Traditions

"Well, I can't believe she's bailing on me again." Even as she said the words, Buffy cringed at the whine in her own voice. "I mean, she's my mom. She should want to be here with me. Us. You know what I mean."

"Hmn?" Celeste took yet another of the three-inch pieces of green florists' wire out of her mouth, and used it to attach a sprig of holly to the cedar swag, then held it up against the mantlepiece to try the effect.

"A little to the left, I think," Buffy told her. "Over...over...yeah, there."

Celeste used the rest of her wires to hold the whole thing in place. Since she'd designed and built it, the swag looked great, of course--not the least bit Californian, but that was kind of the plan. The two of them had been conspiring since right after Halloween to put together an English Christmas for their guys, and Buffy just hoped the weather would cooperate by not delivering 900 degree temperatures again this year. Not that she was asking for snow, or anything. In fact, she really almost hoped it wouldn't. Snow, that was.

Snow was something bound to bring back some pretty cringeworthy memories: for her, of a Christmas spent with Angel; for Giles, of a Christmas spent with nobody, thousands of miles from home. After the events of the previous summer and fall, she was thankful to have been given a chance to make that up to him--even though she knew he'd never think of it that way, as something she needed to atone for.

Buffy smiled--she'd certainly started to pick up more than a little of Giles's vocabulary. Not that that was always a bad. It always impressed her professors when she sprang a Giles-word on them.

Celeste stepped away from the fireplace, stretched to get out the kinks, then absently rubbed her lower back with both hands. Usually, her work clothes camouflaged the baby so well, Buffy tended to forget how huge she'd gotten, but the leggings and tunic top she'd worn to decorate didn't hide anything. She looked like she was about to give birth to a baby elephant.

"Come now, little one," Celeste said lovingly, reaching around to stroke the curve of her stomach instead. "Keep those lovely feet of yours away from mummy's spine."

"Oh!" Buffy felt herself blushing--how inconsiderate could she be? "Hey, you should sit down. I should be doing this."

"I'm not an invalid, Buffy," Celeste reminded her, smiling, though she did lower herself into Sebastian's big comfy chair, curling her legs beneath her. Like everything else she did, Celeste made pregnancy look easy--but Buffy knew her friend had reached the uncomfortable stage, and wasn't sleeping really well a lot of the time. "Since I'm not at the studio, I must have something to do. It's horribly tiresome otherwise."

Buffy left for the kitchen, returning with two big mugs of the hot cider that had been simmering in a crock pot since early afternoon. The whole house smelled of apples, cloves, cinnamon, and of the big Noble Fir that occupied a place of honor in one corner of the living room, waiting for that night's tree trimming party. In fact, the house smelled like everything Christmas was supposed to smell like, and looked that way too, with its garlands, its holly, its candles arranged everywhere, just waiting to be lighted. Everything was beautiful and perfect, and she knew she had no reason to feel sad, but she did a little bit, anyway.

Stupid Aunt Eileen, she thought. Why'd she have to pick Christmas to fall on the stupid ice?

Buffy passed one of the mugs to Celeste, who sipped, then gave her one of those perceptive Celeste-looks.

"I'm sure your mum would like nothing more than to be here with you," she said, turning the clear glass mug around in her hands. Light shone through the cider, casting a golden glow over the smooth brown skin of Celeste's hands. "I remember that first year in England, how dreadfully I missed my mummy."

"But you were eight--I'm just being" Much to her embarrassment, Buffy felt tears sting the backs of her eyes. "I'm just being a butt. Poor Aunt Eileen falls and breaks her leg in three places, and all I can think of is me me me. I should get a lump of coal in my stocking for being so selfish."

Celeste gave one of her musical laughs, and set the mug on the endtable. "Come here, my dearest."

Buffy sat on the floor with her back against the front of Celeste's chair, leaning into the cushy upholstery. She tipped back her head, looking up into Celeste's wise, kind, upside-down face as the older woman smiled down at her.

"Are you entirely miserable, love?" she asked, and reached out to stroke Buffy's hair with such a warm, gentle touch, Buffy couldn't quite hold in the tears.

"I'm stupid. I'm okay," she told her friend, "And you're going to be the best mom, Celeste. You know that, right?"

Celeste laughed again. "I'm sure, as with all mothers, it will be a voyage of discovery. And you are far from stupid."

After a bit, she added. "I'm certain you shan't get a lump of coal. But I shouldn't rule out lovely kisses under the mistletoe."

That made Buffy laugh in return, even while she was crying, and after a little while the need to cry left her. She sat quietly, soothed by Celeste's touch, looking around the room with its greenery and its beautiful golden wood. Rooms in heaven, if there were rooms up there, probably looked like that, everything lovely and warm and welcoming. This one only needed the people to make it complete.

She tried to imagine being eight years old, away from your family, away from your home, in a foreign country surrounded by people who didn't look or talk or act like you, surrounded by tall, serious strangers in tweed who didn't love anyone, who were only interested in teaching you how to kill nightmares. She couldn't do it, couldn't imagine it--wouldn't have been able to stand that life even for a minute. "How did you make it, Celeste?" she asked, in her tell-me-a-story voice.

"Hmn?"

"In England, when you were little? It must have been the worst thing ever."

Celeste sat quiet for a long time, her hand resting softly on the crown of Buffy's head. "I was terribly lonely," she said at last. "Perhaps it hadn't struck me before, how alone I was. Usually, the lessons kept me busy, or course, and the Watchers weren't unkind."

"Or kind."

"Not strictly true." Celeste shifted a little. "One or two of the young ones would slip me Christmas sweets when my own Watcher wasn't looking. An extremely strict man, was Mr. Pulsifer."

"Pulsifer?" Buffy asked. "Weird name."

"That wasn't his only bit of oddness. I could tell you stories." Celeste gave a little chuckle, then shifted again. "But as the days drew nearer and nearer to Christmas, I began to miss my mum and dad, and my sister Livvie more and more--and being eight, I was rather concerned over whether Father Christmas should be able to locate me in my new home. By the time Christmas Eve came round, I was utterly beside myself., but when I asked Mr. Pulsifer about that, he told me not to be silly. He then quite wondered at the volume of my tears."

"Jerk," Buffy said.

"He was not very accustomed to children. By the end of the hour I'd given him a headache, and he was more than happy to send me on for my English lesson.

"When I got to the schoolroom there was no one there, but I'd learned, by then, to always be obedient, and so I sat in the front form and waited for my English tutor, sniffling a bit, and wiping my eyes on my sleeve. I wondered what kept him--he was usually such a punctual man. Most days I'd have dawdled a bit on my way in, and I would find him already sitting at his table with his books, reading. He'd look up at me, quite gravely, and say, 'Good afternoon, Celeste.' I would say, 'Good afternoon, Giles.'--since Giles was only a Candidate, my Watcher taught me, he wasn't to be granted the respect of a title--and then the lessons would begin. I had a very curious accent in those days, and was being taught, along with my other studies, to speak what was called "properly."

"Snobs," Buffy said.

"They meant well, one supposes," Celeste answered. "At any rate, I arrived, and Giles wasn't there, though he came in shortly, breathing hard, and with quite an armload of my warm winter things clutched to his chest, and a large Gladstone bag--what you might call a doctor's bag, Buffy--dangling from his fingertips. I couldn't imagine what he was up to, and was even more amazed when he smiled at me, and asked, 'Would you like to go on a journey, Celeste?'"

"I gaped at him, unable to believe what he'd asked me. 'A journey,' I finally managed to quaver. Giles smiled again, and I thought what a nice smile he had, even though the way his eyes would change colour had sometimes frightened me in the past. That, and the way he was always so quiet and contained, one could never tell what he was thinking, or whether one had pleased him or not. 'We ought to hurry, in order to make our train,' he said, then, 'It's begun to snow in the West.'

"'Snow?' I echoed, excited by the very thought--for, of course, I'd read of snow in books, but never seen it in my life. My hands shook so putting on my boots and muffler and coat that Giles brought for me that he had to help me dress, as if I'd been a much younger child. In the end, he took my hand in one of his, and the Gladstone in the other, and we set off out of the Compound, the place that had been my entire world for the past six months. We rode in a taxi to Waterloo station, then boarded a train bound for Salisbury, a town I'd never even heard of. Even whilst we were still in London, small white flakes had begun to spiral out of the sky, and the farther the train went, the thicker the snowfall became, until soon we could see nothing but a blurred whiteness everywhere we looked. I found myself huddling in a corner of our compartment, afraid of the blindness, afraid that I'd somehow been found wanting, and Giles had been dispatched to take me far away, to someplace even more forbidding than the Compound--perhaps, I thought, it was because I'd cried with Mr. Pulsifer.

"Giles had been staring out the window, but all of a sudden he seemed to rouse himself and notice my distress. 'I'm sorry, Celeste,' he said. 'You must have thought I'd quite deserted you.' 'I shall be good,' I sobbed. 'Please, Giles, I promise. I shall be very good.' At that, he looked nearly as alarmed as my Watcher. 'But Celeste,' he said, 'You have been good. You've been extremely good, and I thought you might like a bit of a treat. It hasn't quite escaped me that you're quite lonely at the Compound--as, why shouldn't you be?'

"He paused with his strange coloured eyes upon me, and suddenly I understood that despite the tweed and his serious ways, he was actually quite young. I realized that he felt as afraid and alone in that place as I did, and hated his lessons nearly as much as I hated mine--and that, for him, this was the saddest time of all the times of the year. 'I can't give you back your family,' he told me, 'Any more than I can recover my own. But--' he said softly, after a while, 'I can take you to the best place in the entire world.' I believed him. I've always believed him, ever since.

"In time, the motion of the train and the swirl of the snow made me sleepy. I drifted off, dreaming of weapons and Latin verbs and an empty sock hung at the foot of my bed. When I woke again, it was in Giles's arms, as he carried me down from the train. There were English voices all around us, and then I was being tucked up inside something that felt like a very odd sofa, the icy air on my face and a warm blanket spread over my knees. Giles's arm was around me, and my cheek rubbed against the scratchy wool of his coat. Bells rang, there was a kind of slapping sound, and then we were flying!" Celeste's eyes shone with the memory. "We were flying over the snow, and I was safe and warm and cared for. I don't think I ever did wake up completely--maybe one doesn't, when there's magic all around. Maybe one needs only shut one's eyes, and trust, and believe."

"Was it really magic?" Buffy asked, twisting a little to face her friend more comfortably. She wondered if it really could have been magic, or if Celeste was just making up a story to illustrate a point, like one of those alligator-thingies.

No, like an allegory, that's what she meant. Buffy sighed.

"It was a sleighride," Celeste answered, smiling, as she reached down to touch Buffy's cheek. "But it might as well have been magic. I felt so free. So free." Her eyes got a happy, far-away look. "When we stopped flying, Giles lifted me again in his arms, and it came to me then, as he carried me, how strong he was, and how gentle. I told myself if I ever grew up and married, I'd want to marry just such a man."

"Which you did," Buffy said, thinking of Celeste's husband Sebastian, how alike he was to his dad.

"Which I did," her friend echoed. "There are moments, I suppose, that make one's life what it is, that made one the person one is meant to be. One of those moments came to me then. The door opened and golden light spilled out around me. We walked into glorious warmth and the most wonderful smells: fresh bread and sweet spices, cedar and pine. Far off in the distance music played, and outside in the snow our horse stamped its hooves and shook its bells." A faint pink flush spread over Celeste's cheekbones; her dark eyes sparkled. "Everything I make, everything I do--it's an homage to that moment, an attempt to catch again the way I felt that night, and the next morning, when I woke up so perfectly content in that big bed, with my filled sock hung from the footboard.

"I remember Giles rapping on my door, and opening it just a little, asking me, 'Everything all right then, is it, Celeste?' whilst I smiled so hard I felt my face would split in two. 'I quite love you, Giles!' I called to him, and he blushed and stammered something to the effect of, 'I quite love you too.' Lovely man. Lovely, lovely man." Celeste stopped, touching her fingertips to her eyes in an attempt to stop an overflow of tears from smudging her Celestially-perfect makeup.

"You'll get no arguments from me," Buffy said, squeezing her friend's hand. She climbed to her feet as Sebastian, with Willow and Xander in tow, breezed into the room, bringing with them a gust of what almost felt like cool air.

"What's this?" Sebastian asked, noticing the dampness on his wife's cheeks as he bent down to kiss her.

"Nothing, nothing," Celeste answered, catching him around the neck and pulling him closer for such a deep kiss Seb was gasping when she finally let him up for air. "A child's Christmas in Wessex."

"Ah," said Sebastian, looking bemused--which seemed to be one of his usual looks, most days. He hadn't quite adjusted to his new life in Sunnydale, or his new family. "I'll just get changed then, shall I?"

"Give me a hand, Bastian?" Celeste asked, her eyes sparkling as she gazed up at her husband. Buffy found it adorable how gentle he was with her, helping her to her feet. Seb was strong in the same way Giles was strong, and not just physically--strong in the way that knows when gentleness was called for. His arm went around Celeste's back, and she leaned her head on his shoulder as the two of them climbed the stairs together.

"We're surrounded by couples of cuteness," Xander commented, sprawling on the couch, but the look he gave Will was almost serious. He still joked, of course--sometimes more than was really appropriate--but he wasn't the same goofy kid Buffy'd met in the hall of Sunnydale High. They'd all changed, of course--none of them were the people they'd been then--but it sometimes seemed as if Xand changed the most growing up. Buffy liked the man he'd grown into even better than she'd liked the boy, and that boy had been one of the best friends she ever had.

For a minute, Willow's eyes got misty, and that lost expression came over her face. Both her friends watcher her with apprehension, anticipating one of those sudden storms of tears that had hit her so frequently during the fall. True, Buffy had had a hell of a summer, and sometimes it came over her like a tidal wave how much she missed her dad. Most of the time, though, she almost felt guilty about how great her life was going, compared to Will's. She'd really hit the books for the first time in her life, and had, surprise surprise, the grades to show for it. She had a great job working part-time for Celeste, wonderful friends and the most loving guy in the world for a fiancee--and if the Chosen One thing was sometimes a drag, at least she didn't have to face that alone. For Will, though, it had just been one thing after another: school, weird magic, all that badness with Oz...

Willow took in a deep breath, blinked, and shook her head. "I'm okay," she said softly. "I just...I'm okay." She sat down on the couch next to Xander, who reached out to take her hand. Willow gave him a look that was full of stuff Buffy couldn't even begin to decipher. "I'm glad you guys asked me to come tonight, even though I don't...usually."

Xander gave her one of his sideways grins. "Tonight wouldn't be...what it is...without our Will."

"It really wouldn't," Buffy told her. The three of them sat there quietly for a little while, thinking of the people that wouldn't be coming, the people they missed.

"Did you hear from your mom?" Willow asked at last. "Did she make it to your Aunt Eileen's okay?"

"Uh-huh." Buffy thought she heard the crunch of a car in the drive, and went to the window, hoping it might be Giles arriving, but the car was parking at the house next door. What she did see, though, were a few snowflakes twisting down out of the sky.

Just like last year, she thought, and the thought made her suddenly afraid. Just like last year, when she'd been that thoughtless person who only cared about Angel--not that Giles was all on his own, or that Xander was sleeping out in the snow.

Moments got away from you, she thought, and you never, never got them back. You could spend the rest of your regretting what you'd done, how you'd acted.

She touched the window, feeling the coldness of the pane again her hand. There didn't seem to be any cars on the street, and a sudden pang of fear shot through her--that Giles wasn't coming, that something horrible had happened to him, out there in the dark, and she never would get that chance to make things up to him, that they'd never get to spend a Christmas loving each other, that they'd never have any traditions of their own to remember.

Give us just one, she prayed. Just one. Okay, more if you can--but please, please let us have this one? She'd learned her lesson about making wishes, but there couldn't be anything wrong with a prayer, could there? Especially not a Christmas prayer.

"You have to tell your honey that his tests are way too hard," Willow was saying. "People were turning into puddles all over the room. It wasn't pretty."

"Literally?" Sebastian asked, returning with a plate of appetizers in his hand. He had on his reindeer-and-snowflake Christmas sweater on, and his hair was all mussy, as if maybe he and Celeste had been up to more than changing clothes and putting food on trays.

"Yes," Willow answered, giggling. "And the janitorial staff is soooo upset."

"When I was..." Seb began.

"No Oxford stories," Celeste decreed, doing a pretty good job of edging in behind her husband, despite the baby and the tray of food in her hands.

"I was just going to say..." Seb started.

"No Oxford stories!" they all chorused.

For about five seconds Sebastian looked offended, but then he laughed. He tended to be more-or less good-natured about their teasing, luckily.

Buffy turned back to the window. More snow. Still no Giles. In about ten minutes she was going to officially wig. His class that Willow was in had been the last one, hadn't it? So how come she was here and he wasn't? Buffy knew he sometimes had paperwork to clean up after finals, but shouldn't he be done with that by now? And he knew there was a party, he wouldn't have let himself get sucked into his dusty, musty books, would he?

"Can I use your phone?" she asked Celeste, knowing it was ridiculous to panic, but having to fight the urge anyway. Giles had probably just lost track of time. She'd call his office and catch him sounding like he'd just woken up, not because he'd been sleeping, but because he'd been concentrating so hard. She could scold him lovingly, and in a few minutes he'd be there with her, and she wouldn't have to worry any more. She'd reach up to him, and he'd half lift her off the ground, his arm around her, holding her so warmly and so close she'd be able to feel their hearts beat together.

But when she called his office, no one answered, not even the History Department secretary.

"I'm certain he's on his way, Buffy," Sebastian told her, sensing her concern. He didn't look certain, though, anymore. That was the downside of living in Sunnydale. One of the downsides, anyway--you never just assumed someone had a flat tire, or stopped for milk, or just got a late start. The worst that could possibly happen always flashed through your head.

"Yeah," Buffy answered, wanting to believe, but not quite being able to. "There's no answer because he's on his way. Makes perfect sense."

"I've no doubt," Sebastian answered, joining her at the glass. "Honestly, I've no doubt." He leaned closer, until his forehead nearly touched the window. "I say, it's certainly coming down out there."

Buffy shivered, feeling the chill in her bones, trying to smile back at Seb as he looked down at her, with that expression so much like Giles's own. That was their big tradition really, 365 days a year--worrying about each other, worrying that it would all be too much, that someone would get hurt, that someone might just never come home again.

Without having said a word, Xander brought her a cup of cider, and Buffy held it, not drinking, wishing some of the warmth would spread to her icy hands.

"It's normally a quarter-hour's drive from the University. Let's add another few minutes on to that, for the snow," Sebastian said, "I'm sure Dad will be with us in less than half an hour now."

Buffy nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat. She didn't dare speak, didn't even dare to think. It seemed as if all the warmth and the color had been drained from the room. She had a dim awareness of Celeste putting in some Christmas CD, and of Xander and Seb arguing in a friendly way as they strung the lights.

Please, she thought desperately. A year before, she never would have thought she'd be so desperate to hear Giles's groaning, rattling Citroen pull into the drive--now she wanted nothing else in the whole world.

The lights shone on the tree, but to Buffy they looked dull and lifeless, the fir itself gray as Kansas in the middle of a drought. Everyone else seemed to be having a good time, eating Celeste's no doubt yummy food, singing along with the Classics--in Xander's case so far off key he might as well have been in a completely different song, making Celeste laugh until she nearly cried.

Buffy was just about to excuse herself--go out into the night and search and search until she'd found out what happened--when someone knocked on the door. She flew to the entryway, not knowing what she expected--the worst, she guessed, a pair of police officers with grave expressions on their faces, ready to tell her words she wouldn't have been able to hear. She flung open the door to find Giles standing on the stoop, looking rumpled and tired and a little bit pale. There was blood on his throat, and dark bruises around his neck and on his jaw. Buffy wanted nothing more than to fling her arms around him, but she'd lived where she lived to long, and so, hands shaking, she took the little gold cross he'd given her from around her neck instead, holding it out toward him.

Giles's eyes locked on hers. He reached out, wrapping his fingers around the cross. Slowly, a smile spread across his face. "That's my good girl," he said softly, holding out his arms to her, folding her in against his body, between his warmth and the icy, snow-filled air, holding her as she cried against his shirt, which smelled like ice and vamp-dust and, underneath those not-pleasant things, like the wonderful, complicated smell of Giles.

"I thought I'd never get the chance," Buffy sobbed against him.

"The chance?" he responded, in the same bemused voice Sebastian had used.

"To make it up to you. I wanted so badly to make it up to you."

Giles pulled away from her, looking down into Buffy's face, brushing away her tears with his thumbs. "When will you believe, my love, that you've nothing to atone for? That you've nothing to make up to me?" He didn't sound angry--maybe just a little bit sad, and with so much love in his voice that it made Buffy's heart feel all strange-shaped and too big. "You are everything I want," he told her. "You are everything I've ever wanted, and that I have you now is all, in life, that I need." One of those faint Giles-smiles flickered across his mouth. He bent to kiss her, his lips cold against hers, but the inside of his mouth wonderfully warm. Buffy felt herself melt, like one of Willow's puddle people, all the fear, all the anxiousness flowing out of her.

Giles was here, he was safe, they were together, and Buffy knew that was all she wanted and needed too.

They walked into the house together, where all the known, beloved faces smiled at them as they entered. The lights shone brightly again--twinkling white lights, exactly like stars--and the air smelled of spices and evergreens.

"Let me guess," Xander said, "The old 'I have a flat tire' damsel-in-distress ploy? Giles, man, how many times do we have to go over this? You're gettin' a reputation."

"Very amusing," Giles said, adding, in his own defense, "I'd brought a stake, at least. Besides which, it's Christmas. And her tire was most definitely flat."

"I don't care if her car was sitting on rims. Don't fall for it." Xander glanced up, a funny look in his eyes. "We'd kinda miss you."

"Let me get you something to change into, Dad," Sebastian said, obviously wanting to change the subject even more than he wanted Giles to change clothes.

Celeste just crossed over and kissed them both. "Welcome, Rupert. Now we're complete."

That's exactly what they were Buffy realized: complete. She could miss the people who weren't there--whether they were gone for two weeks, like her mom, or gone for good, like her dad. And she did miss them, sometimes so badly it made her literally ache inside. She had her family around her, though. People who'd been with her through more horrors than she even wanted to name, people who loved her even when she was wrong and bad.

There was no need for regrets or guilt, she realized, and no need for atonement, or to make amends. The past was behind them, and all the minutes or hours or years of their future together awaited them, every instant as bright and perfect as one of Celeste's blown-glass ornaments, the ones waiting to be hung on the tree.

"Ah! Ah! Mistletoe!" Xander told them, laughing as he pointed at the beam over their heads.

Buffy and Giles glanced up together. Sure enough, the little dry-looking sprig with its white berries hung just above.

"Shall we?" Giles asked.

"I don't actually need an excuse," Buffy answered, shivering a little as Giles's still-cool hands cupped her face and his now-warm lips pressed to hers, kissing her deeper and deeper, until the world stopped existing around them, and there was only that touch, that kiss--one of those moments that changed her life, as Celeste had said, and made her the person she was supposed to be.

After an eternity, they parted, though Giles's hands still framed her face. His eyes shone as they gazed down into hers. "Happy Christmas, my love," he murmured.

Buffy laid her hands over his, feeling their combined strength, the unbreakable bond between them. It took her a long time to find her own voice, but at last she told him, "Merry Christmas, Giles," in return, hoping he could read, in her eyes, everything else she meant by those worlds.

When Giles bent to kiss her again, Buffy knew he'd understood everything.