Tribulations - Ch. 21

Joyce stopped the car suddenly, on the outskirts of Weatherly Park, stumbling out of the driver's seat and into the shadows in a way that Giles knew he should have found alarming. He ought to have gone to her, made sure she was all right, but he could not so much as lift his head. His thoughts chased their own tails, How am I to tell Buffy? How AM I to tell Buffy? How am I to TELL Buffy? Round and round and round they circled, until he felt even dizzier than he'd been before.

At last, however, Giles could not ignore Joyce's absence. He rose, groaning, somehow making the effort to unfold his body from the Citroen's rather cramped interior.

He wasn't sure whether he was relieved or aggravated to find Buffy's mum quite all right. She sat on the edge of the roundabout, swinging the playground toy idly, her long, fine fingers gripped tight to the metal bars. Joyce glanced up at his approach, a faint flush of embarrassment suffusing her cheeks. "Rupert, I--I'm sorry. I hoped you'd sleep for a few minutes. I needed to--well, I wasn't feeling very well, and I guess..."

"You needed the air," Giles said gently, not finding it within himself to chastise her.

"Which was selfish, I know." Joyce's fingers knotted together in her lap. "Rupert, I don't know how to tell her. That her father--"

Giles lowered himself gingerly to sit beside her on the platform. "It was my act. My deed. Let me tell her, Joyce. If she's angry with anyone, she can be angry with me, and then you shall still be there to comfort her."

Joyce's eyes turned to him, brimming. "Don't you ever get tired, Rupert?" she asked gently. "You're always so strong. You always do the right thing."

"No," Giles meant to shake his head, but the gesture hurt too much. He leaned his temple against the cold steel rail. "Joyce, in my lifetime, I have committed so many wrongs it's likely I shall never atone for them. The two of you...you and Buffy have the right to comfort one another." He groped for Joyce's hand, wishing his own would not tremble so as he closed his fingers warmly round hers. "Will...will you be able to bear it, Joyce?"

She drew in a ragged breath. "I--" Her head tipped back, and she gazed up at the stars. "He came to me tonight, and I saw the man I loved, the man I married. He knew everything I wanted to hear, everything I wanted to feel. He touched me. Rupert, he k-k-kissed, he kissed me--" Her voice rose, until the rawness hurt Giles's own throat.

"He kissed me and he was a GODDAMN monster all along, and I let him, and I have been so FUCKING lonely for so long now that I felt his coldness and I didn't, I didn't even care." Joyce slipped down from the platform, her face pressed against the earth, her fingers clawing into the tattered grass. "I didn't care," she breathed, in a low, ravaged voice.

After a time, she raised her head, leaning it against his knee, and Giles stroked her soft hair, his heart swelling with pity for her, unsure of how to help her, what words to say. What words could be said, really?

"You know how it is, don't you?" Joyce asked him at last.

"I suppose I do," Giles answered, putting out an arm to provide at least some support as Joyce climbed to her feet. She ran a hand over her face, smearing dirt, but making, nonetheless, a brave attempt to smile at him.

"God! I'm pathetic. And you're too patient." She reached down to help him in return, and it frightened Giles how much he needed to lean upon her. "You look like your next stop should be the emergency room, Rupert."

"I'm all right," he told her tightly. "Must get home to Buffy."

"You'll see your doctor tomorrow though, right?"

"It's not bad," he answered, evading the subject. They drove the rest of the way to his flat in silence, Joyce stealing glances at him, which Giles pretended to ignore. He negotiated the stairs, Joyce hovering all the while at his elbow, small, concerned noises escaping her, now and then, which he also pretended not to notice.

The door stood wide, although Giles knew he'd left it not only shut, but securely locked. Had Buffy heard some noise, and in her confusion forgotten to close it when she rose to investigate? Had it been left gaping by careless Xander, for some reason returned to camp on his sofa and empty his cupboards of food? Or had some evil thing entered and remained within, flaunting its presence by the token of the open door?

Giles pressed a finger to his lips and motioned Joyce toward a corner, soundlessly securing her a cross, stake and holy water from the weapons chest, so that she might guard herself whilst he investigated.

Arming himself similarly, with the added protection of the crossbow from the lower kitchen cabinet, Giles climbed the stairs to the loft where his love lay sleeping, adrenaline providing him with a temporary surge of energy.

He stopped exactly where he'd stopped that other time, seeing Buffy's face turned toward him, her head tilted at just that same angle. For a moment his heart froze in his chest. A vision of Jenny overlay Buffy's still form, the image of Jenny's dark eyes, regarding him without sight.

Giles's weapons slipped from his hands, much as the wine and the glasses had slipped that other night, the night that would perhaps always linger in his darkest nightmares. A white-hot anguish built itself within him until nothing existed but the grief and the rage, no sense, no reason, only the fury that consumed his soul in an instant. He didn't see that Buffy's eyes were closed, that her chest rose and fell regularly--he only launched himself at the shadowy man who stood over her, the force of his leap and his own weight driving them backward, over the loft rail, into the open air.

They landed hard, shattering furniture in their descent, rolling until they fetched up against the stools beneath the pass-through. Giles no longer felt the physical aches of his body, only the viciousness of his own anger, his fists pounding into the intruder's face until at last, with a pained grunt, the man who was not truly a man pushed Giles away again.

"Angel?" came Joyce's tremulous voice. "Angel, you were supposed to have left town. What are you doing here?"

Giles lurched to his feet, his heart labouring. His vision doubled and trebled, narrowing at last to a pinpoint--but he would not let himself slip away. Ruthlessly, he forced himself back to awareness, straightening to loom over the man--the monster--who still sat on his floor, eyes wide, a look of amazement on his handsome, inhuman face.

Giles's own eyes felt like orbs of ice, and he knew they'd gone Ripper-green. He felt closer to Ripper, indeed--not the demon, but the Ripper that arose from the hottest flames of his own uncontrollable anger--than he had in years.

He wanted to kill Angel, once and for all--not because he truly believed the vampire to be a threat at that moment, but for vengeance, plain and simple, a just repayment for all his loss, his grief and the never-ending contempt that the vampire had shown toward him.

"How dare you," he said, in a soft, dangerous voice. "How dare you set foot in that room again? I am only too aware that a demon inhabits your body, but have you no respect, no sense of decency?"

"I--" Angel climbed to his feet, his eyes still wide, his voice flat, yet curiously boyish. "Geez, Rupert--"

Giles straightened, staring him down. "This is my home," he continued, in the same quiet voice. "That is my bedroom. You entered there one night, Angel, and the...ah...gifts you left behind nearly destroyed me. Now you claim to have a soul, and yet you still feel free to enter there, without my consent, without even the courtesy of asking my leave. You let me think--" He wasn't breathing right, and Angel reached out a hand to steady him, but Giles struck it away. "You stood there, and you touched her, and for one moment let me imagine--"

He drew in a deep sob of air, concluding flatly, "No matter what you tell yourself, Angel, you are a monster."

"I came to warn you," Angel told him, with something in his tone of affronted innocence.

Giles felt his own bruised lips curve to a sardonic smile. "To warn me, Angel? Of what, pray tell?"

"One of my friends...well, one of my contacts, anyway, saw Buffy's father in Los Angeles."

In her corner, Joyce gave a small, sobbing laugh.

"Rupert, my source says he may have been turned. That he might be on his way here."

Giles laughed outright. "Oddly, Angel, your information, accurate thought it was, comes a little late."

Angel seemed to notice, for the first time, Joyce's shadowed face, the blood on her throat, and Giles's own battered appearance. His mouth closed to a straight, hard line.

"Yes," Giles told him, "You see how it is."

"Did Buffy have to...?"

"No." Giles walked with measured steps into the kitchen, fetched two glasses down from the cupboard and offered Joyce one. She nodded, still trembling. "No, I should never have asked that of her."

"You've asked everything else of her, taken her hopes, her dreams--her childhood."

"And yet he continues to speak." Giles splashed scotch in the direction of the glasses, spilling badly, the excess flowing across the counter's surface to dribble onto the floor unheeded. Joyce crossed to him, taking the drink he offered, while he gulped from the other, the neat alcohol burning his torn mouth so badly he pressed his fingers to his lips in sudden mute agony. Joyce touched his shoulder. They traded a glance.

"I'm going upstairs to Buffy," she said softly.

"I was forced," Giles said softly, the fury leaving him, to be replaced by something he could not at that moment identify. "I was forced to stake both my parents. My father when I was a boy of ten, my mother less than two weeks ago." He glanced at Angel's eyes, hoping to see some sign of comprehension. "Yes, there are things--terrible things, sometimes--that I have asked of Buffy, but not that. Never that. I love her, you see, more than my heart or my life or my soul. I loved her before I ever knew her, and I love her a thousand times beyond that now. I have, Angel, a man's love for her, and that you cannot possibly understand."

Giles glanced down, turning the glass on the counter, watching light flicker through the amber depths of the scotch. "Even if I should explain it to you, Angel, you haven't it in you to understand." He looked up again, meeting the vampire's gaze, reading his look of stony confusion.

"You think it was a boy's love I felt for her, Rupert? Then, let me tell you--"

"No." Giles held up a hand. "Be quiet, Angel."

The vampire stood still. Yellow roiled in the depths of his brown eyes, and Giles wondered if Angel was even aware of it, the way he responded, instinctively, to the smell of blood, the sight of the open wounds that marked Giles's skin, his own anger.

"You have read, and studied, and you think you know what you are, Angel--but you can never know. As long as you live, the demon will tell you hopeful lies. That you can be free. That someday, if you banish your impulse to feed, if you right enough wrongs, do enough good deeds, that you can become a man again--but you can never be a man."

"You tell me then," Angel said in his own, equally dangerous tones. "Enlighten me, Watcher. What am I?"

"You're a corpse," Giles said flatly. "A corpse, Angel. Don't you know that? Feel my hand." Giles reached out across the pass-through, curling his fingers around the vampire's cold ones. "It's warm, isn't it? You can feel the warmth, but you can never achieve it. Every time you touched Buffy, every time you kissed her, you stole away a bit of her own fire, but even that left you with nothing lasting. You died nearly 245 years ago, and your body was buried in the ground, to rise again animated only by a demon. Do you understand me?"

Angel shook his head in denial.

"You are a corpse, kept in motion by a demon, with a thin layer of soul laid over the top. And the demon hates the soul, doesn't it? It wants dreadfully to be free, and whenever you are weakest, it's down there whispering, 'It's quite all right to love her, it's all right to let her hide you, it's all right for her to lie. She does it for love, after all, and love is a noble cause.' But is it right, Angel? Is it true? Most of all, was it ever fair to Buffy?"

Angel shook his head again, more vehemently than before, his fingertips clawing at edge of the counter, scarring linoleum and wood.

"You said you came here to warn her, that you'd heard rumours. Why did you really come, Angel? Truthfully?"

"I'd heard...Because I'd heard..."

"That she was with me," Giles finished calmly. "You wanted to see for yourself, and you wanted to dissuade her. She's meant to love only you, isn't she, until the day she dies?"

"You..." Angel began.

"I'm just that stupid old man, that foolish tweedy Watcher." Giles was amazed by the venom in his own voice, and by how good it felt to say the words, as if he'd relieved the pressure, finally, on some terrible, infected wound. "The one who couldn't even kill you when you he had the chance, who couldn't manage to stand up to you."

"You..." Angel began again. "You did stand up to me. I hated you."

"You still hate me, don't you?" Giles asked, frankly curious.

Angel looked at him for a long while, and then slowly nodded. "You were in the way. You were always in the way. Whatever it was--there you were. I owe you..."

Giles gazed at him again: that smooth, strong-featured face, those brooding eyes, the mouth that smiled so much more frequently when the other was in control--that unforgettable, tipped-up smile of cruelty. He glanced down to the hands now resting on the bar, hands that had broken his fingers, wrenched out his shoulder, touched and hurt, slashed and burned and bruised him. He could still feel the touch of them on his own hands, on his back, on his legs--as if only a moment had passed between that time and this. He began to feel sick as the burden of emotion overwhelmed him.

"I owe you for Buffy's life," Angel said. "And I owe you an apology."

"You owe it me," Giles repeated, "But that's a debt you will never repay--will you, Angel?"

"No," the vampire answered, shortly. "I don't have it in me."

Giles shut his eyes. "I didn't think so," he answered. "Or perhaps I might have heard the words from you long ago."

"You don't deserve her," Angel said, "And the thought of you with her makes me want to kill you."

"Then," Giles answered, opening his eyes again, favouring Angel with Ripper's coldest look. "Then, sir, that is one area in which I believe you and I are entirely agreed. But in partial recompense for that debt, which you've assured me you have no intention of repaying, give me this: stay away from her. She doesn't need you."

"And she does need you?" Angel asked, the slightest tinge of contempt underlying the flatness of his tone.

Giles returned to him a smile that was warm, genuine, complete. "Why, yes, Angel, I'm assured that she does." The truth of that statement spread through him, a warmth in his chest, and in his stomach. "I believe in my heart that Buffy does need me."

Angel had the grace to look ashamed. He head went down, and he seemed at a loss for further words--all the more so as Buffy's faint tread sounded on the stairs, then on the carpet, until she'd made her slightly unsteady way into the kitchen.

"Mom told me," she whispered. Giles turned toward her, thoughts of Angel no longer occupying his mind. She reached up to touch his cheek, then ran her small hand over his shoulder, along his chest, down his stomach, wincing with him as he could not help but respond to the pain. "Oh, Giles."

"I'm so sorry, love," he told her, his voice hoarse with emotion. "So very, very sorry."

"You could have been killed, you dumb man," she said, the love achingly evident in her own voice. "You could have been killed, and there you are all hurt and being brave, and when will you ever stop it?"

He folded her into his arms, the warmth of her going through him. He would have fallen, without the support of her arms, but it wasn't that need that made him hold her close, and closer. It was the truth of her, the wonder of her--that she was his, just as he was hers.

The room ceased to exist around them. Angel ceased to exist, along with all his earlier fears and angers. Only Buffy mattered, that perfect circle of their love, the one completing the other.

Neither noticed when footsteps crossed the floor, or when the door opened, then closed again behind the one departing, a sound that echoed through the room with hard finality.