My name is Rupert Giles, and I am not drunk. Tipsy? Maybe. Sloshed? Sort of. Drunk? Never. I spent most of teenage years drunk and doing dark magic's, screwing around with Ethan and the gang, raising hell. Literally, and then I stopped. It got to bloody scary for me and I stopped, I buckled down and did what I had to do. I became a watcher.

Buffy Summers was my slayer, the most talented young lady I have ever come across. She can fight harder and with more love for others then I have ever seen in a human being, she has a will about her and a natural leadership that makes her friends adore
her. I adore her, she is my Slayer. She no longer needs me, she doesn't need the council, and she most certainly doesn't need her fired watcher. I was fired for loving my Slayer too much, like a daughter.

I do this a lot lately, sit around in my apartment and stare at the books I haven't opened yet and drink brandy or schnapps or whatever I happen to have lying around. I'm a man of leisure, a bachelor, unemployed. I miss the gang, Willow and Xander. . . Buffy, everyone gathering in my library to do research until all hours of the night. We were a team, I felt part of it. I loved those kids, even Xander, they were my family and when I had to blow up the library I had built my being in for three years it was like blowing up a tiny bit of my soul, it all went down hill after I lost my library.

I lost my job at the school, obviously. Willow started spending more time with Oz, he's a werewolf but a good chap. Xander left on his road trip, seeing the united states. I think it will do the boy some good to wander around and possibly find himself, maybe he'll find a self that won't need to hide behind comedy. Cordelia, she just left. Off to become a actress, she stopped by the night before she was going to leave. I've never seen her express as much emotion as that night when she hugged me and gave me a kiss on the cheek, thanking me for helping her save the world all those times. I would actually miss Cordelia and her biting comments and blustery personality. And then there was my Slayer.

Buffy seemed to grow distant that summer after the ascension, Angel had left her and she. . . just couldn't handle it. I know the pain she feels, when I lost Jenny. . . it was like I could breathe. Like my heart had stopped and yet I couldn't die to join her, Jenny. I've stopped mourning her, she is gone. I miss her dearly every day but my life has to move forward, if I'm going to be useful to anyone or anything, I need to stop letting it hurt. So badly, at least.

So why in bloody hell am I writing this? I shouldn't even be still writing in my Watchers Diary, I am not a watcher. I just. . . don't have anyone to talk to. Not anymore. Even though I could never really open up to Buffy or Willow or Xander. . . I still felt as if I was letting them know my emotions, by just being around them. Jenny was the only person I spilled my heart out too, she knows my secrets and she's taken them with her to. . . wherever she has gone.

This will be my last entry, well at least until I get. . . tipsy again. I don't fancy breaking anymore antiques in my apartment trying to find some more books, so I'll write. If I remember this in the morning. . .

Rupert Giles
July 10th, 2000
~*~
Giles slowly closed the leather bound book and glared at it. He should burn it, but he knew future watchers would need it. He slipped it gingerly back into his desk drawer and took another gulp of his drink and stared at the phone, hoping, waiting for it to ring.
~*~End~*~