds was responding to treatment, the bad news was that he had a high fever.

Giles looked at the label they had put around Wesley’s wrist. It had slipped down almost to his elbow, his arms so thin he realized at last why the man always did up the strap of his watch so tightly above his wrist bone, because otherwise it would be halfway down his arm. He had never realized how padded the shoulders on that one good suit must be because Wesley was far narrower than he had ever realized; just skin and bone really; unexpectedly fragile, painfully vulnerable. He had bandaging around his scored torso and gauze pads on his forehead and around his arms, the lesser scratches had been left uncovered in the hope that they would heal faster; there shouldn’t be any scarring on his face, the doctor had said, as if that was what mattered now, when the poor fool was hovering somewhere between life and death. And inside the cuts and bruises and stitched up tears in his skin and flesh there was his fever-heated blood which was now be turning everything inside Wesley’s sleeping mind to multi-coloured confusion. A delirium within a savaging. No, this really wasn’t the way things were meant to be for pompous annoying little twerps; this was the way things were meant to go for heroes. And what was someone who was bleeding to death in the dark and yet used his last gasp to try to save the life of an eighteen-year-old girl if not a hero? When is a hero not a hero? He could almost hear Buffy answering him: When it’s Wesley.

“How is he?”

He turned to find them in the doorway: Buffy, Xander, Willow and Oz. He presumed they’d slept a little, as they had changed their clothes, but Willow looked just as pale as the night before and there were smudged shadows under her eyes.

“He made it through surgery.”

“Is he going to live?” Buffy pressed.

Giles tried to give them an encouraging smile. “He has a better chance now than he did a few hours ago.”

“Can I touch him?” Willow asked.

Giles had to admit to being surprised by the question. “Yes, I think so. Try not to breathe on him, I presume he’s very susceptible to germs right now.”

Willow immediately pulled a chair over to Wesley’s bedside and took his hand in hers. It was limp, of course, the fingers unexpectedly long and delicate, more suited to a pianist than someone who battled demons. Willow curled her fingers through his and said softly: “I wanted to thank you, Wesley, for saving my life. That was very brave what you did – going after the Hazranak in that demon-hunty way. I’m so sorry it hurt you. I hope you can hear me and that you wake up soon so I can thank you properly.”

Oz said quietly to Giles, “She kept waking up saying she hadn’t thanked him. I thought it was better if she did that right away.”

“Yes.” Giles looked across at the slender redhead. “Probably better for her to do that.”

“You look so tired,” Buffy said gently. “Let me get you some coffee.”

“Thank you, Buffy.” Giles realized that he was indeed utterly exhausted; emotionally and physically.

Xander said: “How’s he doing?”

Giles looked across at Wesley. “I don’t know. I just think someone should be with him.”

“We can do that.” Xander looked across at the bed and the unconscious man. “Why don’t you go home for a few hours? Get some sleep.”

Oz nodded. “You do kind of look like hell, Giles.”

“We’ll stay with him.” Xander handed Giles his coat and nodded to where Willow was holding Wesley’s hand, still talking to him quietly with a smile on her face, evidently telling him something cheerful and probably a little…adjacent.

Giles knew that if he left them here they would probably read Wesley’s notebooks and that letter from his father but suddenly he didn’t think it mattered if they knew that adults were also riddled with insecurities and doubts and felt lonely and useless and unfit to face the tasks ahead of them sometimes; perhaps it was something everyone needed to be reminded of from time to time.

“…so, I thought when you were better that we could show you some of the places where we hang out – only not the Bronze because I think the music would probably be a little too loud for you, or any of the cemeteries, obviously, and I was thinking maybe the zoo except for the evil hyena spirits, and then I thought of the museum but there was that whole Inca Mummy problem, but actually as a Watcher you probably find evil hyena spirits and Inca Mummys pretty darned interesting, so maybe we could start with those....”

Oz looked across at Giles. “He’s going to know there’s someone with him, Giles.”

Buffy came back in with the coffee but held it out of Giles’s reach. “I can give you this, but I think we both know it would be a better idea if I kept it and you went home and got some sleep.”

Giles looked across at the bed, still trying to make this person look like Wesley; he did and he didn’t, but mostly, without his glasses, or his padded suit, or his tie, or his brylcreemed hair, he looked like a very pale ill thin young man who had been savaged almost to death by a demon.

“We’ll take care of him.” Buffy handed the coffee to Xander, while still holding Giles’ gaze. “I promise.”

Giles nodded and walked out of the room, when he paused in the doorway, Willow was still talking to Wesley brightly about all the exciting things they were going to show him in Sunnydale as soon as he was better; given the way she was smiling one might have thought his recovery was in no doubt at all, except for the tear tracks on her face.

***

Comments

[whisp.livejournal.com]

I just had to comment in this chapter, because my absolute favourite part of this fic was the conversation that Giles and Angel had after reading Wes' journals. You wrote in some really thoughtful insights about the human condition. I never thought about how Angel would view people after being around them for so many years.

[elgrey.livejournal.com]

Thank you again for the kind and detailed feedback. I'm glad you enjoyed the fic. Angel always seemed a lot more laid back about Cordy and Wesley than most people in Sunnydale, which I really like about him.

[grapecase.livejournal.com]

My feedback won't be as detailed but I was thinking the very same thing. I always enjoy your insights on Wesley, Angel, and the other scooby/ai members and I like it when Giles and Angel suss it out in that intellectual thoughtful way of theirs. I also enjoyed the Wesley stream of conciousnes. It was very well done. :-)

~Tai