
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/4683827.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Choose_Not_To_Use_Archive_Warnings, Major_Character_Death, Underage
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer
  Relationship:
      Rupert_Giles/Buffy_Summers
  Character:
      Buffy_Summers, Rupert_Giles
  Additional Tags:
      Remix/Redux_6:_There_are_many_copies...and_they_have_a_plan_|
      remixredux08, Character_Turned_Into_Vampire, Scents_&_Smells, Dark,
      Slayer-Watcher_Relationship, Parent_Issues
  Stats:
      Published: 2008-04-27 Words: 1485
****** Sunrise, Sunset (The New Day Dawning Remix) ******
by wisdomeagle
Summary
     The darkness shall turn to dawning, and the dawning to noonday
     bright.
  This work was inspired by
      Night by zulu
He can always find her, now.
As a man, with the arrogance of man, he pretended indifference to the stench of
her sweat, the ooze of her pores, her menstrual blood, the many scents that
made her Buffy. But oh, he noticed. He noticed with the parts of him unimpeded
by superego, his gut, rolling with hunger, his prick, taut with blood, his nose
and eyes and ears. He remembers with senses and with senses he tracks her,
leaving bloody, hungry-eyed shadows of her friends in his trail.
He loses the scent at the edge of Los Angeles, which reeks of animal bile,
dust, death -- even the sweetness of Buffy, the perfume that he tracked like an
animal, bathed in at convenience stores and dirty rest stops, is masked by the
anonymity of sex upon sex upon sex, whores and liquor and vampires without name
or lineage. Buffy is in that city, somewhere, hiding from her history, hiding
from his lessons, hiding from him.
As a Watcher -- a deceased Watcher, a disgraced Watcher, a Watcher who has
already let his Slayer be resurrected once -- he can't track her. No innovation
the Council can create could match the fine, pin-sharp skill of the Slayer at
disappearance. Buffy knows shadows no Watcher could see. Watchers fear
darkness, and Slayers hide in the night.
As a vampire, he can track her only to the edge of civilization, although he
knows what no vampire should -- the scent of a particular human, the coppery
taste of blood he's never fed on. The Judge (before Buffy slew him) would test
Rupert and find him wanting.
And yet, he can always find her, now. He can wait in the darkness of his flat,
swimming in seventies music and drowning in high schoolers' blood, drinking the
potions of his youth and feeling strength and immortality once more flood his
veins. He can track her, trace her, locate her, ring her with protection and
build for her a sturdy web -- his love, a certain trap. She'll return, for her
friends, for her mother -- and she will find him. Only, always, her Watcher.
++
She throws herself into his flat, sobbing; her wrists wet with blood, her stake
dusty from -- Willow? Xander? or the sweet brightness of Cordelia, true queen
of a half dozen minions? No matter -- one is dead, the rest will follow, and
Buffy will take them all, and when her innocence is gone, her carcass will
belong to him.
"Giles!" His fangs extend; he reaches for her, face twisting into want. There's
terror in her voice, and though he imagined surprising her into submission,
vamping in the middle of a kiss, he can't retract his fangs now, not when he
can see the curve of her jaw where the flesh covering her lifeblood is
thinnest. He greets her with glowing eyes, and devours her scream.
She throws herself at him, stake clumsy in her grip. "Not you," she sobs. "Not
like this. You can't be -- you can't -- Giles, please." His arms find her
shoulders, press her arms flat against her sides. He wraps himself in her
warmth, wraps her in his strength. His tee shirt is wet from her tears, and he
knows that he's already imprisoned her. On three counts, she can never kill
him. First, that he knows her, deeper even than Angelus knew. Every twist of
her hips, every thrust of her chest, every parry, he anticipates and blocks.
Second, he is her Watcher, closer than family, dearer than friends, and (his
cock is hard against her thigh; he can smell her arousal and taste her tears)
soon, her lover. But third, third -- he is all that remains to her, the only
survivor of the -- who where they? -- Scooby slaughter.
When she's taken Xander and Cordelia (separately, lost in the carelessness of
mutual loathing), Oz and Willow (feasting together on the football team),
Rupert takes her, with her back against a grave and her legs spread wide in
fresh earth where flowers and worms struggle towards freedom. He drinks from
her neck, this first time, and she gasps and chokes and gasps again -- she
groans, and he thinks he's taken too much, but she's still warm in his arms,
and sweet in his mouth, and when she moans again, it's with bliss, as he
thrusts into her cunt and takes the last of her innocence. His teeth are
sheathed in her vein, and both she and he are safe. With the last of her
friends, the old order passed away, and here on her mother's grave, in the
darkness of a new moon, the new day begins.
++
"Honey, I'm home." He rubs dust from his eyes, reaches automatically for the
glasses he no longer needs, will never need again. "Morning, lover." Her voice
is dry, swollen with vampire dust and demon parasites, with sarcasm. The flat
is dry and dusty; the kitchen is unused. Even his bedroom has a half-lived-in
feel, because he lives a half-life there. Vampires don't love, and Watchers
don't take chances. Neither protect Slayers, not like this, not with the dark
magic, once-forgotten, that floods his senses now, protective charms flowing
from him into Buffy like the sterile semen of his fucking.
"Good morning, Buffy."
"I brought you breakfast," she says, and actually smiles as she bares her neck.
"Fresh blood in bed? Maybe... blood?" She unhooks her belt, unzips her
trousers, reveals the sweet spot of her thigh, his favorite. Her fingers and
two small, red scars guide him; he sucks without thought, without care. The sun
has risen, and Buffy is safe. His fingers curl into her sex; her lips part
easily for him, and she shrieks with the pain of his bite, shivers with
pleasure as he drinks her, fucks her, loves her into the oblivion of daytime.
Deep plum drapes lined with muslin hide them from the sun, and they'll sleep
together in her warmth, drying blood sealing his lips to her leg.
Once, she showered after. Once, she cared for appearances, imagined that he'd
left some friends to care for her, to notice her truancy, her scars, her
emaciation, the whiskey on her breath and the razor burn on her cheeks and
thighs. Once, he'd have spent this day buried in arcana, brewing potions and
summoning assistance, working in secret to protect her from his kindred. Once,
she would have looked the other way, pretended not to know the things he did or
the powers he invoked. Now -- now they sleep the sleep of the drunk and the
dead, half-doers of almost-brave deeds, a vampire protecting a human, a human
protecting a vampire. He turns her friends, her classmates, her teachers, and
she slays the creatures he sires. If there were peace between them, it would
lie in the death of everyone they've known, but there is no peace, only a
bloody kind of love, her tongue just peeking from her mouth, his hand gentling
her sleep-tousled hair.
Now, they die in daytime, and can only see clearly at night, under the stars,
lying in gravedust.
++
"Come with me on patrol tonight?" she asks, yawning, sometime near sunset.
Hunger fills him already, to hold her aching muscles, to watch her in battle,
to know the scent of her sweat before he beds her in the graveyard.
"Of course, Buffy. I'm here whenever you need me."
"Of course." She dares to roll her eyes. He's angry but -- he can't. He never
could.
So she Slays, silent, precise, an empty whirlwind of passion, and he watches,
and waits, and prays to whatever demons will still receive his petitions, that
he will not lose her.
When the night's last vampire is dust, when the bravest demon has retreated to
its daytime lair, she leads him to the grave -- Joyce's again, the empty
casket,beloved mother. Joyce struggled against him, screamed. Her blood was
rich, like an aged wine, and when she drank from him, she swooned. She tried to
turn Buffy, braved an embrace, and the stake took her from behind. Buffy lies
on her grave, lifts a wrist to his mouth. "Just. Drink," she says, too rough.
His Slayer is old, older than Angelus, older than her mother, older than he.
Her blood tastes like a thousand generations of Slayers, a hundred thousand
years of lost daughters. Her taste is as crisp as wind, as clear as stars, as
musky as an autumn fog. He drinks from her wrist, her neck, her thigh, and when
she's wet and limp and weeping, sobbing his name, he makes love to her as
gently as he can, a mockery of all he is.
He's inside her when the heat of dawn reaches the horizon, and the warmth of
her desire still holds him when the first rays crackle, when his skin ignites,
when the blaze begins.
"Goodnight," she whispers, and takes him in a final kiss.
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