Transitions - Ch. 6

Giles woke in his own bed, with no extremely clear memory of how he'd gotten there, only that Buffy had been involved, and his old friend Em.

He spent a few moments, as he had when Buffy asked him his own names, trying to remember all of what Em was called, but the words simply wouldn't come--instead, he received a sudden, vivid image of his friend as a girl, wearing his leather coat over her tatty summer frock, running and running through the dark, wet London streets. The panicked sound of her breathing returned to him, and the fire of his own breath in his lungs as he'd tried to keep up. There had been a bridge, and a large black car, a hatchet-faced old woman and a stern, handsome, terrifying man. Mr. Stanley, the man was called. Mr. Stanley, of the Watchers' Council. His stepfather.

Thirty years later, the vision of his stepfather's face still filled Giles with a hatred so intense he was nearly nauseated--and yet Mr. Stanley had never once touched him, in either love or hatred, or so much as raised his voice in anger. Everything Mr. Stanley did, he had done with his eyes, and with his calm, rational, reasonable voice.

Every moment of crushing self-doubt Giles ever suffered, then and since--and there had been many, far too many to count--had come to him phrased in his stepfather's measured tones. Mr. Stanley had made living with fierce, feral Em in the rat-infested darkness beneath London's streets seem a paradise compared to spending even one moment more of his life within the snug walls of his mother's house in Salisbury. Living with Em, who'd never cried, who'd never closed her eyes when she kissed, who'd made love to him in brief, nearly-brutal explosions that made one feel that one came inside something like a fireworks display--brilliant, beautiful, fiery and hurtful--had truly been a heaven as compared to that hell.

Giles gasped at the memory, pushing it forcibly from his mind. Why would that image return to him with such power, when kind, simple, fresh ones would not? When he could not remember names or places, or even string words together, as he knew that, quite recently, he'd done with ease?

He had been at Buffy's house, in her sweet, girlish room with its warm pastel colours and her soft toys set aside on the floor. They'd even names, he felt fairly certain, and perhaps she'd still hugged them close to her when she'd lain alone in the night. Such a contrast it provided to his own, dark-beamed, bachelorish room. He tried to imagine her bright outfits hung beside the drab tweeds in his closet, her sparkly little brooches and clips strewn over the bureau-top, her plethora of odd footwear tumbled over his floor. Had she come here with him, his treasure, his beloved--or had she remained behind in her mother's home?

Better, perhaps, for her to have stayed with...Joyce. Yes, Joyce. That was Buffy's mum's name. He kept forgetting. So young, she still needed her mother, needed Joyce's love and approval, and yet, he wished...

There had been a battered van, he recalled--not Oz's--and Joyce's voice, speaking words that could not be taken as kind, followed by Em's crisp replies. Giles remembered Buffy weeping as she helped him dress himself, almost more hindrance than help. She'd kept presenting him with what seemed endless items of clothing, half of them turned wrong-side-to.

And Buffy was here, in his bedroom. She wept, still, sitting cross-legged on the side of his bed, her deceptively fragile shoulders hunched in misery. He felt so very sorry, and so sad for her.

Giles's thoughts moved with the slowness of cold syrup, and the frustration made him nearly furious. He must make an effort, for Buffy's sake. He'd be no use to her as he was--and yet the smallest attempt only seemed to further drain his strength, and to increase the throbbing in his skull. He must ignore it. He must try.

"Buffy?" Giles said. His voice came out odd, not like his own voice at all. Buffy, at any rate, wept too passionately to have heard him.

Giles turned, watching her, wishing, rather, that her form would not show such an alarming tendency to multiply in his blurred sight. Yes, additional effort was definitely called for. He forced himself to sit, barely stifling a cry as a hundred arrows of pain stabbed through his body and that now-familiar corkscrew of discomfort twisted down from his skull. God, what had he done to himself? It was absolutely appalling.

For her, though, he could ignore the arrows, just as he'd ignored those that resulted from Angelus's...attentions. He touched Buffy carefully, on the arm, mindful of her reflexes, knowing better than to alarm a distracted Slayer.

"Buffy, what is it?" he asked her, thankful that the words came out as intended, not all twisted about.

She would not turn to him, hiding, instead, her face in her hands. Giles reached over to switch on the bedside lamp, fumbling a bit with the difficult little knob.

"I wish you still remembered stuff," was all she answered.

"I know, dearest." Ignoring the shrieks from his tortured muscles, he drew her onto his lap, holding her close. The weight of her head on his bruised shoulder was enough to make him want to scream. Spasms of agony ran though his body--but she needed him, needed his comfort, and Giles hoped that she could not feel the tremors.

"I know how much you love your mum," he told her, guessing at the cause of the tears. "The last thing I should ever want to do is come between you."

"You didn't help very much back there." Buffy swiped at her tears with both hands, childlike in that gesture, if in nothing else.

"I know," Giles answered, though he could actually remember nothing of what had been said. "I shall try to improve. Honestly."

"Like that's fair to you?" she said. "I'm upset 'cause my mommy's mad at me, so you have to pretend to be all fine, to take care of me?"

"I am fine," he told her. "Only a little sore, and that's to be expected." He fell silent, the mere effort of forming those short sentences having utterly drained him.

"Yeah, you're fine. And that's why you're dead white and shaking like a leaf. Good try, Giles."

He smiled a little in an attempt to reassure her. "Why don't you call Willow and Xander? The three of you ought to do something you enjoy." He paused, gathering strength. "Go to that Bronze place you all like so well."

Giles felt proud of himself, rather, that he'd remembered what they liked to do, and by what name the place was actually called.

Buffy quickly burst his little balloon. "Just 'The Bronze,' Giles. Not 'that Bronze place.' And like I'm really going to leave you here all on your own. 'Cause that turned out so well last time."

"There may actually be limited numbers of vampires to whom I've granted standing invitations into my home." For that had been, he remembered, exactly what occurred: he'd known a girl named Helena. A Slayer named Helena, and she'd been turned. That creature, who had once been a girl he'd loved, as if he'd been her uncle, or her older brother, lay at the root of all this pain. "I shall have to be left on my own at some point," he told Buffy.

"Just not yet." Carefully, Buffy slid from his lap. "You gonna say how much it hurt to have me sit there?"

"Not bloody likely," he answered, though the relief was so great he could hardly catch his breath.

Buffy turned, rising on her knees, facing him. "Ya know, Rupert sweetie, I kinda love you. If I give you a big kiss, are you going to be trying not to scream the whole time?"

"'Rupert sweetie?'" Giles attempted one of his raised-eyebrow looks, feeling the pull of his bruised skin.

Buffy laughed at him, but kindly. "You know, I'd give those patented Giles-looks a rest for right now. They're not really working--you look like Wile E. Coyote post-Acme bomb."

"I've no idea what that means."

"Sorry, Giles, but if we're gonna be together, you'll have to learn--it's more fun if I don't have to explain myself all the time."

"Delightful."

"Hey, just think of it as studying the ways of a primitive culture--you'll do fine. And I promise to learn at least a big word a day. How's that?"

He felt himself turning upon her a troubled look--how could he explain what he'd lost to this exquisite, brave young woman, who loved and needed him so? What if, for all his trying, he could never regain enough to be truly of use to her?

"Or not." Buffy stroked his cheek with the tenderest of touches. Giles shut his eyes, turning his face into her hand. He must be honest with her. They must have now, no further lies.

"Buffy--" he said, uncertain of how to even frame the words that he must say. "I-- I--"

"I asked you to lie to me once, do you remember?" Buffy asked, as if reading his mind.

Confused by her words, Giles shook his head. He could not. Honestly, he could not.

"I wanted you to tell me that things eventually got easy, that everything would someday come down to happily-ever-after if we just held on long enough--and you did. You told me that, but in a way that I knew you meant it wasn't true. And even when I asked you, I already knew." Her fingers brushed his jaw with a feather touch. She gave him the tenderest of kisses, her mouth tasting, very lightly, of mint and honey. His Buffy could be so gentle when she chose, despite her strength, and so caring.

"I know what is true, though," Buffy continued, pulling back, her eyes gazing into his.

Giles wished that he could see her more clearly, without his vision doing what his young friends might call "fuzzing out."

"I know that it's true that you cared for me when no one else would," she said. "When I kept choosing Angel. When I ran away, and everyone else got mad. When I did every stupid thing I could think of, you never stopped loving me. I'll never in a thousand years be able to make it up to you, Giles. Don't add anything else to my personal bucket o' guilt. Let me take care of you now. Don't pretend." Her strong little hands wove into his hair. She kissed his mouth once more, then directly between his brows.

With sudden fierceness, low-voiced, Buffy told him, "Do you think I care if you're not up to reading the big, musty books right now? If you never are? If I need someone to ready moldy books, I can always get Wesley to do that for me. What I need is you, the guy-you, who loves me. I'm not gonna let you hurt yourself. Even without anything else, you had a really bad concussion, and you shouldn't be going out anywhere or stressing about anything for at least a couple weeks."

"But I'm--"

Buffy's finger rested across his lips, shushing him effectively. "Nope, no arguments. We Slayers are very stubborn."

"I've noticed," Giles told her drily.

"So, you just lie back while I get stuff ready. I'm not accepting any arguments here."

Giles did as she told him, content to lie back and watch the blurred golden shape of her move about the room, making whatever mysterious arrangements she'd planned for him--nothing too energetic, he hoped, sinking into a not-entirely-unpleasant lethargy. He could hear water running in the next room, and smelled a pleasantly herbal odour waft toward him on steam-permeated air.

Buffy returned to him a few minutes later, a blue-glass bottle in her hands. "Will gave this to me," she said. "She got it at the magic stuff store, but I don't think it's really magic. And at least its herbs so it doesn't smell too girly." She appeared to be reading the label. "There's lavender, and rosemary, and aloe, and elder flower--it's supposed to destressify you."

Giles smiled a little at the made-up word.

"And I figured that, since you're too banged-up for a nice back-rub, that a nice, hot bath would do the trick instead--I know your muscles are just in knots. I'm warning you now--fussing will ensue, and you're gonna take it, mister, and not say anything snide."

"Yes, dear."

"Sorry. Little bit of snideness detected there. It's my turn to boss you around for a change." Buffy helped Giles rise, steadying him until a measure of his sense of balance returned. He surprised himself by how heavily he needed to lean on her shoulder as he walked--but so far from minding, Buffy seemed to enjoy being able to lend him her aid. She divested him of his clothing in quick order, and Giles was surprised again by how little shame he felt.

He sighed in contentment as she helped him into the large tub, and the herbal-scented bubbles and warm water lapped around his body. The tightness in his muscles began to ease almost at once, and the fragrant steam soothed the soreness in his eyes. Buffy made sure his injured hand was propped comfortably on the side of the tub, where water couldn't get into the wound. She knelt beside him on the tile and wet a soft cloth, stroking his face, his throat and his chest until he felt nearly ready to purr, in much the manner of a contented cat.

"Wake me up in a fortnight, would you, love?" he murmured.

"I would, if I knew how long that was." Buffy spread the cloth flat on his chest, the heat of it soaking through into his skin.

"Two weeks," Giles answered, nearly half asleep. "And after the first week, I should like very much for you to join me."

"Hmn...this tub is big enough, isn't it? And after two weeks, when you've turned into the human prune?"

"I might consent to emerge. And we might spend another fortnight together, and another." Giles opened his eyes, seeing her face just over his, so lovely and golden, so filled with the most tender regard.

"And then?" Buffy smiled, that perfect, incandescent smile that lighted his world

"Would you fetch me something, my love?" He felt his voice begin to tighten with emotion. "There's a black lacquer box, about the size of a shoebox, on the uppermost shelf of my closet. Will you bring it down?"

"What, now?"

"If you please. I promise not to slip beneath the surface of the waters and drown."

"I'm gonna hold you to that," Buffy said, leaving him.

Once she'd gone, Giles felt his heart begin to beat too fast. The breath began to stick in his throat. What if this was too sudden? What if it frightened his dear girl away? Yet he knew that if he let the moment pass, months or years might go by before he could bring himself again to this point. Better to take advantage of his giddiness, and the way his injuries weakened his sometimes nearly-overwhelming restraint.

Buffy returned with the box in her hands, shaking it a bit in her curiosity. "It sounds like it's full of pictures. Won't the steam be bad for them?"

"It's something else we're looking for just now. Down at the bottom, in the leather case."

Buffy set the box on the floor, prising off its lid. Her hands trembled a little, he noticed, almost as if she'd expected what she discovered within. Giles found it hard to read her face as she regarded him, and he stretched out his hand for the small leather case.

Giles palmed one of the things he found inside, and passed the box back to her. Buffy placed it on the floor by her knee, mindful of setting the now-damp leather atop the old photographs.

"Buffy, may I--?" He sat up, reaching out toward her. Buffy's unsteady fingers brushed his. She bit her lower lip, her great sapphire eyes beginning to fill up, again, with tears. Giles slipped the twisted band of old gold, with its stone that matched those eyes, onto the ring finger of her left hand, clasping his own wet hand around hers.

"Once, in another country," he said, remembering this, at least, clearly. "I swore an oath to you, body and soul. The men who administered that oath did not believe in it, but I always did. Always, my dearest. I mean it more now, in this moment, than ever before. I would not have allowed you to come out of your mother's house, if I weren't prepared to offer you more. Will you have me, Buffy, as your own? I promise myself to you, with everything that's mine, by everything I hold sacred or dear. I promise to love and cherish you forever, for all the fortnights of our lives."

The tears spilled over Buffy's lower lids. Her face looked pale and still and filled with emotion, and for a heart-stopping moment, Giles feared that she would turn away.

"Buffy?" he said softly.

In the end, she ended up with him in the water after all, half the contents of the bath--and little islands of bubbles--spread halfway across the floor.

In the end, Giles nearly did pass out--but not from his weakness, or his injuries. Rather, the sensation came to him from the absolute completeness of his joy.