Watchers Council

Chapter 3

Three weeks later and life at the new Watchers Council Headquarters was more hectic than ever. The final stages of the initial phase of construction seemed to be almost completed at the new dormitory block but the foundations had just been poured for the new gym and pool complex. Xander now had three construction crews under his control and managed better than even he would have believed several months before.

Giles looked out of his office window as he took a break from the relentless round of reports to be read and minor administrative details to be dealt with.

He remembered the months after the defeat of the First when he had returned to England to try to resurrect the Council. Buffy had finally taken a holiday while Dawn enrolled in a high school in the nearest town, graduating early and with exceptional marks. He grinned as he looked at her graduation photograph and remembered the excitement of the day and their sighs of relief as the guest speaker remained in human form for the entire ceremony. Dawn had blossomed once the constant worry of the hellmouth had passed and had become a bright, confident and attractive young woman. When he had first suggested the job as his assistant in England over the summer holidays she had jumped at the chance. He had meant the offer as a reward for her hard work and hadn’t really expected her to want to work. However, after a few weeks of sightseeing she had been keen to get down to the serious business of pulling together the disparate strands of the devastated Council of Watchers. Several weeks passed and she had become indispensable at his side, thoroughly enjoying working with people who didn’t know her background and treated her as a person, rather than the Vampire Slayer’s sister.

After several months it became apparent that the fundamental aims of the Council would have to be re-evaluated if they were to have any chance of re-establishing the role of the Watchers in the lives of the recently activated slayers. Many of the young women had accepted their new found strength and speed as the answer to a prayer and moved on with their lives. Others had found it difficult to adjust and had come to the attention of the authorities when their emerging talents led to more than bruised egos.

Giles had argued that the new organisation must act as a safe house for these girls, a place where they could learn about their new skills and the responsibility to use them wisely. The Board of Directors had disagreed vociferously, claiming that the Watcher’s birthright was to defend innocents from the demons who walked the earth and the domestic and police troubles experienced by these young women were none of their business. Giles had eventually refused to carry on in his position as head of the organisation and told them that he would continue his work, as he saw fit, elsewhere. The Directors knew Giles well, many had served with his father and they recognised the stubborn tone that indicated the seriousness of his intentions. They also knew that if he were to leave he would undoubtedly take many of their trained staff with him. Eventually bowing to the inevitable they had agreed to give him his place and the freedom to run the Watchers Council as he wished. Only two of them had not been surprised when his first decision was to relocate to America and begin recruiting a group of people familiar to all who had studied the recent Watcher diaries.

When Giles had insisted that the new Compound be sited in America one of his first decisions had been to hire a local company to undertake the large construction project. Mr Smythe had assumed that, as the remaining survivor from the Council’s planning and estates department, he would obviously be in charge of the construction works. Giles had simply told him to report to Xander on the following Monday morning and to try to stay out of his way as much as possible.

None of his friends would ever know the efforts Giles expended to make sure that they were given positions that reflected their experience and knowledge. He had insisted that Xander was the only acceptable candidate as the project manager for the construction project. Any worries he may have had about the temporary nature of such a job were dissipated when the construction plan finally cleared the Board and estimates put the completion date as five years hence.

Nobody had dared to disagree when he had told them that Willow would be in charge of Research and Development. Willow had been bored out of her mind at the University where she had gone to continue her studies. It seemed, in retrospect that the constant threat of vampires and giant snakes had served to spice up her early life and she realised that all she was left with were some relatively tame subjects. A growing reputation for being a mine of information in some very esoteric subjects didn’t help as she tried to get used to a normal life. She also missed her friends and with Buffy on an extended trip and Xander hard at work building his construction business she had been lonely. Kennedy had taken up Faith’s offer to help out at the Cleveland Hellmouth. They had parted as friends and tried to keep in touch but she had felt very out of the loop on a normal campus with no apocalypse type funny business. Giles’ call to beg her to join him had come at a point when she was finally ng tng to decide on a career and despairing of having to work normal office hours.

Buffy was a more difficult problem as she was no longer in the semi-unique position of being the chosen one. The reason that they were all working so hard was to try to sort out the overabundance of slayer-powered young girls now roaming the planet. However, Buffy did have the advantage of being the most experienced of them all and she had suggested the training role when Giles had confessed his lack of success at finding a niche for her.

Physical training was something that the remaining Watchers could take care of, however, none of them had the field experience of the last and most successful active slayer. She had worked hard to pull together a block of lessons that tried to instil this awareness within the limitations of a classroom setting. It also had the advantage of taking up only six weeks out of every three months so she was free to travel wherever she wanted and with the attractive salary attached to the post, also had the money to indulge her wunderlust.

The Board of Directors was made up of senior members of the old Council. They travelled from all over the world once every three months to agree budgets and plans for the next quarter. Giles would quite happily have acceded to Willow’s initial request to change them all into toads, however, they controlled the bank accounts that hadn’t been destroyed by the First.

Ancient evil always seemed to lack an understanding of the ways of the modern world and the First had assumed that blowing up property and people would be enough to end the Council of Watchers for evermore. It had reckoned without Swiss bank accounts, investment portfolios and electronic data storage.

Although many original manuscripts and texts were lost in the devastation, much of the library had been converted to electronic media over the previous years and Willow now had one of the most powerful libraries in the world at her fingertips. One of her major headaches was that the cross referencing had remained in the dark ages as a paper based system and it was frustrating to have all of the knowledge and yet take five days to find the simplest piece of information. The majority of her team were working towards an information retrieval database that would speed up the process but it had taken her three months just to recruit the computer specialists she needed and she was frustrated that everyone else had made real progress since their arrival at the site.

Giles yawned and stood up to stretch. Now that the initial stages of setting up were nearly past, his life had settled down to dull routine and paper pushing. He had known that the post would eventually come to this but he missed the time when he could sit for four days in a library trying to translate one phrase, knowing that the correct answer would save lives. He even missed the demon slime and sewers of his life as an active Watcher. Shaking his head he decided that he had seen enough of the inside of his office to last him a lifetime. “Dawn” he put his head round the door and found her poring over a pile of papers. “Do you need a hand with any of that?” he asked.

She put her hand up to silence him for a moment as her lips indicated she was counting. Writing down a number she finally turned to look at him. “Nope, I’m just checking some figures before I send them downstairs” she flexed her fingers and winced a little. “Surely someone can come up with a non-itchy plaster?” she asked disgustedly.

“I’m just going to pop down to the training rooms for an hour or so, I need to get out of this office for a while” he came into her office and shut the door behind him. “Are you sure you should be back at work if your arm is still giving you problems?” he asked and leaned over to prod at the plaster.

“It hurts no matter where I am so I might as well be here” she shrugged. “Besides, Willow was about to hang you up by your suspenders” she glanced at his wince and smiled sheepishly. “Sorry, braces” she enunciated clearly and saw him smile. “So you should be thanking me for coming back and saving you”

“There is that” he agreed. “Perhaps when I get back you could take the rest of the day off?” he suggested.

“I’d rather clear the backlog but thanks for the offer” she smiled. “Tell Buffy I said hi and ask her pick up some milk on the way home?” she asked and returned to her figure work.

He walked down the corridor and headed for the main stairway. When he had first been looking for suitable properties he had fallen in love with this staircase. It swept from the front entranceway to the right and left of a large central hall and met up at first floor level in a grand balcony. The building had been abandoned for several years but had originally housed a boy’s boarding school and he had found it whimsically appropriate. The walls had spent their early years ringing to the sound of boys whispering and laughing and now they rang to the sound of girls shouting and arguing and fighting and giggling. He chuckled to himself as he walked down the stairs, one day he would pluck up the courage to slide down the banister.

The basement had originally been a wine cellar for the masters in the school but, tempting as it had been, he had agreed to the plan to convert it into a basic training room. He hoped that the completion of the state of the art gym complex might allow him to convert it back to its original purpose but there would probably be another priority at the time.

Quickly changing into his sweats he spent ten minutes warming up before heading for the treadmills. As he settled into an easy rhythm he watched in the mirrored wall in front of him as Buffy took a class of young women through some basic self defence moves. Her assured movements and obvious power made some of them unsure of her but she worked hard to include everyone in the class. When the class finally broke up he watched her walking towards him. Slowing a little he was walking by the time she handed him a towel. “Hey boss, whatcha doing slumming it with the workers?” she grinned.

“Just thought I’d make sure you were teaching them the proper techniques and not the sloppy stuff you used to try to pass off when we trained together” he smiled back at her and stepped off the treadmill.

“Oh yeah?” she asked, the challenge clear in her voice. “Think you can still teach me a thing or two?”

He winced slightly as he remembered the look in her eyes when she had told him, not so long ago, that he didn’t have anything else to teach her. He saw her watch his reaction and knew she had chosen her words carefully, perhaps she was ready to call a truce? “There are one or two moves I didn’t think you were ready for” he suggested and slowly took off his sweatshirt.

“You even train in many layers” she shook her head and moved to the centre of the training mats. “Come on then Mr Watcher, show me what you’ve got” she gestured to him and rested one hand on her hip, ready for whatever he had.

He was aware of the remainder of Buffy’s previous class watching their preparations and shook his head. He wasn’t sure he wanted an audience when Buffy inevitably dumped him on his ass but he knew that they were all curious about the slayer/watcher relationship and he decided to give them an indication of what they were letting themselves in for. “Why don’t we make this more interesting?” he asked and left the mats to gather two swords from their place on the wall. “First one to three hits gets to choose the flavour of ice cream and the loser pays” he suggested and flexed his blade.

“Agreed” she grinned, caught the sword as he threw it at her and stepped inside his raised arm in one fluid movement, lightly tapping his rib with the edge of her blade. “One to me” she smiled sweetly and took up her position in front of him.

He heard the gasps from a couple of the other girls, her movement had been almost too fast to catch with the naked eye and he took a deep breath, this was going to be fun. “En garde” he touched the blade to his forehead and lowered it again before thrusting and parrying for sev min minutes. “You’ve remembered most of the basics I taught you” he eventually grinned and took a step back to catch his breath.

“Let me know when the warm up is over” she quipped and made some flashy passes with the blade. She was also aware of the growing crowd of onlookers and admitted to herself that she enjoyed the audience.

“Time to give them something to watch” he muttered under his breath so that only she could hear. He waited for her barely perceptible nod before lunging at her. She dropped to one knee as she stepped back and he narrowly missed her as he kept his forward momentum and moved past her. They fought quickly and with no quarter given but Giles had the advantage of years of experience with his chosen weapon. Ten minutes later and the score stood at two-one to him. Buffy stood back and rolled her shoulders as she used a towel to dry her hand and the hilt of the sword. “Why don’t we make this a little more interesting?” she asked.

“What did you have in mind?” he grinned.

“Let’s make it dinner instead of ice cream and use the entire room instead of the training mats” she nodded her head to the equipment around them. “Unless you don’t think you can move much further?” she goaded him.

He continued grinning and shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t mind, it’s your money and I have a very expensive restaurant in mind”

“We’ll see about that” she lunged towards him and feinted at the last second, barely missing him with her blade.

“Bit of a draught in here?” he asked in an unconcerned tone of voice as he watched her go past him. Her momentum carried her towards the gymnastic equipment and she vaulted easily over the pile of training mats sitting in front of the beam. They continued with the cat and mouse, Buffy constantly on the move and trying to tire him out before she closed to within distance of his blade. The crowd sensed her tactics and several discussions broke out as the quickest ones explained to the others. “Are we running a race or having a sword fight?” he stood beside the vaulting horse and waited for her to come to him.

She stood several feet away and he saw the studied look on her face. Realising the move she was about to make he backed away from the horse, but he was too late. With a minimal run up Buffy dived at the horse and planted one hand to twist herself as she passed over it. Her sword arm came round in a wide sweep and as she nailed the landing in front of him the beaded point of her sword landed square in the middle of his chest. They stood staring at each other for a moment, Buffy finally having to take deeper than normal breaths. “Two each I think” she said and leaned against the sword to cause the blade to bend a little.

“Well done” he muttered under his breath and moved away from her to settle the deciding point. They lunged and parried for a few minutes before he set up a complicated series of feints and thrusts. Their swords clashed and slid against each other until they met, face to face, as the hand guards ground together. “Ready to give up yet?” he chuckled and took the opportunity to push his glasses up his nose.

Buffy shook her head and pushed him away, using his momentary unbalance to flick his sword out of his hand. Cursing under his breath he ducked under her lunge and swept her legs from under her. Continuing with his momentum he threw himself across the mats to reach his sword. He was vaguely aware of the rising noise from the crowd as he grabbed the hilt and reversed his roll. Buffy had landed with a thump and was about to flip back to her feet when he stretched out, the tip of his sword just catching her outstretched arm. He grinned and flopped onto his back, breathing heavily.

Buffy disgustedly rose to her feet and turned to congratulate him on his win when she saw the crowd of young girls surrounding him. She started to laugh and went to rescue him from the horde.

“Mr Giles, are you OK?”, “Did you hurt yourself?”, “Should we call the Doctor?” covered the gist of most of the noise coming from them and she had to practically fight her way through them to reach him.

“Giles, get up” she said in an exasperated tone of voice and held out her hand. “Nice move” she grinned at him and headed towards the changing room.

He followed behind her, trying to placate the group of girls still surrounding him. Eventually he gave up trying to reply to them individually. “Don’t you all have classes?” he asked in his best librarian voice and the noise suddenly increased as they all rushed to get to their appointed classes. Buffy was sitting at the edge of the gym, sipping from a water bottle. She threw one at him as he came within range and grinned up at him. “What?” he asked and shook his head. “They probably thought I’d done irrevocable damage to a body as old as mine” he shrugged and took a long drink.

“Or the curse of the schoolgirl crush has been resurrected and we all have to put up with them mooning about over you for the next few years” she suggested and closed her eyes as she leaned back against the wall. “Still I suppose it could be worse, you could still be wearing the tweed suits” she sighed dramatically.

“What on earth are you talking about?” he spluttered and grabbed a towel to wipe up the water he spilled.

“Like you didn’t know about the crush” she said in a disbelieving tone and opened one eye to glare at him. “And Willow spent all that time in your library just to learn stuff” she snorted.

“Willow?” he seemed genuinely confused. “Of course she was there to learn and to research, what else are you suggesting?”

Buffy opened both eyes and sat forward. “You mean she never told you?” she started to grin then covered her mouth with her hand. “Ooops” he heard as she sniggered.

“Buffy tell me this instant what Willow didn’t tell me” he insisted.

“If she wanted you to know she’d have told you herself and she didn’t so I’m guessing Willow didn’t want you to know” Buffy blurted out and stood up, backing towards the changing rooms.

“Didn’t want who to know what?” Willow asked as she stood looking down at them. Neither had heard her approach and Buffy looked like she had been caught stealing cookies. “What are you two up to?” she indicated the empty gym. “I was just on my way to see you when I heard a commotion in here and then I nearly got trampled to death by a horde of students leaving at speed and chattering about some kind of fight”

Buffy squared her shoulders. “We were showing the students how to sword fight and then they were concerned that Giles was hurt” she pointed towards him as if it were his fault. And And then Buffy was explaining something very interesting about crushes and the amount of time you spent in the High School library” he pointed at his slayer but kept his eyes on Willow.

“Buffy you didn’t?” Willow squealed and turned several different shades of red.

“I’m sorry Will, I think I kinda did” Buffy admitted and shrugged her shoulders. “I just assumed you’d told him when you’d seen him sing. Remember you told me how it reminded you about how sexy you thought he was” she tailed off as she realised a second too late that she had now let several cats and their offspring out of the bag.

Willow closed her eyes and covered her face with her hands. She finally looked up to Buffy. “Please don’t explain any more, I’m begging you”

Giles looked between them both with increasing astonishment. “Will one of you please tell me what on earth you are talking about?” he finally demanded.

Buffy jumped and headed towards the showers. “See you guys later” she waved and disappeared.

“Willow?” he looked towards her and raised his eyebrows.

She squared her shoulders and sat down on the floor next to him. “When we first started working together I had a silly schoolgirl crush on you” she admitted and blushed again. “It kind of disappeared when Oz came on the scene but I remembered why I had felt like that about you when we saw you sing at the Espresso Pump.” Her eyes were glued to the floor, too scared to witness the anger and disgust she would undoubtedly see on his face. “If it helps any Anya and Tara both agreed that you were pretty sexy when you were singing” she groaned and covered her face again, cursing the lack of a Hellmouth to swallow you when you really needed one.

He looked at her in astonishment, trying to assimilate what she was telling him. He realised she was waiting for some reaction from him and couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled from his chest. “Willow, please look at me” he begged, biting his lip to stop from laughing out loud. “I’m not angry” he put his hand out to lift her chin.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to embarrass you” she mumbled and then looked at the grin he was struggling to keep off his face. “You’re laughing at me?” she asked incredulously and sat back from him a little. “I’m pouring out my heart here and you’re mocking me?” she asked again and desperately tried to keep the matching grin from her face.

He took a shaky breath and used the towel to wipe his face. “Of course I’m not laughing at you, I’m just a little surprised to find out after all these years…” he stopped talking as he suddenly caught up with what she had said. “Anya and Tara?” he asked and quirked his eyebrow.

She shook her head. “You are going to be intolerable about this aren’t you?” she sighed. “Just don’t mention it to Xander, he still feels nauseous whenever he thinks about you being an acoustic rock god”

He finally allowed himself to laugh and she joined in. For several minutes they sat next to each other at one end of the empty gym and laughed out loud. Finally he handed her the towel to wipe the tears from her face. He waited till she’d headed towards the doors before asking his final question. “Willow” he said quietly and waited for her to turn back towards him. “Tweed?” he lifted his hands in a gesture of bewilderment.

“I am going to kill Buffy Summers” she growled and slammed out the doors towards her office.