Guilt and earthquakes

Rating: G
Disclaimer: Whedon owns them all.
Notes: Set in the last episode of the first season, The Prophecy Girl. Dead Poets Society involved too,
Comments: Written for Zauberer Sirin, who asked for Buffy underage and Giles feeling guilty. It turned out to Buffy underage and Giles feeling angsty, and not very shippy -___-

Feeling guilty isn't an unknown feeling to Rupert Giles. Conciously, like everything he does. Methodically. Sorting his guilt like he sorts the books, all tagged and ready to come out everytime he touches the cover. And he has become rather good at doing it, the guilt, truth be told. Anyway he never thought he'd miss it. There was a time -for years, a really long time- when he'd remember things he had done and said in the past every second and that meant something. It worked, reminding him he shouldn't forget what he was, and he should always be careful not to let that former self, the one he was, be in control again. Guilt had a purpose back then.

In Sunnydale he had found a new kind of guilt - the one you know isn't stopping even if you try to fight its roots. That new guilt had roots in the way a certain Chosen One dealt with fate and her life. She was full of life, and still always craving for it. 'I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life...' There was life in all her words, the way she moved, the way she breathed, and guilt in every moment Giles found himself staring at her with the shadows of thoughts that weren't the thoughts he was supposed to think. They were only shadows, but shadows were enough.

She wanted a life, and he knew he wouldn't have one. He had suspected it for years, since he became a Watcher, but now it was true. It was written. It could not be erased and forgotten, and definitely, it was happening. The guilt has gone, now there's only fear and sadness and knowing that anyway, anything he does or says, it isn't going to change anything. You can't protect her, you can't save her, you can only watch and that's your job. She's your job.

The moment he discovered it the Earth had trembled. Now that she's there for the first time since Giles knew what the words in the books meant, it seems to him that the earthquake hasn't stopped. It's been shaking, breaking, making the world crumble down for hours but no one else noticed.

She didn't notice.

There's not even the tiniest note of worrying in her voice while she speaks. Something about vampires, about last night, about death. When she says the word Giles turns around to face her and the Universe trembles again, because she's talking about everything like her life was just beginning. For the young ones, 'death' is nothing but what happens to old people and young myths. Grandparents, Jim Morrison and that old woman with the flat full of cats, that's the sort of people who dies. Her mouth moves, pouts, and he barely listens because the sound of death, the sight of death entangling her in circles is too strong to pay attention to whatever she's talking about right now. And right now she stops speaking and waits while his words come out all wrong. Like he didn't care. Sure she thinks he doesn't care. That's the way it should be, for the greater good, isn't it?

She's gone the next moment, all teen angst about things that don't really matter anymore, and blissful ignorance, and Giles wishes so bad it could go on that way forever that it hurts. His lungs hurt, his head, even his guilt when he blames the Council, and the Prophecy, and whoever set the whole play in motion. Whoever decided it had to be him the one that'd tell her the truth. That she's going to die. To save the world, or maybe not. Maybe she'll die and then everyone else.

It's the fact that she's dying first, and he'll be alive when it happens, that even in that last moment she'll die as the Slayer and he'll only watch, what makes his world shake. And soon will hers, too, it'll shake and break down, but she doesn't know yet.