Add this to his long list of failings:

He's a coward.

Why else would he leave without saying goodbye? Is a terse note left by the cash register the best he can do for Willow and Xander? Five years they've given to the struggle, knowing any fight could be their last. The self-chosen ones, content to link their destiny to the Slayer's. Because they loved her.

It takes no time at all to get through security and to the concourse. Giles wanders through the newsstand looking for a magazine that interests him. He finds none, buys ten. Adds the latest Tom Clancy doorstop. Heroes, rock-jawed men of action, facing down global threats without anyone's heart being broken. Hardware pornography, plain and simple.

He finds his gate and takes a seat facing the pale expanse of sky. One of the chairs across the way has a sticker slapped on the blue vinyl: Hello! My name is.... In the white space below, some wag has printed Fuck you in jagged graffiti lettering. When he first arrived in the States, this would have sent him into his standard 'Young People Today' speech (rant, Xander would call it), with a side helping of 'Lax Standards', topped off with 'What Can You Expect?' Now, it just seems apt.

Fuck you, Giles.

He takes little comfort from the fact that few Slayers survived as long as Buffy. Or in knowing that every single one of his peers has ended his or her career in exactly this fashion -- those, of course, who didn't die beside their slayers. To be a failure in a long, noble line of failures, he finds, is no consolation at all. He's not even a proper failure by Council standards. He's in a special class, an outcast. We band of buggered, Spike proclaimed them as they marched out to face Glory.

Band of one. Giles can't show his grief, draw strength from the others the way they do with one another. It's his duty to be the strong one. Leaning on these children, who've been through so much, would be unforgivable. He's kept himself at a distance, watched the Scoobies learn to carry on without Buffy. (He's a Watcher, after all.) Xander, making his own effort to be the rock, hiding his sadness behind a joke or a helpful gesture. Willow, stepping out of the Slayer's shadow, somehow gaining confidence and power even as she mourns.

Anya learned so much from Joyce's death, but her heroic efforts not to ask irritating questions have made her particularly short of patience with the Magic Box limbo. In a strange way, Giles misses her honest confusion that annoyed everyone so much.

Tara with her soft, sad eyes, always so gentle. There were times when he almost allowed himself to express his sorrow to her, but he refrained from such selfishness. Though she's more than once given him an opening, she's just a girl.

Dawn's grief shines purest. She doesn't put on a brave face for the others. Sometimes she can lose herself for moments at a time with a video, a card game; sometimes she sinks to the ground with the sharpness of her pain. It's Dawn he intends to emulate when he can finally step from behind the facade.

Giles doesn't know if her style of grieving brings quicker healing.

He doesn't much care if he heals at all. People try to heal to become useful again, to become whole.

He'll never be that.

His life's purpose, the one he was born and bred to, has been ripped away from him. How can he pretend to be useful after that? How can he think to become whole?

He has been making the pretense this past summer. Patrolling with that ghastly Barbie-doll edition of Buffy, enduring her bright chatter and then returning home to get quietly pissed. As far as the children know, their main concern is to keep the vampires and demons from learning Sunnydale's wide open. But it's the Council Giles fears most. Once they know Buffy's gone and no new girl has been called to replace her, Faith's life expectancy will be very short indeed. It would be a simple matter to arrange an inmate attack, and who would know otherwise? Who would care? The Council would do worse to ensure that the Slayer line continued.

Giles has enough on his conscience when it comes to Faith.

Fuck you, Council.

Giles has a lie in place, if he's forced to appear at a debriefing. He's had enough of Buffy's rebellion, there's been a parting of the ways. He'll sacrifice his own pride (what little he has left) to the Council before he sacrifices Faith.

A surge of restlessness comes over him, and he searches out the nearest coffee kiosk. Though on any other day he'd have the tea, he orders a coffee. It seems a fitting farewell to his adopted home, somehow. (Though for all he knows, London is now choked with Starbucks as well.)

When he returns to Gate A-12, a pair of dreadlocked youths and their array of backpacks has usurped his row. He surrenders to the inevitable and takes the Fuck you seat.

The gate agent makes the pre-boarding announcement. Thank Christ. He's had quite enough of Sunnydale. He hurries to finish his coffee before his row is called.

Giles hears a small commotion, then Willow's voice. With her, Xander and Dawn, Tara and Anya. So much hangs unspoken in the air as he accepts their tokens. Parting gifts, Anya calls them -- what's given to the loser on a quiz show. Smiling, he adds this to his private 'Gallery of Unfortunate Honesty, Anya Pavilion.'

He rises to hug them, risks unseemly behavior. He owes at least that much to these--

No, not children.

Not any longer.

They've called his row. He takes their gifts, seen and unseen, lifts his carry-on bag. One final goodbye and he walks onto the jetway, heading home.

Leaving home.