Helplessness - Ch. 4

Giles could sense Buffy's impatience from the minute she slouched through the doors. She slumped in her chair as he set the crystals on the table, fussing with the long sleeves of her lilac pullover, squirming in her seat with a closed-off look in her eyes, a slight pout on her lips. He knew, with a flash of insight, that she had been with Angel, was feeling frustrated, and that the library at half-past-eight on a Wednesday night was the absolute last place on earth she wished to be.

They had been over this material before, and at one time she'd known it well enough. More Willow's line, or his own, really, but it wouldn't hurt the Slayer to know it as well, and besides being part of a Slayer's specified training, it made the perfect cover for the act he must perform. He himself felt a touch of stage-fright, knowing the number of eyes that must be on him at this moment.

One by one, he dangled the crystals before her. As a girl with a fondness for jewelry, Buffy had little trouble naming most of the stones--it was their vibratory functions she couldn't be bothered to remember. Her attitude, and his own bone-weariness, combined to make him more-than-usually cross with her.

"This one?" he asked, holding out a largish amethyst.

"Amethyst," she identified, sliding lower in her chair as she toyed with a long spike of rock crystal.

"Used for?"

"Breath mints?" Buffy glanced up, hoping, he knew, that he would admit defeat and release her to do whatever it was she actually wished to do.

Giles bit back an exasperated reply, answering with as much patience as he could muster, "Charm bags, money spells, and for cleansing one's aura."

Buffy's eyes sparked, and Giles knew she'd thought of some clever comeback to put him in his place. "Okay, so how do you know if one's aura's dirty? Somebody come by with a finger and write--" She waved the crystal like magic wand. "'Wash me' on it?"

Another time he might well have found that amusing--it was amusing, as Buffy's witticisms usually were. That night, however, between his tiredness and his knowledge of the act, only moments away, that he must perform, Giles's sense of humour seemed to have gone south. He set down the amethyst, removed his glasses and leaned toward her, invading--he must admit--her personal space a little. Looming over her, truth be told, as she often accused him of doing.

He answered her at his stuffiest, the way most guaranteed to annoy, "Buffy, I'm aware of your distaste for studying vibratory stones, but since it is part of your training, I would appreciate your glib-free attention.."

Buffy pouted a bit more, making some excuse about Faith, and wanting to patrol, which perhaps she even meant, concluding with a statement that Rupert knew she did mean, quite intensely: "I hate being the good one."

He didn't know, really, how to respond to that, and so spoke a few more meaningless phrases, returned the glasses to his face and, trying not to be overly hasty in his actions, pushed before her the largest crystal, like a small, transparent mountain of cerulean blue, saying the magic words, "Try to concentrate."

He'd built a minor spell into the stone, focused on a small flaw, near the base of the crystal, that was shaped, oddly enough, like a stake. One look and Buffy fell into a trance, her eyes glazing over, her breath growing slow and almost soundless.

Still without hurry, Giles removed the leather box from his briefcase, the syringe inside it already sanitized and filled. Tenderly, he pushed up Buffy's sleeve to reveal her smooth golden forearm-- softer than silk to his touch, such a contrast to her iron strength--and wiped an alcohol-soaked pad across her skin. The needle slipped in easily, delivering its poison, then out again, leaving not so much as a spot of blood in its wake.

It frightened Giles how easy the entire process had been to complete, despite the fact that, by the time he'd returned the case to its hiding place, his hands were shaking and he felt nearly sick.

He had to pace between the table and his office door a few times, in order to calm his nerves enough that he could face her when she woke, but at last he waved his hand before the stone. The spell broken, Buffy snapped to awareness at once, giving him an odd look.

"Maybe you haven't as much energy as you thought," Giles told her, in response to an earlier comment she'd made. "In fact, you seem a bit tired--maybe better to just call it a night? Go home and rest?"

"Nah, nah." She climbed to her feet. "I think you're the tired one. Didn't sleep well last night?"

"Bit sore." He delivered a half-hearted smile. "Can't think why."

"Poor Giles. And here I was, being snotty to you. I know it's all for my own good." She gave him a light pat on the arm. "It's just kinda..."

"Boring?" He gazed down into her sapphire eyes, wondering if the poison had already begun its work upon her, hoping that it would not hurt. He wanted so badly to trap Buffy's hand in his own, to go down on his knees to her and beg her mercy, to try to explain to her what all of this meant--but he could only touch her shoulder lightly in return, and tell her, "Buffy, if you do go out--which you certainly needn't--do be careful."

Buffy laughed. "See ya later, Caution Man."

Then the doors were swinging shut behind her.

After Buffy had gone, Giles drove himself home, but could not seem to settle. Instead he went walking through Sunnydale's silent streets, wondering if Buffy had heeded him after all, or perhaps even taken his unexpected lenience as an excuse to go "Bronzing" with her friends. Perhaps even now she was curled up in that comfortable corner of the nightclub which her little group had adopted as their own. Normally her willingness to play hooky--a Xander term--irked him, but tonight Giles wished heartily that she had.

Not until he'd gone blocks from his flat did Giles realize he'd left home with neither cross nor stake, a risk he hadn't taken in years. Even Ripper had always carried a cross somewhere on his person. He knew that he ought to turn back, and to hasten home with deliberate speed, but did not--neither did he pause to ponder the state of mind that divorced him from his usual careful ways. Luckily, he supposed, he saw nothing untoward, and arrived home safely at what his watch told him was a quarter past two.

As he had the night before, he performed his incantation in a hot shower, then fell into his bed. Buffy was already dreaming by the time he came to her, not quite so frantically as she had the night before--in fact the scene appeared nearly humourous. She, Willow and Xander, encased in large white aprons and floppy chef's-hats, wielded enormous pushbrooms through a stadium-sized room mounded with dust. So much for his idea of coming to her in another's form, it would only confuse her if another Willow appeared, and Giles could not think how to make the dream-Willow speak for him. Instead, he recited a variation of his earlier spell, pulling Buffy with him into the lucid dream state.

Still wearing her hat and apron and clutching her broom, Buffy stared up at him in surprise, shock even. "Giles?" she said.

"Will you listen to me tonight?"

"You were here last night. I thought so." Her face hardened just a little. "I thought I'd told you to get out. Can't you leave me alone even here?"

He saddened at that. "Do you really want so much for me to stay away? You once asked me never to leave you."

Confusion crossed her face. "But I have so much to do, Giles. Last night I had to rescue Angel, and tonight...we have to clean all this up before Mom gets home."

"Rather a mess, isn't it?"

"Mom's gonna wig." She brightened. "You could help us, though."

"I would be glad to help you, but I need you to listen first. Buffy, it's extremely important."

She removed her hat, gazing up at him without its shadow across her face. "Okay, if you'll help. Fire away."

He drew a deep breath. "I tried to reach you last night, because I need to tell you something. It's a very great secret, and I can't tell you by daytime, because they will hear."

"Who will?" She'd created new scenery around them. Now Giles sat in his desk chair, while Buffy perched, as usual, on his desk. Her apron vanished, leaving her in one of her usual ensembles: brief top, miniskirt, knee boots.

"The Council of Watchers. They're filming us now, whilst we sleep, at the library, and God knows where else."

"Filming...?"

"There's a test, called Cruciamentum, given when--if--a Slayer reaches her eighteenth birthday."

"Crucial momentum?" Buffy's brow furrowed. "And I don't like hearing that 'if.'"

"I know, dearest," Giles said. "But this must be said. As the Slayer nears her birthday, her Watcher is sent a certain...package."

"A birthday present?" Buffy swung her legs like a child. "That's nice. Who knew that they cared?"

"Buffy--" He trapped her eyes with his own. "They don't care. It's not a nice present. It's a drug, which I am required to administer to you. A drug that will take away your strength, at least temporarily. On the night of your birthday you shall be taken to a place, and required to kill a vampire."

"Without my strength?"

He nodded. "Yes, I fear so."

"I can't do that!" Suddenly she was not merely childlike in her actions, but an actual child, a lovely little girl of no more than five. "He'll hurt me. Don't let him hurt me, Giles!"

The child squirmed down from the desktop, directly into his arms. He could feel the strength of her, her small hands biting into his skin. "You won't give me any bad stuff. You won't take me to a scary place. You won't!" Her face pressed very close to his, her lips meeting his in a woman's kiss.

Deeply disturbed, Giles flung her away from him. "Buffy, grow up and listen to me. You're not a child, and you mustn't act in such a way." Breathing hard, sickened, he turned away. "I have given you the drug. I will lead you to that place. There's no other choice for me." He could not bear to look at her. "I administered the first injection tonight. If I refuse to give the others, if I speak a word of this to you in our waking life, or if I fail in my orders to lead you to the proper place, I will be sacked. I will be sent away. Do you understand this?"

Buffy's bare arms reached in around his waist--her true arms, no longer a child's. "My Giles. I know you won't hurt me, no matter what they say to you." Her hand, adorned with silver rings, its nails varnished blue, began to rub him gently through his trousers, the pleasure so intense and lovely and horrible that he wanted to weep. He'd wanted her, it was true, in his most secret dreams, but never in any way but with honesty and true, deep, mutual, affection. Eyghon had been right in one thing--even counting his Ripper years, he loved like a woman, with sometimes-unreasoning loyalty and a depth of affection that could cause him worlds of pain. Not for him, Xander's Mantis Women or Incan Mummy Girls, or this dream-Buffy touching him as, in recent months, he'd longed to be touched. He wanted her to love him, not to seduce him into a promise of protection he could not, in any case, give.

Catching hold of her hand, he turned again, holding her fast.

"You're hurting me," Buffy said softly.

He could feel his eyes burning, becoming the cold ice-green of Ripper at his worst. Slowly Buffy backed away from him.

"And you're scaring me," she added.

"Have you listened at all?" Giles shouted. "It has been. It will be. I can't stop any of it. I can't protect you in this, even if I would give my life to do so. Don't touch me in a way that means nothing to you."

"Giles--"

"I know you love Angel. I know this." He was trembling, hot tears running down his face. "I don't want you in that empty way. I don't want you in any way except with the gift of your whole heart. I love you, Buffy. I have loved you. First before I ever met you, as my destiny, then as my charge, then as my friend. And now, God help this pathetic old man, I love you with my soul."

Buffy watched him shake, an odd distant look on her face. "Well, that's certainly a wake-up call."

"It means nothing." Giles wiped his eyes on his sleeve. "No reason that it should--only do remember what I've said."

Her silky brows drew together. She smiled a little. "Which part?"