There are stories he remembers, told to him by his grandfather (of the Great War) and his father (of vampires and watchers) in the light of the fireplace on cold winter evenings. Tales of adventure, honour and courage, and enough blood to keep a small boy interested.
If there was a moral to the stories, it was the same that had been drilled to him by his father, by his father's father, by the watcher's academy and the Council - that there was no death greater than to die for the cause. For country, for honour, for humanity, for her.
With the darkness already lurking at the edges of his vision, Giles lets his eyes close and tries to imagine his father - killed by a vampire just months before his retirement - and what he would think of it all. The soft bed and softer morphine, the smell of urine, disinfectant and withering gerberas.
Giles knows what his father would say, but he also knows that those words would be nothing but lies.
There is a warm hand in his and when Giles opens his eyes, he sees Buffy smiling at him. He looks at her, at the stray gray hairs that have escaped the peroxide, at the crow's feet gathering in the corners of her eyes, and he knows that what he has is something better: to be free of his greatest fear, twice already realised.
He closes his eyes with peace in his heart and his slayer by his side - old, wise and alive. It's the death all watchers dream of.