Work Text:
In April, at two in the morning, the phone rings. Sleep clumsy fingers fumble for the receiver.
"Hey, Giles."
"Oz! Hello, this is quite the surprise."
"Yeah." Full-throated laughter is caught in one syllable.
Giles relaxes. It's good to think about something outside of Sunnydale.
~~~
Narrow postcards arrive in the mail. Most of them smell musty, the familiar scent of old paper. The pictures are matte, with a texture like cheap canvas. The captions on the back are blue, the paper yellowing at the edges. The images vary but hold to a theme- outdated roadside attractions, concrete dinosaurs, hotels with names like Wig Wam and Prospector's Folly. They appear sporadically - it took Giles three months to realize that they appeared as the moon waned. The messages are brief, a few short sentences about demons encountered [Polgrara:1] or hot spots [Vortex: south end, downtown Helena. The confederate soldier with a broken rifle - sentry.] But they always end with 'Wish You Were Here.'
Giles can't help the worry. The rest of the children are absent, lives full and centered elsewhere. He forgets to tell them about the cards, forgets to assure them that their wandering friend is well and was last outside the Corn Palace - or was at least there long enough to cross paths with an Elvis-obsessed Dine shaman. He forgets - then starts to track the geography touched with color-coded pins and string stretched between them, on a giant map of the US he tacks up in his bedroom. Giles, if asked, would say the walls there have more space, and that keeping this separate prevents distraction from local conflicts and concerns.
The truth of the matter is he feels not all hobbies need to be shared.
~~~
Sometimes he dreams. Not of demons, or the rallying sunlight flutter of blonde hair. Instead, it's an ocean of swaying grass, moon touched. The sculptural faces of unfamiliar mountains. The wide shining expanse of a lake, surrounded by fir trees and aspen with pale arms and leaves shaking in unison, wind touched. He feels no fear, but remembers a distant life: sufi dancers whirling, billowing cotton winding around human spindles, pinning the world tight in place. He thinks of India, of guided tours and careful measures of local color, and smiles.
Instead of counting sheep when the decanter's contents are reduced to fumes, Giles closes his eyes and imagines the whirl-thud of tires on pavement. thud repeat. thud repeat. Sometimes when he wakes, the world still blurred by glasses' lack and made vulnerable, Giles thinks of departures. He thinks of Xander - of all people- and the call to adventure. And he thinks of failure.
~~~
The postcard is postmarked from Lawrence, Kansas. It's unlike the others - modern, glossy and slick against his fingers. Smudged with the fingerprints of strangers. "There's no Place Like Kansas." the lurid caption reads. The message is equally cryptic. "Possible Buff in South Dakota. What do you know about 1967 Impalas?" He blames insomnia and Xander's cable pirating skills... and the Stephen King marathon on USA late night for his nightmares of possessed cars that night.
~~~
On the first full moon after Oz's departure, Giles had sat on the patio outside his flat on an aluminum and mesh webbing lawn chair borrowed from the nice old lady down the hall, a bottle of Scotch by his right foot, heavy crystal tumbler in his hand. He'd sat out under the cool white light, a book on Arcadian rites of passage unopened in his lap, and watched the moon ease its way across the sky. Nothing troubled him the entire night. He fell asleep at some point - waking as the dawn spread pale across the sky, his trousers heavy with dew. He'd just managed to wrestle his provisions back inside - the stake and short sword proved a moment's awkwardness - when Buffy and Willow arrived, vibrating with concern and grief. The throb at his temple faded as he set the kettle on the stove. The tea would grow cold in the cups, of course, but it was the principle of the thing, really.
On successive full moon nights, Giles became convinced that Hubert-Straton's Theorem was, in fact, correct. It certainly did seem that there was a wolf print on the face of the moon.