Title: Eat, Drink, Watcher, Slayer 1/2
Author: Ruth
Pairing: B/G
Rating: PG
Thanks: Rari for Beta, Lonely Planet Guide to Hanoi for information about a place I've never been to.
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon owns the secret recipe for BtVS. I'm just doing a little home cooking. No copyright infringement intended.

Apologies to Taiwanese film-maker Ang Lee for blatant pinching and subversion of his film title 'Eat, Drink, Man, Woman'

WARNING: This is a very SPOILERY fic. Sundry spoilers of varying degrees of reliability about upcoming episodes inspired me.

SPOILERS: Season 7 up to episode 14.

Westerners. With their rushed lives and preoccupied, anxious faces, they missed so much. Grow up in a village without electricity and mains water and you had to take time over life. No choice, but a benefit too. You learned to value people above things, to see beneath the surface, to face up to the harshness of existence but to look for the chance of happiness wherever it lay. To see the wisdom of some traditions and the foolishness of others.

And if you were born to be a Slayer - or a Watcher - then all the more reason not to let the paddy field dry out under your feet. To make life more than weapons practice, more then endless poring over books or - when the time came - cutting up demons.

"Buffy...cleaver." Giles' voice was calm and even as he surveyed the scene.

"This the one? Dismemberment for the purpose of?"

"Precisely, and yes, that's the one. Swing it *so*..." *thunk* "...to break through the joint at the point of articulation in one blow. Then chop it up, as fine as you can. Like this."

*Thunk*. *Thunk*. Clip, clip, clip.

The Slayer followed the swift arcs of the shining razor-sharp blade with narrowed eyes and nodded her satisfaction.

"Keen. What now?"

"Garlic and plenty of it. A whole clove apiece."

"Pre-chopped's all I got. Now don't go all purist on me, Giles. Still smells...really, really garlicky and… ewww. Now it's on my fingers. Got the boiling oil right here though. Stand by to repel boarders!"

The corner of Giles' mouth quirked just a little. It was so good to hear the old Buffy; alive and quipping and glad to be so.

"That's 'smoking' oil, Buffy. We're cooking a meal here, not turning back the Armada."

Buffy flashed him her best 'if you say so' smile. "Seems like it right now. I've got baby Slayers in the spare room, kindergarten in the basement and grade-school on all the couches. Now it's Cultural Exchange week in the Summers School District and where's a mummy girl when you need one to suck them a bit drier behind the ears?"

Giles chuckled obligingly and squeezed her shoulder in reassurance. "I'm sure you're coping magnificently. And tonight it's just the four of us. We need to help Minh-Ah start to settle down here. She's been thoroughly uprooted and needs a taste of home. Literally."

"I thought you said her name was Chao Ahn?

Giles reddened and shrugged minutely. "Yes, well, my mistake. The first time we met I introduced myself and that's what she said in reply. Apparently, it means something like 'Greetings, sir '.

Busy with sizzling pan and spitting pork knuckle, Buffy restrained herself. The tension in her shoulders as she resisted the laugh was perfectly eloquent, however. Giles had to admit the humour of the situation himself. Any way to diffuse the frustration of constantly smacking into the language barrier from both sides was more than welcome.

"You're sure you know how to cook genuine Vietcong?" Buffy turned to him as she spoke and glared as he balked and then spluttered, holding his hand in front of his grinning mouth. He composed his features and assured her:

"Er, Vietnamese. And yes, pretty sure. All it requires are decent kitchen skills, proper ingredients and a clear cook book. All of which I've spent some effort in acquiring." He lifted the volume in question to demonstrate and set it back down beside a pile of shredded spring onions, glistening moist, pale green and white under the light of the overhead spots.

All over the kitchen, stacks, piles and bowls full of ingredients were arranged in serried ranks, ready to be pressed into service according to Giles' carefully constructed schedule. Fragrant sweet scents of lemongrass and turmeric met and mingled with the sharp bite of sliced root ginger and the pungence of fermented fish sauce. Beside the sink, glossy deep red chillies leant against milky white packets of rice noodles, bound like miniature sheaves; a fan of grey-green lotus leaves glistened wetly in a colander.

"Where did you find all this?"

"I spent the entire day yesterday trailing around the speciality food shops of Los Angeles with my new charge in tow, engaged in a great deal of smiling, head shaking, pointing and spending. San Jose would have been better, but I've spent enough hours travelling over the past few days. It's as near authentic as I can manage in the circumstances."

"Of course it is." Buffy tipped out the cooked meat into a dish and shook the remaining drops of oil from the pan over it. "You're Giles. You get it right."

Her confidence in him even over such a trivial matter set a warm glow going in the region of Giles' heart. It was so good to be back here, even in the wake of disaster at the Council and grave danger to the Slayer line. He wished indeed that he didn't need the excuse of an Apocalypse to return to Buffy's side. But whatever the excuse, surely it was better to advance it than any real reason he might have had. Any reason to do with personal feelings, with attachment. With lo- ...no, best not go there. Not a safe route. No Through Road.

"If a thing's worth doing..." he began.

"It's worth doing properly. See, I do listen to the Wisdom of Chairman Giles sometimes."

"Gratified, I'm sure," he replied drily. "Where is our guest, by the way?"

"Bonding with Dawn over video games. They don't need much in the way of language skills and her reflexes aren't up to Slayer speed yet, so it's the right side of fair on Dawn."

"Right side?"

Buffy's mouth pursed, the expression of a beleaguered older sister about to taste vicarious revenge. "She can't complain that the deck is stacked, but all that weapons practice should have given the challenger the edge." Batting her eyelashes innocently, she passed in front of Giles and headed for the sink, following the direction of his pointing finger. "Noodles for the soup?"

"Chairman Giles he say: unfair tactics not worthy of honourable Slayer heritage," teased the Watcher. " Just check the water in the steamer, would you? Noodles only go on just before we eat."

She did as he asked and stood watching for a while, admiring the dexterity of his hands and the typical precision of his progress, as he sliced, stirred and tossed, smelled, tasted and adjusted. The cooking smells made her mouth water. Her appetite for food, normally very healthy owing to the demands of Slayer metabolism, had been a bit depressed again recently by all the stress and worry. Prophetic dreams, Willow's return, Anya's trials, Xander's concerns, her own new job in the school that stood once more on the Hellmouth; and...Spike, of course. But now that Giles was around more, she felt like they at least had a chance of making sense of it all. She had confidence in her own abilities, now. No longer did she want him to take the burden away from her altogether, to let her slip back to childhood. She didn't want a father-figure anymore. Nor (*how* could she have been so dumb, so insensitive, saying that) for him to replace her dead mother. He was a man, a friend, a Watcher. He was Giles, and that was whom she wanted back in Sunnydale. Preferably for good.

She just hoped he wouldn't be too fazed by the couple of surprises she had in store for him first.

Pretty good 'pho ga'. Piquant golden chicken broth swirling with fat, tender, cooked noodles, the surface dotted with tiny shrimp and crushed chillies. Fragrant steam curled up under her chin to escape to the ceiling of the comfortable room. As she sipped and scooped her way to the bottom of the bowl, Minh Ah began to relax a little more. The heavy weight of a Vietnamese/English dictionary was still cradled in her lap, but she felt relieved for a while of the need to make conversation, to tie her tongue around those impossible polysyllables, to try to make out whether the Englishman and the Americans were really speaking the same language.

Instead she watched the interplay between the others at the table, the familiar sparring between sisters that she herself had known in her mother's house, before Trung Ba Hue had taken her. Since his disappearance, she had had no Watcher of her own. Rupert Giles had come to bear her to safety, just as Hue had promised he would in his last letter, delivered by hand a week after he had gone to Hanoi, never to return. He had known, somehow in advance, that they would come for her; he had heard about the others. His last act, his last thought had been to protect her. She felt that she knew Giles would have done the same for his Buffy were it needed.

Hue: how she missed him, and mourned for him in her heart. She felt sure he must have departed this life, though there was no grave to find. No place where she might pray that his spirit visit her at Tet, the New Year Festival to which they had both been looking forward in the weeks before he left. It had been difficult for her to understand the situation here, even with all the help translation could give. That a Watcher might leave his Slayer whilst she - and he - yet lived was to Minh Ah an alien concept. She wondered what cause he had thought sufficient. From what she had seen, Giles was very like Hue, a man of devotion and loyalty as well as learning and courage. Buffy, The Slayer, in contrast, seemed very different from Minh Ah herself. Perhaps the answer lay there.

"No, Spike's not here anymore. We ran out of room, and anyway the girls felt nervous with him in the house."

"And that's not just the Slayers-in -training," muttered Dawn. Her sister glared at her and received a mutinous glower in return.

"What's that, Dawn?" enquired Giles.

"Nothing...I just... well, I don't miss him *at all*. I don't see why he had to come back to Sunnydale in the first place."

"You know why. To...atone, to try and make up for...stuff." Buffy suspected she was veering towards the most charitable explanation.

From her sister's expression, it was clear that Dawn thought she had merely been thoroughly taken in. Giles, unaware of quite *all* the undercurrents, had nevertheless picked up on the tension that the subject of Spike was guaranteed to introduce into any conversation between Buffy and Dawn these days. It concerned him deeply, especially as he thought he detected a similar tension between Buffy and each one of her friends, from the same cause. He wasn't a hundred percent happy himself.

He was willing to trust her judgement up to a point; Spike could indeed be a useful ally in the fight against the First. He had sought a soul and won it; he should be given the opportunity to prove himself. But if relying on him turned out to be a mistake, and if she alienated those close to her in so doing, Buffy could be extremely vulnerable. A soul was no guarantee; in Giles' considerable experience, character counted for far more. How easily could Spike throw off the habit of a hundred years of manipulation, deceit and self seeking? Did he truly want to? Why *was* he back here? Giles couldn't quite suppress the suspicion that it had far more to do with the beautiful face and strong heart of the young woman sitting opposite him, than any more altruistic motive. At the same time if he was honest with himself, it was perfectly possible that it was his own dislike of Spike, soul or no, and his fear that Buffy might again put her trust where it should not go, that fuelled his suspicions.

<< That, and your own pathetic jealousy, >> he admitted to himself. << Get a grip. If she wants to go to him she will, and there won't be a damn thing you can do to stop her. >>

"Well, wherever he is," he continued aloud, "at least he still can't harm anyone."

Buffy dipped her head towards her rice bowl, avoiding his eyes.

"Buffy? Spike *is* still electronically restrained? There's been no malfunction?"

"Well, there was. But now there isn't." Buffy could see both Giles and Dawn heave a sigh of relief, and almost stopped there. But Giles wasn't going to let it drop. He knew when she was hiding something, and she was.

"While...while you were gone, in Shanghai..."

"Hanoi. I was misdirected. By a thousand or so miles," Giles corrected grumpily.

"Wherever. Anyway, not here. The chip...it started to fire on its own, continuously. No reason, it just wore out I guess. Giles, I couldn't leave him like that, suffering, could I? It wasn't his fault. So I...I contacted Riley, what's left of the Initiative. They found one of their scientists and she...took the chip out."

"WHAT?" Dawn jumped to her feet. "Buffy how could you? Without telling anyone? Without asking anyone if they agreed? Aren't you supposed to protect us? To protect me?" She was about to turn and run from the table when Giles' strong hand descended on her arm and he gestured with a sharp but slight movement of his head towards Minh Ah, sitting bewildered and anxious next to Buffy. Dawn re-seated herself, only slightly mollified by the realisation that the hand that held her was itself trembling with suppressed emotion.

"Buffy," said Giles in a low, controlled tone; "I'd like to discuss this with you later, if I may." He offered their guest a reassuring smile and a pearly white plate piled high with neat packets of wrapped mixed meat and rice. "'Banh chung', Bac Minh Ah?"

Now what was that all about? She and Hue had scarcely ever raised their voices to each other, or to their neighbours. To have done so would entail severe loss of face. She admired Giles' restraint, and made allowance for the sister's youth. Youth seemed to last so much longer in the West. A young woman of that age in Minh Ah's village would certainly find herself promised to a likely man or even already married, running a household and working the fields. She herself had had to combine her Slayer training and study with cleaning and farming, although in the privacy of their house, Hue had undertaken all manner of domestic duties to free her for preparation in the event she might be Called.

Hue was a superb cook. She could taste last year's special 'banh chung', even as she gingerly unwrapped the one that had been cooked for her tonight. Preserved lotus leaves just didn't do it; the delicate green imparted by steaming the rice for hours inside fresh bamboo leaves could not be imitated. The contents were tasty enough, however. The sticky rice and savoury minced pork mixed with green bean paste and spices filled her mouth with comforting mass. No, not as good as Hue's, but a worthy effort.

She had no idea what the future held for her. Coming to the Hellmouth with a complete stranger, even if he was a Watcher. Unable to communicate beyond the simplest phrases. Gathering with her sisters around the active Slayer for 'protection'. But would they just make a bigger target? She and Hue had been everything to each other. With him gone, what did she have left?

She helped herself to another bowlful of jasmine rice and some deep fried vegetables, moist and heavy with oil, hot on the tongue. What was Buffy to Giles and he to her? He had seemed shocked but also...wistful about her assumption that they must have the same relationship which she and Hue had come to know. He had tried to explain why he and Buffy were not together, had never been together in that way, but he had not had the words. She had only been able to see that perhaps the situation was not as he wanted it to be.

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