Burn the Bridges As You Cross Them.
Giles.
He remebers: standing on the edge of the abyss, the city whiped out from the face of the Earth; and smiling.
He remembers: how it feels, to have his hand warmed with a breath, steady, until you squeeze.
He remembers: how one learns that you'll never fly a Spitfire, never soar high above; that the generations of those before you hold you down, keep you grounded do strongly that it might just as well be their dead arms, breaking the earth, forcing themselves on you like poison ivy.
He remembers: walking through the fire for the first time, pure, cleansed, a christening more holy than anything a human religion could dream of creating.
He remembers: fire entering you, the unholy communion, and sex is like death and death is like sex and everything is like the oblivion.
Faith.
For some reason, she trusts him. He is still surprised.
Buffy.
She's dead.
That's everything Giles has to say on that matter.
Sometimes he thinks he might hear the ocean in the palm of his hand, steady movement of the weaves, breaking on the shore.
Faith.
Her hands curl into fists when she's sleeping, her fingernails leaving bloodred crescents on her palms. They're always gone by the morning.
Sometimes she doesn't come back until morning, her hair full of smoke, fire dying in her eyes, her skin still covered with swear.
Sometimes Giles wakes up and her hand is on his, hear ear close to his chest, as if his heartbeat was her lullaby. Those days, and only those, he joins her in the shower, pushes her against the cold bathroom tiles. Or, before breakfast, bends her over the kitchen table, her hands flat on the surface, her hair falling over her face.
When he fucks her, her passion is almost like her anger. That's exactly what he needs from her.
Giles.
Memories might be what makes us who we are.
He can see the problem with that.
Ethan.
He's dead.
The death is almost as final as if Giles killed him himself.
Sometimes he wishes he did.
Giles.
He walks from house to house, continent to continent. All he lacks is a flute. Girls, children, follow him into a war started by few people who thought they could win, could make a change, could challenge the hell itself.
Back then, on the edge of a dead city, everything seemed much easier. He was smiling.
Ethan.
Sometimes he wishes he did kill him.
The only consolation is the thought that he did sent him to a death cell.
Ethan would be pleased. Death is like sex and sex is like death, and everything is... he can't remember. It was a long time ago, in a different country, and besides, he is older now.
Faith.
She knows what his endgame is.
He doesn't know why he gave in and told her, that night when she finally stabbed him in the gut, twisted her knife like an exclamation point, like the corkscrew they used earler that night to open a bottle of cheap wine.
She knows, and still she follows him.
He really must play that fucking flute wonderfully.
Jenny.
She's dead.
He remembers: standing over her grave, mourning someone for the very first time.
Maybe because he didn't kill her himself.
Giles.
He drinks his tea without sugar, black, carefully measured out.
He keeps it in the same jar he did in Sunnydale, he could have packed a book, but chosen a worthless memento instead.
If you look at it with your eyes half-closed, the jar looks kind of like an urn.
