Tribulations - Chapter 10

Buffy, Xander, even Willow, might have teased Giles about his love of darkish rooms filled with books, but the particular cluster of wood-paneled chambers that comprised the Watchers' Archives had always held a special place in his heart. Not only did the collection include volumes found nowhere else in the world, but an air of earnest endeavor permeated its very atmosphere, making the Archives seem a world apart from the pointless internal squabbles rife throughout the other branches of the Council, squabbles and rivalries that had brought the Watchers to their present state of extremity.

For the Archives to be violated, for Callum Briggs--a man whose scholarship and kindness were, in Giles's experience, unequaled--to be murdered within those walls, filled him with a barely containable sense of outrage. Briggs ought to have been safe there, of all the places in the universe--for his beloved sanctuary to have been violated in this way made nothing on earth seem secure anymore.

"Through here." Moira indicated one of five varnished mahogany doors. She seemed reluctant to return to the scene herself, which gave Giles an inkling as to what he'd shortly view.

Buffy's hand tightened convulsively on Giles's own--to the extent that his newly-healed fingers nearly splintered again.

"Oops, sorry," she murmured, giving him a nervous glance as she relaxed her grip, her deceptively soft fingers rubbing his bruised hand.

"You needn't enter if you'd rather not, dearest," Giles told her.

"Nah, moral support and all that. Stand by my man. You know."

Giles suspected that, with those words, she'd been quoting something, as she often did, but the source hardly mattered--he understood, and appreciated, the sentiment, whatever the words she voiced it in.

He turned the doorknob, glancing back over his shoulder to where Moira perched on the edge of a reading table. Her expression--eyes narrowed, face pale and masklike--reminded him of Bast, the Egyptian cat-goddess. By the time Giles opened the door, Simon Quartermass had joined her there, stretching up to whisper something into Em's ear, at which her look grew even graver, were such a thing possible.

Quartermass had brought, along with this apparent bad news, a small Gladstone bag, which he then passed into Moira's waiting hand.

Steeling his resolve, Giles stepped into the viewing room, feeling Buffy move behind him. "If I might--" he began hoarsely, then cleared his throat and tried again. "If I might have a moment, Buffy."

In answer, she patted his back, then propped herself against the doorway, facing back into the Reading Room.

The first thing that struck Giles was the smell: a dry, dusty odour with which he'd become, over the years, more than passingly acquainted. The unmistakable smell of a mummified human corpse. A deep wave of sorrow engulfed him, but Giles was careful to give no outward sign. He slipped soundlessly into the tiny chamber.

For decency's sake, a sheet had been spread over Briggs's mortal remains, a body so small it scarcely mounded the white drape. Gently, Giles drew back a fold.

With painstaking dispassion he noted the condition of the corpse, the body's position, its unusual markings. The skin over Briggs's mouth and nose appeared burned, as if by some caustic substance--except that the shape of the burn itself took the form of an unusually long-fingered hand.

Something like mummification was in fact present, but it had not been performed according to the traditional Egyptian processes with which Giles was most familiar. Rather, the corpse appeared to have lain a long while in some hot, arid place, and to have been scoured dry by sand and wind. A second burn marked the left side of Briggs's chest, over his heart.

The Archivist's eyes, Giles noted, had been taken, and this disturbed him more than any of the other details. He wanted to shut his own eyes, ignore all evidence, and weep--but of course he did none of these things.

"Demon?" Buffy asked him.

"Very likely," Giles answered, taking refuge in an academic dryness, as he had so many times in his life. "There's no way to tell precisely by mere visual observation." He hoped, despite his reticence, that Buffy would understand his true feelings.

My friend, he thought, folding the sheet tenderly over the dead man's face. Oh, Lord. My friend.

"Giles?" Buffy called to him softly.

He straightened, a weight of weariness dragging at his bones. The force of gravity seemed to have trebled since he'd walked through the viewing-room door.

He meant to return to the outer Archive, to compare his impressions with Moira's, but he missed the doorway entirely, walking quite hard into the jamb instead. The ridiculousness of his own action made him laugh, even as his vision blacked out--barring the random starbursts of colour exploding behind his eyes.

Buffy's small hand curled round his arm, her other arm circled his waist, and he found himself seated at the table, holding a glass of water he could not remember requesting as his love rubbed his shoulders gently from behind. Of Moira and Quartermass there remained no sign.

"Hey," Buffy said, leaving off her massage to take the chair beside him, turning herself so that they sat knee to knee. "You done wigging?" she asked.

Giles blinked, his eyes stinging.

Buffy leaned forroward to take his hands in hers. "It's okay if you aren't," she said. "I figure you're entitled."

Giles flashed back a quarter century, to a day not long after the horrid business with Randall, Eyghon, and the haunted house in Whitechapel. He'd still been shaky, he recalled, coming off months of the worst magic he'd ever encountered, near-starvation, and enough alcohol to float a fleet of battleships.

Enough to do that--but not enough to kill the nightmares. Giles wished right then that he had a drink, even though a drink would solve nothing, and rarely made him feel better. Old habits died hard.

On that day in the past, his left hand had been bandaged, protection for the burn whose scar he no longer bore. He'd come to the Archive not to study, but as an escape, a refuge from the endless, carping voices that never seemed to tire of pointing out his failures and his shortcomings. As if those voices didn't fall to the merest murmur compared to the constant stream of abuse sounding inside his own head.

He'd sat at this same table, breathing in the warm, musty, slightly tangy smell of old leather and paper. Just when he'd thought the silence would not be broken, Briggs had shuffled quietly out of some dark burrow within the Archives.

He hadn't seemed surprised to find Giles there. Instead he'd given a vague little smile and shuffled off again, leaving his visitor both amused and bemused--doubly so when the Archivist reappeared moments later with a laden tea-tray. He'd looked, with his bright but short-sighted eyes and spiky hair, like some anthropomorphicized hedgehog, a tiny creature dressed in a remarkably old-fashioned suit of tweeds, such as one might find in a children's story. The sort of story Giles himself might have once read to Clarice, who'd loved animal tales.

Briggs had bustled about with their tea, adding milk, pouring out their two cups, setting a plate of shortbread fingers where Giles might easily reach them. He then sat, circled his own cup with his tiny hands, and began to speak of the panoply of Etruscan demons, meandering at times into the words of that ancient tongue to make his point. At one juncture he'd paused, his bright black eyes glancing first to Giles's untouched cup, then up to his face.

"It's no use brooding, dear boy," the Archivist had told him. "These things happen to the best of us."

And so their friendship had begun. Oddly, in many ways Briggs had reminded him of his Gran, gone from him before he'd ever heard of his destiny: kind, and wise, with never a harsh word to say. A bit like Aunt Violet, she'd been, in that quality.

Giles groaned, and bent forward to put his head in his hands. He felt insufficient to face any of this, and yet he knew that Briggs's doppelganger, from whom Buffy accepted her wish, had most likely caused the Archivist's death. In his muddled state, he couldn't imagine what Clarice might have been doing with a magical object rare enough to tempt a demon--yet he knew his late sister's magpie tendencies. Most likely his father had brought home the stone, as something requiring further research, and Clarice had found it interesting. Perhaps she'd liked the way it felt in her small hand.

He wanted to groan again, but stifled the sound, straightening instead. Buffy moved closer, until she stood between his knees. She caressed his cheek with the back of her hand, her blue eyes brimming with sympathy. "I'm sorry," she murmured. "I'm just so sorry."

Giles circled her waist with his arms, laying his head against her abdomen. So tempting to stay there forever, pressed to the warmth of her--but he could hear the click of heels emerging from the viewing room, and Moira and Quartermass, as usual in the Compound, discussing demons.

"It's impersonating him, I'm afraid. Impersonating Briggs," Giles informed them, parting from his beloved. "Buffy saw it."

Buffy gave him a look, obviously wondering why he'd chosen to conceal the additional knowledge from his once-fellow Watchers.

"Poor Mr. Briggs," Quartermass murmured, after a lengthy and uncomfortable silence. "He was truly the nicest chap."

"Yes." Giles cleared his throat. "Yes, quite."

"The demon obviously needed some human substance," the young Watcher continued. "But what else brought it here?"

"Possibly..." Giles found himself staring into his love's pale face. "Possibly, its power-source. Possibly something else entirely."

I will die before I let it take something from you, Buffy, that you are unwilling to give, he vowed. I swear it on my love for you.

"At any rate," Moira said briskly, "We've the Hellmouth to contend with. Rupert, you said you knew where the book was located?"

Wearily, Giles rose to his feet, entering the stacks in search of the dark and dusty corner in which he'd last remembered happening across the volume in question.

They'd been at it for hours, and when Buffy came back after taking a longer nap than she'd intended, they were still at it, arguing as only Watchers could argue. She wasn't surprised to see that Sebastian had joined them, as well as what looked like a couple of LeFayes, and about half-a-dozen other Compound people.

Buffy stood in the doorway, watching them as they'd once watched her, taking in the men's crumpled suits and the half-empty teacups and open books strewn all over the table. The real Mr. Briggs's body had long since been taken away, she knew, and there hadn't been any sign of the fake one, but it still gave her the shivers to enter the Archives. She kept expecting to see the demon librarian around every corner, smiling his pointy grin, his red eyes glinting.

"Then, are we agreed?" Giles asked, sounding cranky.

"Well, actually--" began the library girl, Angela Tremayne.

"We're agreed," Moira said, shooting the girl a look that made Angela's mouth open wide, then snap shut again. "Shower, change, and afterward report to the chapel for the purification ritual. You've half an hour."

They all got up, none of them talking to the others, though Sebastian touched his dad's arm, giving him a look Buffy couldn't quite decipher. Giles shrugged in return, and headed toward the door, shoulders hunched.

"Giles?" Buffy called to him, as he walked past without even seeing her, his long legs carrying him quickly down the hall. He'd been preoccupied before, but this time seemed to be taking the cake. "Giles!" She ran after him.

"Hmn? Oh, Buffy. Hullo." He paused a minute, lightly touching her arm and giving her a warm but semi-shaky smile. He looked whipped, completely and utterly whipped, as if every last bit of energy had been drained out of him. She'd seen vampire victims look perkier. "Did you have a good rest, love?"

"Yeah. I guess. I worried about you. I am worried about you."

Giles shook his head, took her hand and kept walking. "No need. It will all be over soon enough."

"What will?"

"The obliteration of the London Hellmouth. I'm fairly certain it can be done."

"Fairly certain?" Buffy gave him a look, one Giles pretended not to notice.

"Nothing's entirely certain, of course," he told her in his driest Watcher-voice, the one that always told her he was thoroughly repressing. By that time they'd reached their room, and Giles was unlocking the door, letting them inside. With all that dark wood, it felt like entering a cave, but her honey, at least, didn't seem to mind it.

Giles started stripping the minute he came through the door. Normally Buffy would have stood back and enjoyed the show--but something in the way he just dropped the borrowed clothes to the floor bothered her.

"Hey," she said.

Giles stepped out of his pants, and bent down to take off his socks, nearly losing his balance as he did so. Quickly, Buffy steadied him, alarm flashing through her as he clung to her arms for a minute before standing on his own.

"You're not up for this," she said.

"I'm just a little tired," Giles answered, still sounding cranky. "I've been tired before and carried on. Many times."

"I know." Buffy steered him to the edge of the bed and sat him down. To her surprise, Giles flopped back, putting his hands over his eyes. She knelt down to relieve him of the socks, then stretched out beside him on the bed, gently rubbing his chest as she bent down to kiss his lips. "You taste like tea," she told him.

"I'd imagined tasting rather worse."

"I know you've done lots of stuff for me when you were dead tired, but this seems like more. You seem...I don't know...kinda unsparkly."

Giles moved his hands. "As opposed to my usual sparkle?" He managed to look almost amused.

"That's my guy." Buffy kissed him again, and Giles groaned.

"We've only twenty minutes, Buffy."

"I know," she answered, but she kissed him again, even deeper that time, and slid her knee up between his thighs, making Giles give an even deeper groan. "I assume that what you're about to do is dangerous?"

"What we're about to do," he answered. "It's clear that, as the Slayer, you'll need to accompany us."

"So, we're both risking our lives? That makes me feel better." Slowly, she trailed her hand down his chest, over his stomach, her bare thigh (the black tights had gotten a major run, and she'd ditched them, not bothering with a replacement) rubbing against his. There weren't any more condoms--she'd looked, but she didn't intend to let that stop her. It seemed important to be with him, to love him, an opportunity she wasn't going to let slip away.

Giles's cock had begun to rise against her leg, and Buffy slid over the edge of the bed, his fingers tangling briefly in her hair as he felt her go. She knelt between his knees, parting them a little more with her hands, as he'd parted hers two nights before, rubbing her palms up his thighs. God, he felt tense--as tense as he'd ever been, and that was saying something. His muscles had to ache from being so tight. Obviously this--whatever this involved--wasn't going to be any walk in the park.

Carefully, she cupped Giles's balls in her hand, making him groan again, her other hand gliding rhythmically over his abdomen, over his groin, even as she took the head of him into her mouth, stroking the hot, soft skin with her tongue, tasting the saltiness of him. He'd grown so hard so quickly that she could feel the pulse of the blood in his veins. She sent her tongue exploring down the underside of his shaft, sliding her lips further along him, until he was almost entirely inside her mouth. She felt her own body push against the side of the bed, the heat and moistness building in her until she could hardly stand the tension.

Giles hand caught hers; their fingers interlaced. Her mouth moved over him, deeper and faster, until, suddenly, unexpectedly, his grip tightened, his spine arched, and he exploded into her. It was something she'd heard about, the fluids flooding her mouth, but it felt a little weird, and Buffy wasn't exactly sure she liked it.

Not knowing what else to do, Buffy swallowed. Okay, so it wasn't that bad. Strange, but not that bad. When she raised her head, she saw Giles watching her, a funny expression on his face.

"I--" he said, and started blushing. "Buffy, I'm sorry. I didn't intend... That was unpleasant for you, wasn't it?"

"You liked it." Buffy crawled up beside him, looking into his face for the truth. "You liked it as much as what we usually do."

Giles didn't answer, but touched her instead, rubbing his fingers lightly against her warm center, his smooth skin setting up the most wonderful friction until she came, crying out, pressing down against him. Two of his fingers slipped inside her, and she could feel her muscles gathering powerfully against their pleasurable invasion.

"Did you like that?" Giles asked her in a minute or so, still touching her, his fingers still inside her.

Buffy fought to catch her breath, her body still giving off little aftershocks every time Giles moved his hand.

"It was nice." She touched him again, stroking him gently, feeling him stir a little but not rise. "I got all excited when I was doing...what I did to you." The more she thought about it, it hadn't been that bad. Just unexpected.

"It felt wonderful, Buffy. It feels wonderful, when you do that. Absolutely wonderful--but you needn't again, if you don't like to. You're always free to say no to, or to stop, anything that makes you feel uncomfortable."

"Nice guy." She bent down to kiss him at the base of the throat, right into that little hollow above his collarbones. "Do I seem awfully naive to you? Because sometimes I do to me."

"You seem lovely to me--fresh and unspoiled and loving."

Buffy thought of Angel, and hoped against hope that the thought of her ex-lover never crossed Giles mind when they were making love--that he never thought of Angel's hands touching her first, as his touched her now. It meant a lot to her, to be called unspoiled--because sometimes she felt completely spoiled, as if she went around in a cloud of death and badness and dumb decisions.

Giles's eyes shone up at her; he seemed to have gotten some of himself back. He sat up, taking her in his arms, kissing her shoulder, her neck, her arms, surrounding her with his warmth.

"We'll be late," Buffy told him, as he moved on to her other shoulder.

"Moira can wait a moment," Giles answered.