The Code of the Watchers Part Eight by Cynthia Martin ycymartin@cox.net Spike needs a summer job and Giles needs to make amends For the Immortal Beloved, PG Wodehouse, and cherished betas Miriam and Diane ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- "Spike," I said patiently," If you hope to make any kind of a go at Watching, you simply must show yourself prompt and obedient at the early phase. Draw a line from the downy goslings who trot all in a row, or those Jesuit lads who get tied to planks and tossed into the Bosphorous, yet never, per instruction, get wet." Spike's only reply was a distracted smile. The distracted smile was for Buffy. I wasn't in the picture. "Remember when you stopped that sword?" asked Buffy. "And I never said anything? You were hurt for days." Spike smiled. "Did you know that your lips are like twin roes that graze among the lilies?" Buffy's lower lip began to wobble. "Your hands got all cut." She caught one up, pressing it to her heart by way of visual aid. "And -- and I never said anything." "You're not attending," I interjected, for Spike, to judge by his expression, seemed in danger of melting like a worshipful taffy and puddling off his stool onto the floor, "about that game of pool. We must have a bash at it, Spike. That's an order." "Don't fancy it, thanks." "You don't need to fancy it, merely obey. I work in mysterious ways my wonders to perform, and this is just a first step to getting us on our road out of this. Take it on faith. I know what I am about. I have spoken. Tempus, as they say, fugits." "Giles wants something, Spike," supplied Buffy dreamily, lipping -- and only the Council knows what it costs me to record this -- his fingertips. Spike tilted his head as the effort of thought warred with his trance of adoration. "So he does. Wants to order me about, at this time of day. He's in his dotage, poor bug -- poor man." Spike halted and smiled. "We must be kind to him, Buffy." "Okay," sighed Buffy. "Here -" I said. "Thou," murmured Spike. "Spike," whispered Buffy. "Just a moment," I said. Buffy's eyes spilled over yet again. "I'm sorry I tried to beat you to death by the police station." "What police station?" asked Spike. They moved in for the clinch and a bar napkin began to smoke. I snatched at it and smeared it with my shoe, and in the instant of my distraction, Spike and Buffy had fused like silica. A Watcher is never stymied, and to the state of being thwarted he is a bold stranger. When confronted by a brick wall in the form of two gluey lovers oblivious of heaven, hell and all the combined peril generally attendant thereto, a Watcher of merit merely falls back to sip his vile domestic scotch and ponder. And thus I did. "Fudo," grinned a hearty sort of chap in a gruesome Budweiser T, slapping the meaty paw abaft my scotch-bearing shoulder. "Fudo," I replied, as it seemed the thing to say, while trying not to spill. I'd observed that these mid-western sorts swung a perfectly frenetic shoe after a faceoff with Mother Nature. It brought out the hedonist in the meekest Lutheran son of the soil, all that brushing with thunder and fire and living to tell the tale, and they ganged together after as a matter of form, to exult in not being in a ditch or several ditches unable to plant any more corn. Therefore it seemed perfectly sensible that the bar was packing by the minute and that a stranger should salute me like a brother, however obscurely. That was a lapse on my part, I admit. The fellow with the meaty paw paused, looking pained for me. "No. I am Fudo. Fudo." "Oh! Sorry!" I offered my hand "Rupert Giles." Fudo took it, beaming. "I guard the borders of paradise with a flaming sword. I winnow souls like a sieve. My aspect is terrifying, lacerating, combustive and fatal, most of the time." "Is it really? Well done." I sipped my drink. Over the heads of the gathered I saw the door open and, impossibly, admit more. "Can't be easy for you." "It has its ups and downs." Fudo glanced past my shoulder and winced. "So that's your boy, hey? Let me buy you a shot." It seemed perfectly reasonable. One doesn't meet the guardian of paradise every day, and we were waiting for a tow. "We're waiting for a tow," I told him, several shots later. I had a recollection, as I said it, that I had said it more than once. Fudo rolled back in his chair, nearly upsetting the tiny table with his considerable thighs. "He'll come. So, what about this shanshu thing? You like it for the long haul?" I was warmed by his interest. It was delightful to talk shop with someone so keen about the details. The details that everyone else simply ignored, consumed by bad blood, old grudges and foppish romantic minutiae. "Stubborn," I confided. "Rebel complex. Won't have it if we present it as... as something we... won't cooperate if we..." I lost the thread and knocked my glass off the table, retrieved it with much effort, and surfaced to see Fudo nodding at me wisely. "You want a light rein with that one," he said. "More!" A slender golden hand placed a full shot in front of me. Another slender golden hand -- which confused me because it came from an angle disparate with the angle of the previous golden hand -- placed a frosty bottle of beer next to it. I watched with considerable fascination as several more hands placed scotch and beer before Fudo, testing the tiny table to capacity. Having done that, I looked up into seven of the most perfectly beautiful feminine faces of which the male mind could conceive and felt it was not strange, somehow, that the bodies beneath them were lumpy and clad in flannel. "Fudo," said one of them, promptingly, from a pair of ruby lips. Fudo sighed. "May I introduce my dear friends. Haptya, Naptya, Feal, Jaal, Pour, Dahl and Jhari." I rose. Only the chair fell. I kept my feet. A Watcher holds his liquor and inserts the canny bon mot that makes him the life of any gathering, under all circumstances. "Hullo," I said. "Hi," they responded in freakish unison. "We're unmarried. We work in the dairy industry. Where's Spike?" **** - Cyn (Wed 2003.12.31 at 01:12 am EST) Vault : Lost in a Story : The Code of the Watchers The Code of the Watchers, Part Nine posted by Cyn on Wed 2003.12.31 at 01:15 am EST ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- The Code of the Watchers Part Nine by Cynthia Martin ycymartin@cox.net PG-13 for anglo cussing Spike needs a summer job and Giles needs to make amends Thanks to the cherished betas, Miriam and Diane, and to the Immortal Beloved, P.G. Wodehouse. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- It has been said, and said truly, that a clear head in dire circs is the measure of a lad. Oft indeed has the cool reasoning of R. Giles been the difference between disaster and the happy conclusion. And as everyone knows, when one has half a dozen or so goddesses oggling one's new Watcherly disciple with all the appreciation of starving greyhounds at a chili feed, quick thinking is essential. "I believe Spike is having a conversation," I told them diplomatically. "Not anymore," they replied in chorus, and off they sloped, slavering. The wise man who noted that the female is a far more lethal edition than the male must have learned in the hard school of supernatural milkmaids: I tell you, they positively chilled the doughty Gilesian blood. Fearing I knew not what fireworks when they got between Spike and Buffy, who were passing the revels glued together like limpets on a rock, I attempted to rise and put myself, as is my wont, in harm's way. Fudo stopped me with a brawny arm and I found myself sitting once again. "Not so fast," he said. "No?" I eyed the tableau unfolding at the end of the bar with considerable suspense. Spike, at two o'clock. Buffy, also at two o'clock, because she was affixed to Spike. And bearing hard on target, a phalanx of flannel-clad sylphs whose expressions told me they were absolutely out for bear and in no frame of mind to accommodate blushing refusals. It put me in mind of those videos that are so popular these days, of the innocuous snowball that precipitates an avalanche, or the odd shivers that presage the collapse of stadium seating. "So, where is it?" asked Fudo. He tossed his paint-remover back without shifting the regard of his gimlet eye. "It?" I replied distractedly. "When you refer to Spike, kindly employ a more polite form of address. He is no longer a vampire, having suffered martyrdom and rebirth, and moreover, he is my student, after a fashion." Fudo glanced back. "I don't get you. That's just Spike." "Indeed it is. Do you have a previous acquaintance?" "Fetched him into paradise, in fact. And sat on him until he calmed down, too." Fudo peered. "Spike's not the Phial of Japhet, is he? When did that happen?" I opened my mouth to reply, but the clamour of angry voices drew my attention. Interaction at the end of the bar was becoming ominous. Buffy was on her feet, glaring and trying to apply the stiff arm to a dairy lass who had managed to drape herself abaft Spike's collarbone. The others had fetched a compass about them like a ravenous cellular wall and they looked to be absorbing Spike in a blink or two. "Excuse me," I said to Fudo. "I really must --" "Hey, Spike!" bellowed Fudo, making the bottles behind the bar shiver and clink. The bar fell silent. The lasses in flannel paused in their attentions. Spike looked our way. "Oi. Fudo," he said, in the sudden quiet. Fudo beckoned and Spike detached himself from the knot and strolled over. Buffy followed as rearguard, keeping her eyes on Spike's admirers. "How's it going, Spike?" asked Fudo. "Not so bad. Getting married," he beamed. Fudo slapped him with a brisket-sized paw. "That's the stuff, Spike. Didn't steer you wrong, did I?" "Doesn't look like it. Thanks for the shove." "Hah! Remember how stunned you were in the crucible of Perfect Joy? That was pretty funny. They're still talking about you, up there." Spike nodded. "I expect I'll see them again sometime, if I keep my nose clean." These obscure pleasantries concluded, Fudo grew serious. "Spike, this guy is trying to tell me you're the Phial of Japhet. Did somebody transform you into the Phial of Japhet since you got back, maybe?" Spike considered. "Don't think so." "Here," I said. "I hope you wouldn't lie about that," mused Fudo. "Because I really need to get my hands on that Phial. Since it got stolen my job's been hell. The Gate's down, the Stairways are all mixed up, and it's just a helluva mess from one end of the astral plane to the --" "Just a moment," I said. "Hope it's not me, doing that. Could complicate life." Spike turned to Buffy anxiously. "Would you mind if I was a Phial, darling?" "I don't care about anything now," averred Buffy meltingly, stroking his arm. "Just be Spike." "Oh! my life. I exist for you, Buffy." "I exist for you more, Spike." "Leave here," I told them. "Run." Fudo rose. "Only one way to sort this out, I guess. Look, Spike, you just close your eyes while I reduce you to your constituent molecules and sift through your vital essence, okay? I'll catch you in one of these," he added, lifting a filmy shot glass, "and we'll put you back together in a decade or two. Ready?" "Wait," I protested. "No!" cried Buffy. "But I'm getting married," said Spike. "Brace yourself," said Fudo, raising the glass, and everyone biffed into action at once. Buffy threw herself on Spike in a protective manner, and Spike tried to throw her off, also with an emphasis on defending the beloved object, and a bit of self-sacrifical shuffling ensued. I launched myself at Fudo, which was much like trying to bring down a mastodon with his feet planted on the tundra primeval. The ladies of the dairy industry joined the fray, scratching and wailing. "Oh, pity him, preserve him, spare him, great Fudo!" they shrieked. "Mr. Giles!" yelled Jeffries, diving in. "Jeff!" screamed Zuptya, heaving a bottle. "I have the Phial of Japhet!" I shouted. "Will you listen! Oof! I have the Phial of --" That's when we lost the roof. It tore away with a shriek and rotated lazily upward into a bloom of light. Radiance suffused the bar, spilling from a vast stairway that opened above us to the highest reaches of heaven. Awesome, very. A hush fell and all combatants froze. "Come on, Spike," said Fudo, tucking his shirt in. "Don't make a big deal of this. It's not so bad there, remember?" The lasses in flannel chimed in solemnly, eyes shining. "And we will follow thee to paradise, O Spike, now that we have found thee. We will stay thee with flagons and comfort thee with apples, and thou shalt not want." "I want to stay here," said Spike dazedly, reaching for Buffy. "Spike," moaned Buffy. "Sorry, kids," said Fudo. "For God's sake, listen," I croaked, fumbling in my breast pocket. "I have it. I've had it since the Fourth Battle of Herebret, the month before last. Look, here's your wretched Phial." "Ho!" barked Fudo, cottoning on. "Ho, indeed." I held it up. "The Phial of Japhet, repository of intuition and prism of infused knowledge, and considerably more trouble than it's worth. Take the bloody thing. Take it and clear off." Fudo stumped over to me and relieved me of it. "How'd you get it? Why's it smaller?" "Do you really care?" Fudo shrugged. "Guess not. Easier to lug back, I guess." He turned to Spike and Buffy, who stood entwined under the eerie light, watching him with two sets of stunned blue eyes. "Sorry about the hassle," said Fudo. "I hope you'll let me come to the wedding." "No problem," quavered Buffy. Fudo grinned and threw his arms wide. "It's a date." He shot up into the light, roaring and yelling, and the brilliant stairway swallowed itself after him. We were left in the darkness of the shattered bar, in the whisper of the summer breeze, with the spangled night smiling down. I had a very good view of the spangled night, as I'd dropped like loose change and lay sprawled on my back, unable to stir. I watched a sprinkler discharging fitfully as the stunned patrons began to revive. The goddesses approached Spike and Buffy. "We'll stay," they announced. "Spike's going to need handmaids." "Hell, no," growled Buffy, brushing them aside. "You let Zuptya stay!" they protested. "Why does Zuptya get to stay?" Buffy knelt at my side, ignoring further appeals, and Spike joined her. "Giles, can you get up?" "I'm afraid not, my dear." "Oh, God! Spike, help me." They carried me into the parking lot and lay me down gently amid the dispersing throng. Buffy cradled me in her lap while Spike ran his hands through his hair and swore under his breath. A short distance away Zuptya was arguing furiously with the goddesses, waving her arms and pointing at Jeffries. "Giles. Giles." Buffy's face was white and flatteringly distraught. "How many fingers am I holding up? You're not going to die, are you?" I smiled bravely. "No, hush, no. But I'm afraid I'm going to be quite helpless for a while, sorry to say. Had rather a lot --" I coughed weakly, "-- a lot of my pranic energy invested in keeping the Phial concealed. It was the Hope of the Watchers, you know." Buffy smoothed my hair. "Giles, it's gonna be okay." "The rule and spirit of the Watchers," I murmured faintly and with considerable pathos, if I do say it myself. "The history and the Code. I'm all that's left, don't you see, and I have no successor. The world will have few defenders, now or ever again, and eons of darkness will inevitably descend... but I'm glad you're all right, Spike," I wheezed, offering a weak hand. "That's the important thing." Spike patted my fingertips miserably, his face a marvelous portrait of guilt, sorrow and resolve. "Take it easy, Rupert," he husked. "We'll work something out." "But I am the last," I groaned, for a Watcher is no Watcher worthy of the name if life hands him lemons and he pulls a bloomer with the lemonade. "I am the last of my kind. I am the last guardian of the Code." "No, you're not," said Spike firmly. "You're not the last. Just rest now, Rupert, there's a lad." ***** The tow, needless to say, never came. Zuptya and Jefferies prevailed upon a trucker to grant us passage in the hold of his eighteen wheeler, and Buffy made me reasonably comfortable amongst crates of plastic reindeer bound for New Mexico. "My sisters are really good with flowers and stuff," Zuptya told Buffy was we jolted along. "Save you a bundle with the wedding." "Your sisters?" Buffy repeated. "Those things were your sisters?" Zuptya shrugged. "They aren't so bad, really. They peel a terrific grape and weave garlands to die for. And Spike could use a few handmaids," she added delicately. "You should reconsider." I cannot seem to recall Buffy's exact reply. In Santa Fe we hit an ATM and Spike stole a truck when Ethan Rayne and several goons fell upon us an hour later. We careened through the desert to evade pursuit as the sun set in glory, and I have to say that, lingering paralysis notwithstanding, I was feeling fairly chuffed about developments in general. "You'll behave civilly in Los Angeles," I told Spike, who glowered and nodded and gripped the wheel. "No regressive battles unto death with Angel, no rebellion, no antisocial tantrums." "Right, Watcher." "Attention to duty," I insisted. "Strict adherence to the responsibilities of your honorable position. This is a new day, Spike, and I'll see you a heroic, law-abiding defender of the innocent or kill us both trying. Understood?" "Right, Watcher," repeated Spike, with a woebegone resignation I found profoundly encouraging. I watched the two towering dust devils that swirled at pillion, escorting us through the wastes. "I'm intrigued by these things, Spike. See how they catch the last rays of crimson, and lift up their heads to praise the eternal. Rather like unto an army with banners, don't you agree?" "They're useless," grunted Spike. "Did they come when Fudo had the drop on us back in Nebraska? Do they do anything but kick up dust? Who needs it? Piss off, you useless tossers," he called out the window. "Not so hasty," I advised him. "Perhaps they are an honor guard of sorts, or even benign kami. You know, a sort of perk for having died so gloriously and well in the Hellmouth." I adjusted my glasses with effort. "How was that for you, by the way? You've never supplied many details." "It was hot," sighed Spike, without marked enthusiam for the turn of subject. "But you went to paradise after. I'd like to hear more on that, too. Were there fields of Elysium, or banquets for the bravely slain? Or are you sticking to your description of the place as one long delirium of ecstasy?" "Could, if I was gonna say anything." "Do you miss it, or do you prefer the temporal heaven of your union with Buffy, despite the hazards and chances of this inhospitable world?" "Watcher," asked Spike piteously, "do we have to do all this talking?" "It's for posterity." "Don't fancy it." "You're a Watcher in training. What you fancy is henceforth immaterial. Tell me about getting that soul." Spike may have obliged me, or not. I'm afraid I nodded off. When we stopped in Tempe I found the strength to ask for a notepad, which Spike and Buffy obediently procured, along with a camp lantern and a packet of pens. "Don't tire yourself out," said Buffy, planting a kiss on my defenseless brow. "Pleasant nappies," added Spike, smirking. ***** The pair of them are gone off somewhere now, prowling the night, scouting for threat and no doubt setting tumbleweeds ablaze. Zuptya and Jeffries, for their part, have fallen asleep. And all is r., so to speak, with the w. And that is the sum of my report, for the nonce. I hope you will make time to read all this at a quiet moment, Wesley, before you commit it to whatever archive you have managed to cobble together. Should my recuperation fail, or mischance ever befall me, Spike will be entirely in your charge. In such a pass don't use too heavy a hand with him, I adjure you. He reacts better to oats. But this counsel is unnecessary. I am mending well -- in fact rather better than I am letting on -- and I'm confident I'll be able to see Spike's tutelage through. My methodology and discoveries will be recorded separately, when I have the pep for it. And now I must lay aside my pen. The light in here is poor, the lonely coyote howls, and Buffy and Spike will go all of a doodah if they return and find me awake. A devilish amount of hovering and fussing is part of the new order, by the way: perhaps they think I like it. In any case this brief history is enough to be going on with, I think. Rupert Giles, though a man of many parts, has never been famed for blind optimism. Life has taught him too many stern lessons, and the world is too fraught with reverses and disappointments. But Spike is alive, and Buffy is happier than I've ever seen her, and the Watcher's line will not end with me, after all. At dawn we will tack our stolen truck into the wind and ho for Los Angeles by the shortest road. To coin a phrase, I think the future's well in hand. Rupert Giles, C.o.W. Route 66, Needles, Arizona END - Cyn (Wed 2003.12.31 at 01:15 am EST)