Transitions - Ch. 2

Buffy could tell almost the moment Moira's spell wore off. One minute she'd been lying cuddled up with Giles in that warm, drowsy state halfway between sleep and waking, vaguely aware that the candles had burned down and the power come back on again. The next she felt his whole body stiffen and pull away. His breathing had been slow and even, but now it started into hard little jerks that scared the hell out of her.

Usually when Giles got hurt he'd make some dry little joke about needing an icepack and go on with whatever he was doing. Even back in November, when every one of them got that horrible stomach flu, and the rest of the Scooby Gang had spent days at home, in bed, groaning and complaining, the most she'd ever gotten out of Giles was an, "Excuse me, I'll return shortly. He hadn't missed a day of work, and he'd still stayed late every night at the library, researching.

Buffy came awake immediately, and reached to touch his shoulder, but Giles flinched away from her hand. This scared her worse.

"Really bad, huh?" Buffy tried to sound sympathetic, not panicked.

"No," he said into the pillow. "I'm all right."

"Liar," she told him. "You want me to see if I can find you an aspirin or something?"

Giles didn't answer, so she went in search--her own bathroom held a bottle of Tylenol that had expired in 1997, and another bottle of Midol. Buffy went to check her mom's medicine cabinet. Bingo. A nice package of Motrin, not even opened, right there on the shelf next to her mother's birth control pills.

Her mother's what? Buffy did a doubletake. Whoa, mom really was enjoying a little romance, apparently.

Which reminded her--she needed to make an appointment of her own, soonest, so that she could do away with the green rubbers that disconcerted Giles so badly.

Buffy smiled a little. Disconcerted? It was starting already--she'd started to think in Gilesspeak. Or what had been Gilesspeak.

Another thing to think about--how much of Giles's brain really had gotten fried by the bad, scary magic he'd called on to save her from the vampire army?

God, Buffy thought. That was only like--what?--eight hours back? That the time since had been so short seemed impossible. It seemed like months ago. Graduation seemed like years.

Buffy hurried downstairs for a bottle of water, pausing just for a second to throw Giles's clothes from the washer into the dryer, then back up again. She twisted the cap off the pill bottle as she went and shook four of the tablets into her hand. Giles hadn't moved during the time she'd been gone, except to burrow his head down deeper beneath the pillows--so deep she wondered how he could breathe. Even from across the room she could see the horrible bone-deep bruises around and between the scars on his back. The sight made her feel a little sick.

"Sweetie," Buffy said, trying not to let her voice sound shaky, "I found you some Motrin. I know its not the real thing, but it might take the edge off."

He didn't answer. She tried again. "Giles." Still no answer.

His good hand was clutched on to her pillow, so hard that the knuckles--which were also bruised, and gashed, and skinned--looked whiter than the white pillowsham. How many vampires had he taken on for her, with his fists and his sword? It had looked like hundreds. She knew that he'd fought for hours, riding his own weird magic and the wave of Moira's spells. No wonder he was like this--the spells hadn't kept him from getting hurt, they just kept the injuries from showing much until the witchy stuff wore off. She suspected that if she folded back the covers, she'd see blood on her sheets, and she knew that she probably should look, but couldn't stand to.

She wondered why, earlier, the damage she herself had done to him had shown up worse than anything else?

"Rupert?" she whispered, suddenly so afraid she couldn't stand it. What if he was dying? What if she hadn't saved him after all? What if she'd hurt him even worse, making love to him during the storm? "Rupert, please," she breathed.

"Can't," he told her finally, in a low, tight, agonized voice.

Okay, he could still talk a little. Maybe he wouldn't die right away. God, she hated to see him suffer, and hated even more that she couldn't do a thing to help.

"I...um...if you wanted I could go get your real pills from your place," Buffy offered.

That got her another single word. "Couldn't."

"You couldn't take them?" Buffy sat down on the edge of the mattress, then sprang up again when Giles made a sound like a horrible, gasping hiss.

"I want to help you," she said plaintively.

"Please..." Giles stopped. Obviously he'd caught himself just short of telling her to go away, please, and leave him the hell alone.

"Do you...umn...want to be on your own for a little bit?"

"Please," he repeated, in an even lower voice. "Sorry. I love you."

"It's all right," Buffy answered, trying to joke a little so that he'd know she wasn't offended, even if the joke came out completely flat. "If you need to scream or something, it's probably better I'm not here, right? For the whole male pride thing?"

Giles didn't answer that one at all. Buffy backed out of her bedroom, snagging her robe on the way. She wished she knew what to do--if there was anything that could be done.

In the kitchen, the battery-operated clock read 4:13, while the ones on the stove and the microwave flashed red twelves at her. Buffy felt like the only person awake in the whole world.

Someone had to be smarter than her. Someone had to know. Willow maybe, or--God forbid--Wesley? She remembered Moira doing all those tidy little stitches on Giles's cut hand. Geez, he was having a bad week.

Obviously, Moira would be the person to call, but Buffy felt bad about disturbing Giles's old friend. Wrong or not, Moira'd lost someone she loved last night, and the older woman had only been about a pint short of suicide. She probably needed, and deserved, a little downtime.

From right over her head came a stifled moan worse than anything Buffy'd ever heard in her life. She found herself halfway across the room, punching in a number she hadn't even know she'd remembered, the number for Moira's digital phone.

A guy answered. An English-guy voice, one she didn't recognize. For a second Buffy wondered if she had the wrong number--and wondered why, if that was true, the guy didn't sound mad at being woken up at four-thirty in the morning.

"Uh...hi?" she said hesitantly.

"Buffy, is that you?" the guy asked her.

British guy. Knows me. It wasn't going to register. And who the hell are you? Buffy wanted to say--but didn't, because it came to her that the guy sounded kind of the way Wesley would sound if he didn't have such a huge British flagpole shoved up his butt.

"Uh...yes," she told this happy version of Wesley.

"Are you all right?" he asked her. "You sound rather upset, Buffy." He sounded sympathetic, now, as well as happy. It was giving her a major wiggins, like she'd just phoned up Bizarro World where everything was backwards.

"I'm okay," she told him, in a little, little voice, still convinced that she couldn't be talking to her erstwhile--another Giles word--Watcher. "Can I speak to Moira, please?"

"Why, of course, Buffy. Just a moment." He appeared to have covered the receiver with his hand, but she could hear him clearly anyway. "It's Buffy, love."

Moira picked up. "Hullo?" she said, in her usual calm, crisp Watcher-voice, like nothing bad had happened at all.

See, Buffy told herself. It really is Bizarro World. Because in the normal world, Moira should have sounded upset. No one could be either that together, or that repressed. She'd nearly died, for Pete's sake.

For a few minutes after she heard Moira's voice Buffy could only hiccough and sob--and she hadn't even known she'd started crying.

"It's all right, love," Moira told her kindly. "I was just heading out on a run, you didn't even wake me. Let me catch hold of my medical bag and I'll be there straightaway." The Watcher hung up without Buffy ever having spoken a word.

Buffy heard another moan and went outside the front door to wait, going up and down the steps a million times, though it didn't even take Moira a quarter of an hour to get there. She really was dressed in running clothes, the way she said. Did she always get up at four AM to run, or couldn't she sleep--maybe she was still on London time, and her body thought it was noon?

One look at Moira's pale face answered her question. Moira was making herself run for punishment, or maybe just to wear herself out, so she'd get exhausted, and wouldn't have to think anymore. However happy Wes was, Moira was still suffering, at least a little.

"I'm glad that you called," she told Buffy quietly. And she did, really, honestly, look glad.

"I thought you'd be the best person. I got scared."

"Are you squeamish round blood or needles, love?" she asked Buffy as they climbed the stairs.

Buffy shook her head, but that was kind of a lie. She already felt queasy. "Aren't you...I mean...won't you do a spell or something?"

"I'm in no shape for further spells tonight, Buffy," Moira answered, still quietly, and Buffy noticed again how tired she looked, then how the skin of her throat was bruised and torn. She could see the dark purple marks of Helena's fingers on the older woman's neck. "Your lavatory is...?"

Buffy showed her the door, and Moira handed her the medical bag, then went in to wash her hands.

"Have you a first aid kit?" Moira asked, scrubbing hard--doing a little Lady MacBeth action there, as well as getting everything clean.

"Super deluxe," Buffy answered. "Mom went all out as soon as she discovered that I was the Slayer. Why didn't you get Wes to put a bandaid or something over those big holes in your neck?"

Moira glanced up at herself in the mirror. Her body gave a huge jerk, as if she'd just noticed, and been shocked. "I...I..." She started sobbing all of a sudden and sank down onto the closed toilet seat with her clean wet hands pressed over her eyes and her fingers pushed up into her hair. Almost the worst thing was that, while she did this, she held completely still and even with all that crying didn't make any sound. It was like trying to watch a video with the "pause" button pressed.

"Wes sounded happy," Buffy said to her in a small voice, almost surprised that she herself made any sound at all. "I thought you guys were okay."

The Watcher did something that Buffy guessed was a nod, but she didn't stop. Seeing Moira cry was like watching a guy cry: it made her uncomfortable. The whole thing reminded her of the way Giles was after Jenny Calendar died, outside the Factory, and all she could think of to do was the thing she'd done then. She pulled Moira close against her, and rubbed her back until eventually all the sobs faded away.

Eventually, too, both of them looked in the mirror, at their blotchy faces and shadowy red-rimmed eyes, and had to laugh a little.

"Yeah, we're ready for the cover of Cosmo," Buffy said.

Moira blew her nose, loudly. "Glamourous `til the end! I'm sorry. It's the magic. I'm just knackered."

"What does that mean, anyway? 'Cause a lot of the time I don't get Brit words. The whole 'boot' and 'bonnet' and 'carpark' thing. The first time Giles told me to put something in the boot I was, like, looking around for footwear, and thinking whatever it was wouldn't fit--it was a crossbow, I think."

"Knackered means ready to be hauled off and ground into dog food." The Watcher gave another short laugh, splashed water on her face and washed her hands again. "Which I believe I am. Just here, is it?" She went through into Buffy's room, while Buffy followed with the First Aid kit.

Moira cleaned the clutter off a chair so that she could sit beside the bed. "Good morning, Rupert. Bit sore, are you? Something to remember, before you ask me to repeat that particular combination of spells."

Giles muttered something that was probably a British swear word. Moira's eyebrows shot up about half an inch--a bad swear, then.

"And with Buffy present?" she told him. "I'm going to need your arm, Rupert."

He didn't move. Buffy would've been willing to bet that he wasn't able.

"All right, then. I know. Buffy and I shall have to turn you over. Feel free to scream if you'd like."

Moira showed Buffy where to put her hands, and they did the "One, two, three," thing. Giles went over way more easily than she expected, and he didn't scream, but his jaw and the muscles in his neck got so tight that she knew he'd only kept quiet through force-of-will again. Then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he was out.

"Oh, God!" Buffy gasped, putting her hands to her mouth.

Calmly, Moira took Giles's arm, found a nice big vein, and swabbed the skin over it with alcohol. "Actually, one sees that quite a lot with the male of the species," she told Buffy. "Did you notice how he tensed up? Rather than letting out a nice, healthy yell, many men will grit their teeth and clench those powerful jaw and neck muscles of theirs to the point that they block the flow of blood to their brains. Then down they go, and we can work our wicked ways. Good job Rupert was already in bed. As you know, he's terribly heavy to move."

"I...uh...I thought..." Buffy said.

"He's not dying, love," Moira told her. She took Buffy's hand, putting it to Giles's neck. "Feel that? The pulse is a bit fast, but perfectly strong, and now that Rupert's out, he's breathing quite well."

Moira removed a little bottle with a rubber stopper from her bag, opened the package to a disposable syringe with her teeth, stuck the needle through the stopper and sucked a yellowish liquid up into the tube.

"You're not a doctor," Buffy said anxiously.

"No," Moira answered, squirting a little of the fluid into the air.

"What's that you're giving him?"

"Quick acting poison," Moira responded calmly, sliding the needle home. "Ought to be over in a matter of seconds."

Buffy gaped at her in horror. God, the woman was crazy! What had she done calling her here? Then she noticed the sympathetic warmth in the older woman's eyes.

"It's possible that you're joking," she said.

"It's possible," Moira answered drily. "What I gave him should take off the worst of the edge, help him sleep a bit." She touched Giles's temple gently, with just her fingertips. "He really will be all right, I think, Buffy. Let's just survey the damage, then see about getting those cuffs off you, shall we?"

Moira smiled up at her, with that perfectly calm expression and those troubled eyes, so that Buffy didn't know whether she meant what she said, and was fighting with her own problems, or lying about Giles to make her feel better. She wasn't sure that she wanted to ask, either.

"I wouldn't lie to you, love," Moira said.