He smiled bitterly, reaching for the almost-empty bottle of Glenlivet next to the open journal on his desk. Jenny. Just for a moment, Jenny had been back in his arms... He pushed that thought away, focusing only on the sound, the smell, the color of the Scotch as it poured into the glass.

It had been thirty days since Buffy had in all probability had to kill her lover, a week since she'd had everything stripped violently away-- Angel, Kendra, her mother, school, friends... He had failed her. In so many different ways... He lifted the glass, and drank it down. Oh, God, it hurt so much...

There was a sudden knock at the door, startling Giles; what time was it? He blinked fuzzily at the door, then stood, almost toppling his chair in his hurry to rise and answer. It could be her--

"Giles?"

It wasn't her. "Xander?" Giles blinked. "I-is something wrong?"

"No, I just..." The boy looked down wearily. He looked almost as bad as Giles felt. "I woke you up, right? Sorry. I'll just--"

"W-well, n-no, don't--" he stammered, then ran a hand over his face. "Are you all right?"

"No. No... I'm not." Xander rubbed at the thick white cast on his arm. "Look... I know it's late, but, uh... Can I come in?"

"O-of course." Giles said quietly, and stepped aside to let Xander enter.

Booze. The smell on Giles registered in Xander's mind as he moved inside, and he turned and stared at the older man. "Have you been drinking?" Quickly, Giles glanced at his desk, and Xander followed his gaze to the nearly empty bottle of Scotch.

Defensively, Giles crossed back to his chair. "It helps with the pain."

Xander's eyes narrowed. "That kind of help you don't need."

Giles was tired and his temper was short. "As much as I'd love to be lectured on temperance by someone who's not even of age," he said sharply, "was there something you wanted?"

"I wanted to talk." Xander said, looking down.

"Why can't you talk to Willow or Cordelia?" Giles muttered moodily, turning away.

"Sorry, I didn't realize I was interrupting something important." Xander snapped, crossing to the desk and looking over Giles' shoulder. Reflexively, Giles flipped his journal shut, but not before Xander saw that the pages were blank. "Besides, Willow's got Oz. She doesn't need me any more. I just mess things up. Cordy..." Xander laughed and shook his head. "She's been clingy ever since... the ritual. And even when we can stop making out for ten seconds, my 'obsession' with Buffy is the last thing she wants to hear about." There. Buffy. He'd said it. Xander watched Giles flinch, hard, as if struck-- watched his hand move towards the glass of Scotch. "Damn it, Giles!" he said desperately. "You didn't fail her! I did!"

"What do you mean?" Giles stood painfully, and Xander flinched.

"God-- you went through torture!" the boy said, staring at him. "Me-- I chose to betray her. I did it all by myself... I lied to her." he finally confessed. "Just before we came in to rescue you. Willow told me to tell Buffy she was trying the curse again. And I... I didn't." Xander shook his head. "Willow always believed in me, and Buffy-- I was one of the only ones she had, and I lied to her... and she must know. I'm right, aren't I? She's gotta know."

"Yes. You're probably right." Giles said wearily, covering his mixed emotions by pulling off his glasses and rubbing his nose.

"You hate me now, right?" Xander said under his breath.

Giles sighed. "No, Xander, I don't hate you."

Xander laughed bitterly. "Why?"

"Because I know you."

Xander swallowed, then stared at his shoes, trying visibly to compose himself. Finally, he looked up, with the ghost of a smile. "Thanks." Crossing awkwardly to the desk, he looked down at Giles' journal. "I'm sorry I... My dad used to drink. Maybe I overreacted."

"I'm sorry--" Giles said, taken aback. "I didn't know."

Xander shrugged. "Pretty much only Willow does." he said with a shrug, and turned away. "I mean, not that we ever talked about it. But when my parents would fight, I'd come over to her house. Even when it was really late. And I'd toss pebbles at her window, and she'd come downstairs and let me in, and we'd watch midnight monster movies in her living room. God, I used to love monster movie nights." Xander said, dropping onto Giles' couch. "Do you mind?" he asked, kicking off his sneakers, and Giles shook his head.

"Haven't been sleeping lately." Xander sighed. Crossing his ankles on the armrest, he laid back with a wistful look in his eyes. "It wasn't the movies I liked, not especially. But Willow made it my job to cover her eyes during scary parts. I was twelve, thirteen-- I loved that. I wasn't scared any more. I was protecting Willow." he laughed softly. "It made me feel brave."

Thirteen, Giles thought, staring at the boy. Was I ever that young? "I saw my first vampire when I was thirteen."

"Really?" Xander asked.

Giles closed his eyes. "It's actually not ah, a very cheerful story..."

"Somehow I doubt it's more depressing than my life." Xander muttered, then perked up. "C'mon, G-man. Tell me."

"Ah... very well." Giles shrugged, and cast his mind back. "My parents and I were on one of our rare, uh, holidays, at Blackpool, a-a popular beach. It was rather popular with vampires as well; they liked to, um, pick off night swimmers. The deaths would be attributed to, uh, any number of mundane causes... That being the situation, I was threatened with, uh, dire punishment, if I ventured out at night." Giles pulled off his glasses. "One morning, though, I woke up early. Before dawn. Being extremely stupid, I-I convinced myself that it would be all right to go out, because it wasn't technically night... so, I went out. Down, onto the beach-- that's when I saw them." he trailed off, still remembering the smell of the sand and salt.

"Vampires?" Xander prompted him.

"A man and a woman. Playing in the surf, chasing one another-- she had long, dark hair-- beautiful, and she was, uh... naked." Giles continued over Xander's incredulous laugh. "Then I realized she wasn't playing with him. Not anymore. He managed to escape her for a few steps, and then she came out of the sea, her hands dripping with blood-- I couldn't breathe. I dropped to the ground, dug myself into the sand. And as I watched, she fed on him. Drained him dry."

"Jesus, Giles." Xander said softly. "That's... that's what you call traumatizing. Thirteen. I gotta say..." A smile spread across his face. "I'm impressed."

Giles laughed, pouring himself a drink. "Admittedly, that particular, uh, story made a rather large impact upon my return to boarding school-- leaving out the vampire bits, of course."

"Giles?" Xander crossed to the desk, and put his hand, fingers poking out of the pure white cast, over the older man's glass.

"What?" Giles looked up at him stiffly.

Xander smiled at him. "Would you ever have told me that if you weren't drunk?"

"I am not drunk." Giles said coldly. He pulled his hand away in distaste, and before he could protest, Xander had picked up the glass awkwardly in the hand with the cast, then grabbed the bottle with the other hand and walked to the sink against the wall.

"Xander." Giles said softly, gritting his teeth. "I am not your father."

"No. My dad's dead." Xander said, and tilted the bottle, letting the contents pour down the drain. "You're my friend."

Giles took a deep breath, a chill spreading over his entire body. Knowing he'd probably regret it in the morning, he picked up a small brass key, cupping it in the palm of his hand. "Hey," he said, and Xander looked up. Giles tossed him the key. "Liquor cabinet." he said coldly, and pointed to the wooden shelf with its glass doors, affixed to one wall of the kitchen. "Do what you will."

Crossing into the kitchen, giving Giles a nervous over-the-shoulder glance, Xander unlocked the cabinet, and looked in. A muscle in his jaw jumped. One-handed, he began pulling out bottles and setting them on the counter calmly. About half of them were open; over the past few days, Giles had been mixing his drinks.

Carefully, Xander poured the opened bottles down the kitchen sink. Then, working more quickly, he reached for an unopened bottle. His cast made his grip awkward, and the bottle slipped as he tried to twist off the lid. "Damn it!" he exclaimed, fumbling, but it was too late-- the bottle hit the kitchen floor and shattered. Giles stood with a jerk, and Xander flinched back. "Sorry--"

"Are you all right?" Giles interrupted. "Are you cut?"

"I'm okay. I'm f-fine." Xander said, taking a deep breath, and Giles sighed. Crossing into the hall, he pulled a few ragged towels from the linen closet, and walked back into the kitchen. Xander was standing there in his sock feet, a shimmering puddle of glass shards and malt whiskey spread across half the kitchen floor. His dark eyes seemed to see something other than Giles' kitchen-- lost in another time.

Swallowing, Giles knelt at the perimeter of the kitchen, where carpet met linoleum, and began mopping up, carefully pushing the broken glass into a small pile.

After a moment, Xander leaned over, reached for a towel, and began to help, his hands shaking. "I always screw it up." he forced out. "Like with Willow-- it was 'Raiders of the Lost Ark.'" he clarified. "I guess I kept my hand over her eyes a little too long. She pushed my hand away, and, uh... my eyes were closed, too. I don't think it mattered to her. But it mattered to me. I stopped coming over for scary movies after that. My dad was, uh... anyway, he was dead."

Giles reached out gingerly, and picked up a large shard of glass, running his thumb carefully along its edge. "You've teased Willow about being a... a junior Watcher." he said quietly. "Over time... I've come to view that as highly ironic. Oh, Willow's brilliant-- and she has a real knack for research-- but I don't see, as yet, that she has the necessary resolve, that a Watcher needs... You've made mistakes, Xander." Giles said quietly. "But we all have. What's important--" He stopped, a hiss of pain escaping him as his ribs protested the minor activity of stretching.

"Oh, man--" Xander said, looking up. "You shouldn't be doing this. Look, I-I'll take care of it."

Giles sighed, and stood clumsily, leaning on the counter. "No. I should've done this a long time ago." he muttered, stepping past Xander. Reaching for the two remaining unopened bottles, he let them join their comrades in spilling their contents down the drain.

"All of you, you've grown so much." he said. "Sometimes I forget how young you still are. My expectations-- for all of you-- are high, and necessarily so... but still, you have had moments when you've far exceeded them. Despite your occasional, uh, lapses, you have the fire, Xander-- the passion a Watcher must never let die. It's true, you lack a certain... maturity," Giles said, looking down, "but you're only seventeen. Maturity will come."

That done, he glanced at Xander, who was just finishing collecting all the broken glass in a corner of one of the towels. Not looking up, the boy brushed at his eyes self-consciously. "It's the fumes, um..." he muttered. "Make my eyes sting." Moving up to the sink, he pushed the empty bottles aside and ran some water over his hands, scrubbing with his finger around the perimeter of his cast. "You got a mop?"

Giles nodded, pulling it out of his small pantry, and the boy set to work cleaning up the remaining whiskey. Giles thought about getting some disinfectant from under the sink, but it seemed a bit redundant, so he crossed back into the living room, getting out of Xander's way. Lifting the now-empty bottle of Glenlivet from the sink under the mirror, he dropped it in a wastebasket, listening to the empty thud.

Then he heard another sound-- Xander, opening his refrigerator. "Hey!" he said sharply, taking a few steps back towards the kitchen.

"Hey what?" Xander said defiantly, pulling out a bottle of beer.

"Hey that's Guinness and don't you dare!"

"Catch a clue, Giles-- I'm pouring it all out!"

"Dammit, Xander!" Giles raised his hand, pointing warningly as Xander rummaged around in his kitchen, then paused. "What... what are you looking for?"

"Bottle opener?" Xander looked up.

Wearily, Giles motioned Xander to a drawer. "Next to the, uh... there." Pulling up a stool to the kitchen counter, he watched Xander pour out the last drops of alcohol in the house. "This is, of course, why I resolved never to have children." he muttered, pulling off his glasses.

Xander raised an eyebrow skeptically. "Why, because they'd pour out your booze?"

"No. My father was hard on me." Giles sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "But his drinking was worse."

His back to Giles, Xander froze. "Your dad?"

Giles nodded silently. "...after his Slayer died."

Xander nodded, taking that in. "Look, don't... Don't do this for me. Do this for her. I mean, I didn't want to hit the guilt trip angle, but there it is. Buffy's still alive. You know she is. And you know she still needs you. Sober." There was silence for a long moment as the last bottle of beer gurgled itself away. "There. Now that wasn't so hard, was it?"

"Xander?" Giles said, squeezing his eyes shut. "Go home."

Xander nodded, crossing to the couch. Sitting to pull on his sneakers, he wrinkled his nose. "My socks smell like whiskey. That's new."

"What's that?" Giles looked up.

"Nothing." Xander said, rubbing his forehead, and headed to the door.

"Xander." Giles said, and the boy looked back in for a moment.

"Yeah?"

"Get some rest."

Xander nodded, then closed the door.

Giles listened to the boy's fading footsteps, then sighed. He really wasn't looking forward to tomorrow's hangover. Especially without a drop of liquor in the house. A good night's rest was the first step to minimizing the eventual agony-- and yet, for the first time in a month, he felt a subtle impulse stirring within him. It was the urge to write... Reaching with sore, stiff fingers for a ballpoint pen, he resumed his seat at his desk. Flipping open his journal, he thought for a moment, then began setting down a record of the night's events in precise, clear handwriting.

Four pages later, he fell asleep, head pillowed on the leather book. In the morning, every muscle ached, and his head throbbed harshly... It had been a month and a day since the pain had begun. And yet, somehow... it didn't hurt quite as much.

[end]