Here Comes The Sun
"It isn't important to you yet, and it shouldn't be," Nana said to him once with a understanding smile and soft hands wiping tears from under his eyes, "It won't be important until you see that little girl with that large weight on her shoulders looking to you and you will see how it's not just a job, it's your destiny and your life as well."
"Father says it's just a job," Giles said softly, "He says that I need to focus on that only."
Nana sighed, hugging him tightly, "I love my son but I know how unhappy he truly is. I don't want that for you."
She bought him the guitar that day after his father said no once again and told him to give up on dalliances.
She told him that if her son got something to play with, then he deserved something as well.
"What did Father like to play with?" Giles asked.
Nana chuckled, "He wanted his own filing cabinet. Your Father is a special man."
The guitar was perfect to him, the golden strings pulled tight and strong over the soft tawny body. It was order, tuned to his liking, and it sang to each of his movements.
Those days it would accompany the sappy ballads written for the girl next door, and cover poor renditions of David Bowie songs.
Later Ethan tried to convince him to smash the guitar at a horrible concert they were doing in a friend's basement. He was busy losing parts of himself everyday, but he couldn't part with that last piece of his Nana.
He used to practice in her house, and then he practiced by her grave.
The guitar now sings only songs of loss unless someone asks him, and then he can sing those songs that made him smile then and now. He would forget he could play happy songs if people didn't remind him of those lyrics locked away in dormant parts of his brain.
Xander and Willow like songs they can sing along with while they dance together through the room, while Dawn asks for the songs her memories show her mom singing softly.
Jenny used to like folk songs from all years and places, and she would cry whenever he sang Guantanamera.
Oz and Tara both liked to hear the same songs, playing a game of picking a random song off of a record and making Giles sing it for them. Oz would close his eyes, and strum his fingers slowly over imaginary strings. Tara would wait until the second verse and sing with him, starting out soft till letting her voice grow loud and beautiful.
He's been alive for what feels like hundreds of years, but only realizes now how empty a song can sound with certain voices missing.
Buffy loves the same song his Nana did. He would sit by Nana's bed and play it to make her smile softly even with her memory became shady and unsure. He would walk into her room only months after she had given him the guitar and she could only stare blankly at his face, not knowing who him from the nurse bringing her medication.
But when he started to sing her eyes would shine full of recognition and love.
"Here comes the sun," he sang then, and he sings now whenever Buffy's eyes grow even cloudier then Nana's ever did.
Rome is perfect for Dawn who is growing up tall and stunning among the beauty of the city.
She can run through the streets of city, surrounded by the art and history she never knew would mean so much to her. The language flows from her, like the monks had hoped she would return to their holy city.
Dawn cares for the same girls she goes to school with everyday, serving as their guardian on cobblestone streets and narrow alleys.
But it isn't the same for Buffy, with a hole in her heart and a house that will never feel like a home. The city doesn't fit right, a place perfect for a vacation but wrong for the long-term.
Giles know how it feels to live in a foreign land, with your friends spread far away. America wasn't like that for him, but returning to Britain so far away from Buffy and Sunnydale was.
It wasn't home without her.
Their house right outside Rome has a patio overlooking the lush land, where she can sit wrapped tight in a blanket, reading every night. When the work for the day is done, Giles meets her there, lights their lanterns around her, and strums his guitar softly.
The slayers come to listen before going into the city, sitting around them, staring at their own personal museum exhibit of the ideal watcher and slayer. Buffy giggles when the girls ask to hear Justin Timberlake songs, but Giles has been around young girls long enough to know a few. But once he's finished his rendition of "Senorita," Dawn shuffles the girls off to patrol.
She doesn't cry any more over loss, and she doesn't smile over the little things. But in the quiet of the night, she speaks all of those things Giles knew but never expected to hear her say.
"Giles, do you like Rome?" she asks softly one night.
"I suppose I do, " he answers, putting his guitar down and coming to sit on the lounge chair beside her, "It's not home, but it's better then before."
She got up slowly, dropping her blanket to the ground and moving to his chair, "When Dawn graduates, I'm leaving."
"I understand," he frowned, as that path he had planned out in his head slowly fading away, "I don't know where I will go."
"Are you ever going to leave me again?" she asks even softer, moving closer to him, "Please tell me you will never leave me again."
There was an answer in his kiss that never could've been explained in words.
"Sing the song for me Giles," she smiles, placing her head on his shoulder, "I like this song."
Nana was right, she was always right. Watching Buffy had never just been his job. Watching her and loving her was his destiny and his life.
"Here comes the sun..."