Transitions - Ch. 29

Nobody in the Range Rover said a word all the way back into town. Salisbury. That's what it was called. Salisbury, like those mushy hamburger-patty-things that came in cheap TV dinners. Which was weird, because it wasn't really a cheap-TV-dinner kind of place. It was a Giles kind of place, and it was so bright and sunny that morning, and the town itself so apparently peaceful that it didn't seem like anything could happen there.

For something like the nine hundredth time, Buffy smoothed down the skirt of the beautiful dark-gray suit Celeste had given her. The suit fit perfectly. Of course it fit perfectly! Giles's daughter-in-law wasn't going to give her tacky, non-fitting clothing--but Buffy couldn't stop fussing, messing with the skirt's hem, fiddling with the jacket-buttons, tugging at the ends of the sleeves, until Giles gave her a look and asked her if she was uncomfortable.

"Not with the suit," Buffy answered.

She'd tried to dress as discretely as she could--black nylons, the nice shoes Celeste got her to go with the suit, her hair up in a French twist. She'd taken out all her usual earrings and put teeny silver studs in their place. The fact was, she just didn't know how to be. At her grandma's funeral, she and her cousin Celia had run around in the gardens outside the funeral home, knowing they weren't supposed to yell, or to mess up their party dresses, but running anyway. They'd been too little to know better. At Celia's funeral--well, she'd cried, and been sad. Mostly, though, she'd been scared, can't-move can't-think scared, something sticking in her head, that nightmare picture of the Kindestod, with his long, long fingers and his terrible eyes, his mouth expanding to suck Celia's life away.

Giles reached out and took her hand. His eyes were a soft, kind of misty-green color, and his face a little pale. He didn't even look exactly like her Giles--no, her Rupert, she corrected (she was never going to remember)--he looked almost like that haunted kid in the picture Sebastian had showed her. Like the haunted kid, grown up. There were funerals in Sunnydale all the time, but Giles didn't go to them--he'd only ever gone to Jenny's.

Buffy remembered how he'd been then, a little bruised, but dead white beneath it. He hadn't cried, not a single tear. Afterwards, when people started filing out, one or two of the teachers had stopped for just a second, as if they'd wanted to say something, but then moved on again--one or two of the students as well. No one spoke a word. Not one word. It made her nervous, and she'd tried to whisper to him that it was time to go, but Giles hadn't seemed to hear her, and in the end even she had left him alone, looking lost and lonely and diminished in the empty sanctuary.

Weirdly, it had been Xander who finally went back, and had sat next to Giles in the pew. Buffy had watched from the doorway, listening to Willow cry in Oz's arms behind her, watching Xander sit, and turn toward Giles, and finally lay a hand on his shoulder. Neither of them had come to the actual burial.

Buffy squeezed Giles's fingers a little tighter, laying her other hand over the top. "I won't leave you alone," she whispered. "Not even for a minute."

His eyes flickered, but he didn't say anything. Buffy wished she knew, right then, what he was thinking or feeling. Up until this point, except for those first minutes after he got the news, he hadn't seemed that upset, but now she couldn't tell.

"Did--" she started, but her voice sounded funny, and she cleared her throat. "Did your mom and Mr...um...Mr. Stanley have any kids. Together, I mean."

Violet gave her a look like that maybe wasn't a good question to ask, but Buffy didn't apologize. If Giles wanted to tell her, he would. If not, then he'd say she should mind her own business.

"One. A son. Laurence."

"Is he gonna be there, do you think?"

Flora made a sound that, translated, might come out to something like, "Ohmigod!"

"I don't know." Giles got an even stranger look. "Perhaps. I've seen him in the vicinity."

"Rupert," Rose told him sternly.

"Well, I have." For a minute, the two of them locked eyes. "Just as I've seen Marianna and Clarice. Both were with me in Mr. Mole's office."

"Mr. Munson's office," Rose corrected, "And this is no time to become obstreperous, Rupert."

Giles freed his hand from Buffy's and took off his glasses, rubbing his face--a common action of his when he was tired or bothered about something. "I should quite like to collect Celeste and Sebastian, turn around and go home to Appleyard," he said, in a voice so quiet Buffy could hardly hear. "Perhaps we could go for a lovely ride across the downs."

The sad thing was, Buffy realized, that he truly did feel that way. He didn't want to do this, and from that she knew the whole thing really would be horrible, more horrible than she'd even imagined. Then it hit her suddenly what Giles meant when he said he'd seen his half-brother in the vicinity.

"I ought to have..." he began. "I should..."

"Rupert," said Violet, the gentle one. "You can't blame yourself for Laurence as well. You were at Oxford, working terribly hard. How could you have known?"

"Because he was my brother. And I knew what the poor boy's life must be. Why should it have been any different for Laurence than it was for me?" He was going into full Giles guilt-mode now, zero to sixty in five seconds. "I--"

He stopped abruptly as Buffy gave his arm a little tug. "Oh, no you don't."

Giles looked down at her, surprised. "I beg your pardon?"

"I give you permission to feel sad about things that have happened within the last week--anything before that is off limits."

"Oh." The slightest hint of a smile touched his mouth. "Buffy has spoken?"

Aunt Flora laughed. "That's what I like! A girl after my own heart. She's good for you, Rupert." She pulled the Range Rover to a squealing stop in parking space not far from the church.

It wasn't the big church--no, Cathedral, Buffy corrected herself--that they'd seen the day before, though it looked almost as old. The walls were stone, and there were stained glass windows all around, all kinds of fancy stonework, and a tower with real bells that started ringing as they came up the walkway. To the sides and the back, Buffy could see graves, with headstones, some new, others that looked as if they might be, if not ancient, then pretty darn antique. She was used to having cemeteries being out somewhere, not right up by the church. Plus, everywhere she'd ever lived, the church bells had been electronic, or maybe just one bell, singular--but here she could hear different bells, with different voices, each one individual, like a group of people singing.

Beside her, Giles closed his eyes and listened. "I always felt safe here," he said.

"Kinda house of crosses and holy water," Buffy said, then wished she could take it back. That wasn't what he'd meant at all. His expression told he that this had been a place he'd truly loved at one time, and had somehow lost his connection to, somewhere along the line, so he couldn't ever go back to the way he'd been, or the way he'd felt, again.

Buffy thought she knew when that had happened, what night: just before Christmas, thirty-five years before, on the stoop of his parents' house. She swore to herself she'd never leave Giles alone at Christmas again. Never. Not as long as she lived.

"I'm sorry," Buffy told him. "Me and my big mouth. I understood what you meant, really."

Giles glanced down at her. His eyes looked tired again, and had that cautious look--but not because of her.

The two of them followed the aunts up the stairs and over the porch, under what Giles had told her, once, was called a portico. The doors were old, dark wood, pointed at the top, decorated with swirls of black iron.

A chubby little elderly pink-faced man dressed in one of those long, black priest-dresses--no, a cassock, Buffy corrected herself--was shaking each of the aunt's hands, and talking to them in an accent and a tone of voice that sounded almost like Giles's: quiet, rich and warm. The old man's eyes caught Buffy's and he smiled at her, making her blush. She never knew what to say to ministers or priests--they gave her way too strong a feeling of not knowing how to act, or what to do.

"Rupert," the priest said, in his soft, Giles-voice. "I hoped that we would see you."

Giles gave kind of a half-shrug, and made a small, embarrassed sound. "Father Brounslow, I'd like to introduce Buffy Summers, my fiancee."

"Buffy?" The priest gave a little smile. His eyes were bright blue, and the fringe of hair around the bald crown of his head kind of a pinkish-white, as if he'd been a carrot-top a long, long time before. He had one of the sweetest faces Buffy had ever seen--she liked and trusted him immediately.

"Uh, it's Elizabeth, really. But no one calls me that. Ever."

"Then this is the church of your name-saint." He smiled again. "Welcome, Buffy, to St. Elizabeth's. Your Rupert was one of my acolytes here."

For a minute that confused her, because the only acolytes Buffy ever heard about were the minions of some slimy demon, sent out to do his bidding.

While she was still struggling with this image, Giles put in, "I believe Buffy may be having a hard time grasping the concept of me as an altar-boy."

Okay, that one she understood--but then it struck her as funny. The thought of Giles, even as a kid, in one of those white dresses with the frilly collars, like she'd seen in the movies...

"Whilst you're attempting to restrain your mirth, I might as well add that I was a choirboy as well. Laugh as you will." Giles took her hand again. He looked better than he had a few minutes before. "I didn't expect to see you, Father."

"Always here, always busy. You know me, Rupert--though I shan't be officiating, of course. That will be Father Hemmings."

"A decent chap," Giles said non-commitally.

"For the most part, these days, I work in my garden, appreciating the pied beauty of nature."

Giles gave another little smile--that must have been something private between them, some secret joke. "Have the other--?"

"You've come late. We've seated the Servants of the Adversary to the left-hand side," Father Brounslow said drily, "And the Servants of God to the right." As Giles gave him a look, the priest laid a hand on his sleeve. "These are dangerous men, Rupert. Need I advise you to be wary?"

"I generally take your advice," Giles answered, sounding tired again. When Buffy followed him through the doorway, he seemed almost to be sleepwalking. Just inside, he reached out with his bandaged right hand, dipping his bare fingertips into a little stone hollow filled with water, that hung from the wall. He touched them to his forehead and crossed himself--blushing when he caught her gaze.

"You're Catholic," Buffy whispered. "I just realized." There she'd made all those comments about a national religion, and he wasn't even. She felt more than a little stupid about the stuff she'd said, and assumed--what had she thought? After all, Sebastian wasn't Father Delacoeur, he was Reverend Mister. So Father Brounslow was what Xander--who'd also been raised more-or-less haphazardly Catholic--would call a "real priest."

"Was," Giles answered, sounding a little sad--but even after that "was" he still did that little dip, that was called genuflection, when he stood in the aisle of his childhood church facing the altar and the crucifix. Buffy felt lost, and weird--she was going to do something wrong, and embarrassing, she just knew it.

"Am I supposed to have a hat, or a veil, or something?" All the other ladies were wearing hats, even the ones younger than the aunts. Why hadn't someone told her?

"It's not necessary," Giles murmured in return. "Such things are no longer required, and besides, you are American. British women wear hats to church. It's one of their oddities."

"Okay." Buffy still wished Celeste had bought her a hat.

A man in a black suit ushered them into a front pew, shutting the little gate behind them. The whole inside of the church looked like scenery for a Shakespeare play--lots of dark wood, and bare stone, whitewashed walls and balconies. The pews were hard and ultra-slippery, polished by hundreds of years of people sitting. The cold of the stone floor rose through the thin soles of her shoes--but that cold wasn't anything like as chilly as the eyes watching her from aross the aisle. Buffy felt that gaze like a thin layer of ice forming over her skin.

On their side of the church sat the normal-looking people--the aunts, and some people who were maybe friends of the aunts. A few rows back sat a group of what looked like church ladies--the kind of older ladies who could be seen in every church, like clockwork, every Sunday, the kind who usually wear flowered dresses, but because this was a funeral wore drab-colored suits instead. Further back, Buffy spotted the kind of people who just go to funerals, even of people they don't know.

Next to Giles, crying, sat one old lady that he spoke to kindly, and called "Mrs. Parker." Maybe she'd been his mom's best friend, or something.

Across the aisle sat the others, seventeen of them--Buffy counted. Men in dark suits, with scarily still faces. If they'd glared, or looked mad, it might actually have been better, but they only watched. They didn't talk. Their eyes didn't blink. They watched. They were Watchers. Of them all, Quentin Travers looked the closest to nervous.

Funny, Buffy had thought Travers must be some big guy with the Council--but he wasn't. He was just some little nothing sent to fetch and threaten. He wanted to be big, but Buffy kind of suspected he didn't have the balls for that--or the whatever. Like even if you were a fairly nasty or ambitious person, you might not have guts to stoop to the kind of things these guys would do without a second thought.

Moira had told her something weird, about being forced to wear this bracelet-thing that stopped her from using her powers--and Buffy had wondered about that. Like how anyone could make Moira do anything she didn't want to?

Buffy had been so mad at Giles for drugging her before her birthday--cameras or no cameras, why hadn't he refused? Looking at these men, she understood.

They weren't fighting the war anymore, light versus dark, humans versus demons. These guys were into something else completely--they had, for want of a better phrase, sold their souls.

The men with those eyes could make you do anything. Anything. And if you didn't like it, too bad for you. They'd planned for her to die on her birthday. They'd planned to have her die when Wesley screwed up as her Watcher--and if Giles hadn't loved her, and been brave enough to stay with her, she would have. These men sent Helena and Maria, the vampires, to get her.

Suddenly it scared Buffy to be here, scared her to think that Wesley--sweet, dumb, doofus Wesley--might have naively reported the things she'd said to him, scared her that they would use her presence here to hurt Giles or the aunts or Sebastian. She'd defied them once and, Buffy knew, once was all you got with these guys. Sooner or later, she'd be punished, and they'd do it all without ever getting their perfectly-manicured hands dirty, or putting the slightest smudge or wrinkle on their beautifully-tailored suits.

In her fright, Buffy reached down without looking, grabbed Giles's hand, and squeezed.

"Buffy, stop!" he said in a shocked, harsh whisper.

"What? Is it--?" She caught sight of his suddenly dead-white face, and registered the feel of bandages under her fingers. "Oh, God! Oh, my God!" She didn't even keep her voice down, and she dropped his hand as if it was red hot. "Are you--? I mean--?"

"Quite all right," he answered, through gritted teeth, hugging his injured arm against his chest.

Great. Just great. Already they'd rattled her so badly she didn't know what she was doing. Already they were making her hurt Giles.

Buffy hung her head. Trapped between her tortured fiance and the wall of killer stares, she wondered if it was too late to crawl beneath a pew and cry.

Just then, the organ began with an explosion of sound, and out of that explosion came Sebastian and Celeste.

"Sorry we're late," Celeste said casually, slipping into the pew beside her. "The bloody trains, don't you know?"

Sebastian, looking even paler and more tired than his dad, sat down quietly.

Glancing across the aisle at the evil Watchers, Celeste gave a smile and jaunty little wave, muttering, "Wankers," into Buffy's ear.

Buffy had never loved her more than she did at that moment.