Tribulations - Chapter 31

Somehow, what had been a perfectly good dream about sunbathing on a beautiful golden beach got turned into another, much more annoying one. Instead of soaking up the rays or lying on warm sand, Buffy suddenly found herself having to slay a three-ton demon woodpecker before it could tap its way in through Giles's door. Even in her sleep, the dream's subject matter struck Buffy as dumb, so dumb she made herself come swimming up through all the lovely deep layers of drowsiness to something almost like being awake. Which meant an end to her dreams, pleasant or otherwise, but did nothing whatsoever to stop the pounding downstairs.

Buffy groaned and pulled the covers over her head. The noise kept on, until she could have sworn she felt the walls shiver. She groaned again. Couldn't she ever, just once, be allowed to lie all nice and comfy in bed without something coming along to mess it up?

"Go 'way," Buffy finally managed to mutter, and rolled over in the big bed. Our big bed, she reminded herself again, for what felt like the hundredth time, and a little of the comfort and warmth she'd felt before returned to her, until she couldn't help but smile. Whoever had decided to come banging on the door at the ungodly hour of...

Buffy raised her head, resting her chin on Giles's shoulder as she peered across his back at the nightstand lock. Oops, okay, the ungodly hour of eleven A.M., but still--the pounding could stop any time. She got the point.

Without moving a muscle, Giles muttered something that sounded like, "Whaizzit?"

"Nothing," Buffy told him. "Go back to sleep." She couldn't help but snuggle closer for a second, pressing her cheek to his warm back. Maybe Xander would get the door. Or Willow. Getting doors when everyone else was too lazy to rise and shine was exactly the kind of useful thing Willow would do. Besides which, what was the point of having people crash at your place if they refused to do a simple little something like getting rid of an annoying mid-morning caller?

"Mmph," Giles grunted. He slid away from her, all the way past the edge of the mattress and into an almost standing position. The sight of him made Buffy wake up the rest of the way--he looked grumpy, unshaven, half-asleep, like a bear disturbed from what had been a really nice hibernation. He looked battered, too, and her heart went out to him. She pushed herself up, holding the sheet to her bare chest.

"It's okay," she said. "Come back to bed. I'll get the door."

Giles's eyes didn't quite open all the way, but his mouth quirked into a familiar half-grin. "I rather love you, Buffy. D'you know that?"

"It's just a door," Buffy answered, but her voice was a little breathless, and she knew that Giles could read in it her meaning of, I love you too. She scrambled out of the covers, brushing past him to grab her robe from its hook on the back of the closet door. She slipped the garment over her shoulders, but didn't bother to belt it, reaching up instead to lift Giles's wine-colored robe off its own hook. The weight and softness of the heavy silk in her hands reminded her of their first time, here in this same room, all that passion and insecurity, transformed now into something strong, steady, comfortable--something she could depend on, unless...

Unless little demon rodent guy came back and took it all away from her. Great. Now that was a cheery thought to start the day with.

"Whatever you've thought of, Buffy, stop," Giles told her kindly. Buffy gave a little guilty smile. He read her so well. "We'll be quite all right." He took the robe from her hands, sliding it around his body a little gingerly. With all those vampire-fighting bruises, he still had to be pretty damn sore.

"As you say," he told her quietly, "It's only a door. And our visitors, by this time, seem rather impatient."

Which was true enough. By the sound of things, their visitors would be leaving any a second to go find the nearest battering ram--and this being Sunnydale, chances were they wouldn't have to go all that far. At any rate, Buffy was pretty sure whoever'd woken them up had no intention of just going away and leaving them in peace.

Giles started down the stairs, and Buffy followed him so closely than once or twice she nearly stepped on hem of his robe. By the time they got to the bottom she could hear a voice shouting--or at least making that strained whispering sound that seemed to be the British equivalent of a good, loud yell.

"Seb!" Giles murmured, and Buffy felt her heart do a little sidestep of relief. Things would be okay. The cavalry had arrived--and with Celeste there'd be a good chance of a really decent brunch. Not to be shallow, but she suddenly felt absolutely starving.

Giles flung open the door, then just stood there. For a minute Buffy thought that he and Seb were going to do the manly restrained handshake thing--but then he reached out his arms toward his son, folding Sebastian into a tight embrace, and Buffy found herself crying again as she hugged Celeste, breathing in the light, comforting scent of the older woman's perfume, loving the feel of those strong arms around her shoulders.

"I'm so glad," she couldn't stop herself from saying. "I'm so glad, I'm so glad."

"As are we," Celeste murmured in her ear, and Buffy knew that was true, it wasn't just something her friend said to be polite.

"I've my voice back!" Sebastian said happily as they broke apart, all managing somehow to shuffle back inside the apartment. "It returned to me the moment I touched dad's door."

"Perhaps I ought to fetch needle and thread and sew it on to you, in the manner of Peter Pan's shadow." Celeste touched her husband's wavy hair affectionately. "I must say, Bastian, I've quite missed your voice, during its absence."

Sebastian smiled, but he had kind of a shadowy look to him--probably about the same look they all had, Buffy guessed. Nothing like a big ol' spell hanging over your heads to ruin a family reunion.

"Has..." Seb cleared his throat. "Has anything been heard of Moi...of mum?"

Celeste's hand slipped down to his arm, her long fingers circling his bicep. Giles gave his son a look of weariness and concern.

"No, I'm sorry to say," he answered at last, running a hand back through his hair the way he always did when he was worried or frustrated. "There's been no word at all."

"No..." Seb's voice trailed away, but Buffy could guess what he wanted to ask. "No weird magic? No mass killings?"

"Nothing," Giles told him firmly. "Now, let's come properly inside and shut the door behind us, shall we?"

I wish, Buffy thought, That all doors were that easy to shut. She could have used a nice disinviting spell for bad luck too, while they were at it.

They were hurting her, hurting her, as Grandmother once had done when Moira was much younger, and had performed her lessons poorly.

One mustn't cry out, she reminded herself.

One must never cry out. Pain was only increased by one's weakness, and the goddesses knew that Grandmother would try, try and try to winkle out that weakness. Best to put on a calm front, to keep one's mind on other things.

Moira's weaknesses were not physical, and never had been. Her vulnerabilities came from deeper, far, far off in a place that Grandmother with all her magic, all her LeFaye wiles and unbendable will, had never been able to touch. Many of the old stories told that enchantresses kept their hearts in separate places from their bodies. In secret, hidden places, for they knew hearts were both their vulnerability and their strength.

"The seat of life," someone had once called the heart, in a book she'd read long before, and now, as always, that seemed only too true. Moira lay motionless on the unyielding bed, in what she now felt certain must be a hospital, and felt her own far-too-vulnerable heart beat against the painful cage of her ribs. On the whole, it hurt more than any other part of her.

By all that was holy, though, she'd done it this time. Done it all on her own, no less, Moira reminded herself. Spike, or William the Bloody, or whatever he liked to call himself, hadn't needed to lay a hand on her. Crazed, panicked, she'd run like a madwoman from the only man she'd ever truly loved, flung herself over a rail onto some poor hapless innocent's automobile, and caused herself more physical damage than any previous foe ever thought to visit upon her. That being the case, she deserved every bit of this suffering.

"You bloody, bloody, bloody fool," Moira tried to tell herself, but the words came out as more of an anguished, gurgling moan. She'd something stuck down her throat, something round and hard and invulnerable, preventing her speech, preventing her from breathing properly. In a flash, she knew what it was--a breathing tube--and that one mustn't fight against it, no matter how much one wished to do so. She squeezed her eyes shut, tears leaking beneath her lids as she fought her own instincts.

They would come, soon enough now. The doctors and the nurses would come, once they saw she was awake, and take it out for her. One had only to wait.

Surely enough, in a little while a cool hand rested gently on her shoulder. "Back with us at last, are we?" a soft voice asked her. Moira found the British intonation comforting: she'd expected to hear an American voice, louder, somehow more demanding, but this soothed her. She relaxed under the pain, and waited.

"Breathe out," the voice told her. "Breathe out slowly--the discomfort will last only a moment."

Moira breathed as best she could, and just as she'd expected, the offending tube came slithering out from deep in her throat. She gasped and choked once it was gone, but the comforting hand remained pressed to her shoulder, so cool that it surely must be gloved.

Of course it was gloved. They all must be, for safely, and so as not to be insanitary. Unsanitary, the Americans would say.

"Are you quite ready, my dear?" the voice asked her. Gentle fingers loosed the medical tape applied to her eyes, allowing her lids to rise, though Moira's vision remained blurred. Above her hovered a face with dark hair, fair skin, eyes--as her own gradually clearing eyesight allowed her to discover--eyes of clear, deep blue.

She knew the face, of course, and for a moment her heart made a sideways, painful leap in her chest. It had all been a dream, a terrible, unforgettable dream, but a dream nonetheless. Here he stood beside her, so gently, so comfortingly...

The coldness of his touch returned to her, and Moira's eyes blurred again with rare tears. "I ought to have known," she told him, in a raw, ragged voice she scarcely recognized as her own. "I ought to have known you would come to torment me."

Torment it was, gazing at him, her Wesley, the only one to ever discover the secret, tender places inside her. He looked so much like himself: so young, so handsome in that slightly priggish, utterly British was she found irresistible, his shirt crisp, his suit quietly well-tailored. So much her Wesley. So completely her Wesley. Yet her LeFaye sight showed her just as clearly the other within him, the demon lurking just below the surface, only thinly concealed.

Still, Moira could not help but reach out, could not prevent herself from raising one aching arm, letting her torn fingertips brush the smoothness of his cheek. "I wish..." she began, feeling the hollow grow within her until it seemed there could be no heart left, no insides whatsoever, only the great, aching emptiness. "I wish that things might be as they once were." Better for him to be distant from her, to never have loved her, than to come to this.

The demon that was not her Wesley smiled, without sweetness. "How do you know, Emmy dear, that I don't prefer things as they are?"

"Because you were a good man." Moira fell back against her pillow, not caring, really, what he did to her. Hoping, in a way, that he would take her blood and be done with it. She wanted no more of this.

"Poor Moira," said the soft, crisp, familiar voice. "I thought there'd be more of a struggle. Counted on it, really." The bed dipped and swayed a little as he sat beside her. "It isn't like you to deny me my pleasure."

Moira looked up at him wearily. "Do what you mean to do, or leave me. I hate you."

His cool fingers brushed her cheek, her brow, and God help her, Moira found the touch comforting.

"Ah," Wesley said, "That's the trouble, really, isn't it, love? You can't hate me. You never will."

His cold lips brushed hers, and Moira prepared herself, once and for all, to die.

Willow had felt weird ever since she'd woken up. Spaced-out, riding-too-long-in-the-car, taken-too-many-cold-pills-weird. It had taken her a long time to catch up with why she'd been sleeping on Giles's couch, why there were books spread out all around her, why Xander should be snoring on the floor beside her with one of the biggest books for a pillow. Eventually her brain caught up with a brief history of recent events, but the feeling of uber-weirdness still didn't go away; even after she'd slid off the couch, taken a shower and gotten dressed again in the least Buffy-like of Buffy's clothes, the only ones she felt halfway comfortable wearing.

Maybe breakfast would have helped, but she didn't want breakfast. Instead, she found herself outside the back door, gazing down the twisty flight of steps that led to the little pseudo-Spanish courtyard in back of Giles's building, then in the courtyard itself, then on the sidewalk.

"Weirdness," she whispered to herself, but by then she found herself walking down the dark sidewalk, past all the unlighted houses of Revello Drive, wondering what the heck she was doing. Dawn wouldn't come for at least an hour yet, but here she was outside, no one knowing where she was, with no protection--well, okay, with only a little protection, since she realized she had her purse hanging from one shoulder, and inside it would be the usual Scooby Gang preparedness kit of cross, holy water and stake. Like those would do her any good if a bunch of hostile vamps decided to jump out of the bushes at her.

Still, she didn't turn back, even though that would have been the easiest thing in the world. The weirdness had another level--she didn't exactly feel like little Willow Rosenberg. She felt mysterious, that was it, and powerful, and she could hear voices in her head, speaking very, very quietly. Her mom, Sheila, would have taken that for a very bad sign, and probably booked her for a nice long vacation with the men in white coats. She wasn't crazy, though. She wasn't. It was only that something called to her, and maybe she could have resisted it, but she didn't want to.

Besides which, Sheila of the Travelin' Rosenbergs wasn't there to comment one way or the other, and except for her brief fling with witch burning, never had been. Willow's dad, Ira, might have had a thing or two to say, and he probably would have taken the time to listen to her, but he wasn't exactly there either. Willow wasn't sure why she hadn't tried to say anything to Xander, Buffy or Giles, but she hadn't, and that was that.

The doors of the hospital emergency room whispered open so quietly the sound was like something in a dream. Willow knew it wasn't the emergency room she wanted, that was just the quickest way to go where she was going. Sure enough, her instincts led her through emergency and on to the bank of elevators in the exact center of the hospital. Her finger pushed the "up" button and in a little while a silver door was sliding open in front of her. Willow got on, pressed the button for the seventh floor, and leaned on the elevator wall. The weirdness made her feel off-balance, but the solidity of metal and Formica against her back helped with that.

Willow shut her eyes, wondering where in hell she was going, and what she'd do when she got there--for all she knew, she'd be feeling pretty stupid in about five seconds.

"Willow?"

Willow's eyes jerked open. The last person she'd expected to see in front of her was Buffy's mom, but there Joyce was, with a taller red-headed woman beside her.

Joyce's face creased into little lines of concern. "Willow, honey, what's wrong?"

Willow swallowed, at a loss for words, suddenly feeling dumber than dumb. "I...um...I..."

Joyce touched her forehead with the back of one smooth hand, and Willow smelled the faintly almondy scent of her hand lotion. "Are you sick? You don't feel like you have a fever."

Willow swallowed again. "No...umn...I'm fine. I just..."

The doors whooshed open. Seventh floor.

"I just came up here to see someone," Willow said in a rush. Even to her that sounded like a lie, though she didn't really know whether it was or not. For all she knew, she HAD come to see someone.

"Isn't this the floor your bridge-lady's on, Joyce?" asked the taller woman. She had a Southern accent and an open, friendly face. "I'm Melissa, by the way." She smiled down on Willow, and stuck out her hand. Her grip was nice and firm, no wimpiness about it.

Joyce glanced from one to the other of them without losing her look of mom-worry. "My bridge lady?" she echoed, for a minute sounding completely confused, then a lightbulb-going-on expression came over her face. "Oh, yes. Yes, Melissa, it is." Her mouth and eyes got sad then, and it came to Willow that Joyce had even less of a poker face than she did.

"Bridge-lady?" Willow asked her.

"The poor woman who fell onto my car," Joyce explained. "She is on this floor. Oh, and Melissa, this is my daughter Buffy's best friend, Willow Rosenberg."

Willow tried to smile back, but she was beginning to get a sense of urgency. Without even being commanded, her fingers twisted the clasp of her purse, slipping inside to touch the comforting shapes of the cross, the bottle of holy water, the stake. They seemed warm to her, and the sense of importance grew. "I'd like..." she began. "But I have..." She realized that she'd taken out the cross and was hugging it to her chest--as if that would pass for anything like normal behavior.

Melissa gave Joyce a quick glance before asking, in a quiet, serious voice, "Willow, is there something bad up here?"

Without a word, Willow passed the cross to Joyce and the bottle to Melissa. She kept the stake for herself, gripping its smooth wood tightly inside the cover of her purse. "Yes," she said at last, her voice sounding small and helpless to her own ears. "There's something bad. Something very, very bad."