Disclaimer: The characters and setting used in this work do not belong to me, nor have I been given permission to use them.
This kind of tea shop is few and far between now, even in London which seems to keep everything quaint, if only to tip it into the merchandising pool and scam the tourists who are looking for The Real England.
As far as Giles is concerned, The Real England consists mainly of Dial-for-a-Loan adverts, unimaginative graffiti and a working class that speaks ’street’.
He comes here when the world spins too much. When he’s lost his footing and can’t seem to remember the mission. He comes here and mutters a little Latin and a few words of Etruscan and then he stirs his tea in a certain way and closes his eyes.
When he opens them, Wesley is there or sometimes Ethan or sometimes, and these times are rare, it’s Joyce.
Today it is Wesley and he’s wearing a pair of glasses that Giles hasn’t seen him wear before. He looks younger than Giles ever remembers him being. But then, Giles doesn’t remember himself being young, never mind someone else.
The first time Wesley sat in that seat, rather than Ethan, Giles had been surprised. He was surprised because the incantation he used relied heavily on sex and he had never, he was sure, had sex with Wesley. He was also surprised because he didn’t know Wesley had the kind of magical ability that was required. The most surprising thing though, for both Giles and Wesley, was that Wesley was dead.
That had been quite a long conversation. The lady who ran the tea shop had simply locked the door and left them to it. Or rather, she had left Giles to it. She knew enough to understand that just because there was no one there, didn’t mean he was talking to himself.
That day had been over thirty years ago and Wesley had only just died. He’d still had the knife wound; the body is not that quick to forget.
Today though, Wesley is younger. Young, in fact. Giles says so. Wesley simply shrugs.
“Why?”
“I’m not sure actually, I haven’t discovered anything of use to you and I certainly having been thinking about you. I was thinking about when I first went to the Council hence the attire, I suppose.”
Wesley waves a hand to indicate his clothing and as he returns it to his lap he fails to notice that it passes through the table.
“You, of course, had no doubts about your role as a Watcher.” Giles replies, sensing, rather than knowing, that Wesley will contradict him.
“You mean that I didn’t show any, Mr. Giles. I certainly *had* plenty.” Wesley wears his smile like a coat, taking it off and slipping back into it as he sees fit. Giles can’t help but be reminded of a tiger, flickering in and out of visibility against the background of the jungle despite its loud striped hide.
“You were the golden child, Wesley, a third-generation Watcher. What doubts did you have?”
Wesley looks at him or rather *through* him it seems to Giles. He wonders where Wesley’s gone in that phantom mind but it doesn’t take long for him to explain.
“My father used to lock me under the stairs, did you know that?” Giles shakes his head, though he’s always had some idea, thirty years with barely a friend left breathing is a long time in which to think about what made people who they were. “If I did something that disappointed him. He said it would make me stronger. Although sometimes he’d say that I made him do it. That it was my fault.” Giles nods this time, yes, taking the blame, shifting responsibility. “He was right about that.”
“About what?”
“That it would make me stronger.”
“Death must bring some truly wonderful insight if you can decide that. A man locks his only son under the stairs and you think it made you stronger? That kind of treatment breeds murderers and hermits.”
Giles’s age has given him strength in his convictions. In his eyes, he has only certainty; a bitter, sad, certainty. As certain as a gardener is that his early flower will be killed by the harshness of winter before it even glimpses the hope of spring.
Wesley laughs in the face of his certainty. Giles doesn’t like this. Old men rarely do.
“Still the authority on everything, Mr. Giles? My father’s disappointment made me try to be better, to try to please him. I didn’t run away.” Giles knows that is directed at him, “And when it all went wrong, I carried on because otherwise my father would have been right when he told me I’d never be anyone.”
“That’s one way of looking at it. Or you could say that he made you into the pathetic child so desperate to do everything properly. You were so scared to go against the rules that it cost us a Slayer.”
“You got her back.”
“What’s your point, Wesley? You didn’t come here to argue.” Giles asks wearily.
Wesley seems to be reading something from the inside of his head. “I think my point is that there is a bright side. To everything.”
“You think?”
Wesley focuses again and looks at Giles with all the fervour that he showed when he first turned up in Sunnydale, still wet behind the ears.
“You’re old, Mr. Giles. Everything comes to an end one day and when it does, you will have to choose whether or not to hang onto those convictions of yours. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I did plenty of things wrong. If…if there was an award for most cock-ups by one man they’d give me the lifetime achievement. People died because of my actions Wesley, you can’t tell me that isn’t true.”
“Yes, it’s true. People died because of your actions.”
Giles is fuming now. He sits and stares at Wesley, daring him to explain.
Wesley stares backing, giving Giles time to think about the ways that this might be explained. He knows Giles will draw his own conclusions and eventually, Giles sighs.
“Go on.”
Wesley puts his smile on again and continues, “The lady who runs this shop, who says nothing of you speaking to your invisible companions, is thirty-nine years old. In another world, she was sacrificed to a false-god named Osiris, a demon that your Slayers killed.”
“Osiris? I remember that day. I lost Buffy and Willow in one fell swoop.”
“Their deaths prevented 697 sacrifices that would have been performed in the name of Osiris. Their deaths prevented Osiris’s followers from massacring any society that failed to adhere to their false religion. Their deaths prevented, to give you an example that’s easier to comprehend, another holocaust, another World War Two.”
Giles has tears in his eyes when he looks at Wesley and Wesley wishes that he were corporeal, just for a moment, so that he might slip a companion-like arm around Giles’s shaking shoulders.
“But I lost so much.”
“In the words of a fairly prolific author, or at least, he was when I was still alive…er, yes, in his words: Personal is not the same as important.”
Wesley doesn’t stay long after that. He doesn’t need to really. Giles retreats to inside the walls of his own head, arguing with himself.
