Title: In a Relationship
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG
Length: 791 words
Content notes:
Author notes:
Summary: A glimpse at Giles’ and Buffy’s relationship over time


Season One – An Impossible Child

“Buffy, must you do that?” Giles demanded, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Buffy smirked. “I really must,” she chirped, as she continued to paint her nails.

“Have you even looked at the book I gave you?” Giles whined. No, he didn’t whine, he demanded.

“Yep,” Buffy popped the ‘p’. “I came, I looked, and I decided it was a really big, really dusty book full of words that I’d need a dictionary to find out where to find them in a dictionary.”

“And therefore didn’t read it?” Giles asked futilely.

Buffy looked up from her very important, if self-appointed, task. “Do I really need to answer that?”

Giles sighed. “No, Buffy, I dare say you don’t.”

Buffy grinned brightly. “See, Giles, that whole ‘old dogs, new tricks’ thing is totally bogus.” She frowned. “‘Bogus’. Great, now I’m talking like a surfer dude.” She sighed. “Whatever. Big book, no read-y. Now, if you don’t mind, I have shopping to do, and Willow is meeting me at the mall, so if you’re finished being disappointed at me…” she finished with a hopeful smile.

Giles sighed again. “Oh, very well: off you go.”

Buffy squealed, and dashed out of the door as if the hounds of hell were after her. There were moments when he really wished he had been assigned a proper Slayer.

Season Three – Beloved Daughter

He had failed. Her watcher had failed, and had been fired. She wasn’t quite sure how she should feel about that. After all, he had betrayed her, drugged her, and set her up to be murdered by a psychotic vampire, all in the name of some archaic tradition that his bosses had decided she needed to undergo, just to prove that she was worthy of the title of Slayer. And yet, he had betrayed those very bosses by telling her of the trial she had been prepared, unknowing, for, thereby allowing her the precious time she’d needed to prepare mentally for it all.

He had been fired. Her Watcher, Giles, had been fired, and all because he loved her, or at least that’s what Quentin ‘Heartless’ Travers had said. He had ‘a father’s love for the child,’ for her, and they counted it as useless? What variety of moron was the man? How could Giles caring for her be a bad thing? Surely it meant that he would be more invested in helping her succeed as a Slayer; that’s how she understood it, anyway.

He wasn’t going anywhere. They had fired him, and ordered him to stay away, but when he had declared he wasn’t going anywhere, they had immediately backed down and simply said that he wasn’t to interfere. Right. Like that was going to happen. Then again, was it interfering if Buffy simply ignored the new Watcher and paid attention to the old one? And how embarrassing was that? Three years a Slayer, and she was onto her third Watcher. Weren’t you supposed to get one and keep it? They weren’t fashion accessories to change out with the new season. She put her head in her hand, and reached for a cloth, but Giles took it from her, and began to wipe her forehead.

He was staying. He loved her like a daughter, and he was cleaning her cuts, and he loved her, and he was staying. She leaned into the touch, and let him care for her. Her Watcher.

Her Giles.

Season Seven – The Triumphant General

It had been a long, bloody year, but it was finished. For now, anyway. Giles turned to look at the young woman who had once been his charge, now sleeping with her sister in the horridly uncomfortable bus seat. So much had happened over the last year, and he had, unfortunately, played his own unpleasant part in it. Yet she was triumphant, the leader of their band of warriors who would make their way in a new world of their own making.

For it was a new world, a world of opportunities, of Slayers with back-up more than just a single Watcher. In fact, Slayers would have to be one another’s back-up, since most of the Watchers had been destroyed by the First’s minions a good number of months ago. A chance, also, for Slayers to rest, maybe even a chance for some to have a normal life. Maybe even a chance for Buffy to rest; she had a sister, after all, and a responsibility to look after her.

Buffy, his Slayer, his daughter, his general; they had come a long way over the last seven years, and he couldn’t help but be proud of her. After all that had happened, all that he had done with her and to her, she had triumphed, and brought them with her. Now it was time to rest.