Transitions - Ch. 14

The highway and desert flickered by, and a hot, sand-laden wind scoured Giles's skin, the motion and heat, aided by the painkillers he'd dry-swallowed half an hour previously, combining to make him feel slightly dizzy and not unpleasantly high. Buffy and Willow nestled together in the back seat, golden head against copper, even the large caffeinated sodas they'd been guzzling all the way from Sunnydale insufficient to keep them awake at such an early hour.

Giles glanced over at Xander, the driver for their short journey to the airport in Los Angeles, then wedged his body a bit more firmly against the door. It all felt surreal, like a landscape by Dali: the colours, blues and golds and browns, were there, and the desiccated, misshapen trees. Perhaps, somewhere over the horizon, a clockface or two would be melting over some sharp-edged geometrical thing. Somehow, the dark-haired boy driving, and the large, shining turquoise car, only added to the sense of illusion.

The boy drove smoothly, confidently, with natural talent--odd that Xander, who in many areas could be so awkward, should possess such a skill, while Buffy, the definition of grace in all other things, continued to be, despite his coaching, one of the more unpredictable drivers he had witnessed.

Buffy was more unpredictable, in some ways, than even Cordelia, who drove--not surprisingly, given her nature--with a seeming disregard for the rights of others to exist.

His young love continued to improve, though. In that, as in all things.

Giles shifted again, uncomfortably.

"It's your own fault," Xander informed him, not without sympathy. "If you're gonna do that kind of stuff with a Slayer, you've gotta expect to hurt the next day. It's like sex with Klingons, you know? Believe me, I'm clued in to these things."

"No idea," Giles replied. "And to what 'kind of stuff' do you refer, Xander?"

Buffy isn't Faith, he wanted to add, but held his tongue. Hardly necessary to pour salt in the boy's wounds.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Xander laughed. "Don't you try to go all Watchery with me, Giles."

Giles smiled a little, and turned again to the desert. Xander, he knew, was perfectly correct. It was to be expected, and he merely needed to develop a thicker skin. Even after his reluctant caution, Buffy had left bruises. She couldn't help herself.

"You're gonna enjoy that eight hour plane ride," Xander informed him. "Personally, I'd have waited until I hit the mother country to get my smoochies. But that's me. Maybe you're into pain."

"Not particularly." Giles answered, but he found his mind drifting away from the topic.

He began to think of his mother again, and then, by a natural progression, of Marianna and Clarice. Then of his father, Henry Giles, and of Augustina, Henry's Slayer.

Giles found himself missing them all, those lost ones, with sudden, painful intensity.

Everything shifted. Color and sound felt muted, as if he no longer sat beside Xander in the BelAir, or whatever the vividly-coloured vehicle was called. As if Buffy, his beloved, and Willow, his surrogate daughter, not longer slept side-by-side in the backseat--but, rather, as if he'd come to occupy, once more, a world that had ceased to exist only a little less than four decades earlier.

Xander glanced in his direction, seeking reassurance, and Giles directed to him an empty smile. He could give Xander no more, just then, only that emptiness. He felt mummified, as if he ought to be wrapped in bandages--well, he was that, or nearly--and stood up inside a sarcophagus, in one of those large rooms of the British Museum that had once been his charge, and his delight.

After the sorrows and discoveries of the previous week, he'd been prepared only for delight, a vaster, stronger delight than he had ever before realized. Despite pain, sadness, exhaustion, the loss of so much of himself, to feel Buffy's small hand curled within his hand, her body pressed against his...he loved her to the exclusion of nearly everything, had done for almost the entire time he'd known her. Even loving another, with tenderness and passion, he had loved Buffy more, and would have chosen her, innumerable times, over even dark-eyed lovely Jenny. He loved the way, at last, Buffy loved him in return, with a tenderness--emotional, if not physical--he'd never suspected of her, and that air of having surprised herself.

He must shake himself out of this torpor, this nostalgia for things that were lost, and must overcome, also, his fears that Moira's suspicions were real--that his mother's death actually resulted from some machination on the part of the Council, some plot to pull both him and Buffy into their dangerous hold. He must be careful, and vigilant--and he must not alarm her.

Giles put his unbandaged hand over his eyes. Last night had been the first time in his life that he hadn't actually been glad to hear Sebastian's voice. He didn't want to go home. He wanted to remain in Sunnydale, with Buffy. In Sunnydale, where they'd a fair record of catching and quelling the forces of darkness as such evils arose.

In England, his record of past success was far more spotty. In this area, at least, things rarely went well for him. Perhaps Buffy's presence would turn that around and end his--what was it called? His losing streak.

"You okay over there?" Xander asked him.

Giles shifted uncomfortably again. Only just over a week it had been, and he'd been told to stay home, to rest and give his body time to heal. As usual, he hadn't heeded that advice--and here he was, embarked upon this journey. "Yes, thank you, Xander. Fine," he replied.

No wonder he felt a bit depressed: he hurt, he hadn't slept well the night before, and Buffy wasn't awake to shake him out of his funk.

"And which of the Seven Dwarves are you today?" Xander was sometimes inclined to ask. To which the current reply would have to be either Sleepy or Grumpy. Grumpy, most likely.

Giles felt rather proud of himself that he'd be able to reply at all. His young friends had been horrified by his ignorance of what they termed "The Classics" and during the past week of his enforced inactivity, had seen to furthering his education. Willow had agreed with his assessment that Snow White was a vapid twit--added to which she appeared, as animated, about eight years of age, which in turn made the Prince's motives somewhat suspect. Her stepmother, the Wicked Queen, had reminded him rather strongly, though he didn't like to say so, of Moira.

Sebastian would meet them--that, at least, would be something to look forward to.

Angry as he'd been at her when he'd learned of the young man's existence, Giles had to admit that Moira had been correct in the decision she'd made then, as in nearly all things. Two fifteen-year-olds, what the papers called "troubled youths" living hand-to-mouth in a squalid flat--with him too stupid, at the first, to realize that he'd even put her in the club--and too ill, at the end, to accept it as more than a nightmare. Being Moira, she'd done a spell to find what she needed, a couple who were childless, rich and kind. She made her choice--solitary, Dickens would say, as an oyster--a choice he never would have been able to make.

Giles knew he would have tried to raise Sebastian as their own, and most likely scarred the boy for life. Moira had gone to the hospital in the morning, given birth, placed Sebastian in the Delacoeurs' arms, and been home by dusk. Dimly, through the gauzy lens of time and fever, he remembered wondering where she'd been for such a long time, and why she looked so different--and why, for the first time, he'd seen her weeping. At any rate, away from the parents of his birth, Sebastian had grown up sunny-natured, with a boundless enthusiasm. Their first meeting, which Giles had dreaded, had been far less awkward than he'd feared--Sebastian wasn't shy, he had a natural kindness, and he mixed well with people. His adoptive father had been some sort of ambassador, Giles recalled.

"So, your son's meeting you," Xander said. "He's gonna pick you up?"

"That's the plan, yes," Giles replied. "Either Sebastian, or Celeste, his wife."

"Sebastian's Moira's son."

"That's true."

"Whoa, Giles, you do get the babes," Xander smiled at him, sensing his mood and attempting to break it. "So, what's your secret? Is it, like, a tweed thing?"

Giles turned back toward the desert, not wanting to say. He'd been once more deluged, suddenly, with an image of Moira bending over him, thirty-plus years before, as he wept, aching and terrified, in a disused tunnel of the underground.

At fourteen, Moira had already grown to her full height, and as she grasped his jaw with her powerful, long-fingered hand, he'd taken her for adult, a madwoman. "It does no good to weep, you know," she'd told him. "I saw what Jenkins did to you--the tail end of it, anyway. So you don't cry; you learn how to fight. I'm called Em."

She'd released him, straightening, smiling her fierce, feral smile--the flash of it clear, even in the dark. He'd run from Em, the first time, when she'd awakened him in Kensington Park--but this time he would, or could not run. He sensed in her some odd similarity to himself.

The alternatives to her, to keeping company with her, had seemed so much more horrifying: there, in London, had been Em, and the others who lived in the dark--back home had been Mr. Stanley. He'd sworn he would never return to Mr. Stanley.

"What's your name?" she'd asked, and he'd seen, then, that she was just a girl. A girl of his own age, but with none of the softness in her that came from being loved at one time, even if one is not loved any longer.

"Rupert," he'd told her.

"No," Em had answered, "That won't do. You'll have to be Ripper from now on, so they'll be afraid of you."

"Giles?" Xander repeated.

"Sorry. Lost in thought."

"I know you weren't close with your mom," the boy said sympathetically, "But this must still be hard."

"When I was a small boy, I loved her terribly. She was so pretty, and seemed very fragile--and she smelt indescribably nice. My mum was extremely affectionate, whilst my father was quite reserved--he'd shake one's hand, at most, and he always expected one to sit up straight and to dress properly. So much of his time seemed taken up with Augustina. He lived with her, in the city, on weekdays, only coming up to us at the weekends, and often she came along. I liked her very much. She was an Irish Gypsy girl--what they call a Tinker, over there--with blue eyes and black hair, and we'd go on long rambles together across the countryside. I think, perhaps, I was the only friend she had."

"So, you've talked about your dad, and his Slayer, but not so much about your mom."

"She remarried three months after my father and Augustina died, to a man called Mr. Stanley. I stuck out my holidays at home for three years. Given my choice, I'd have stayed at school year round."

"Was that, like, an option? And even if it was--I can't imagine it being a good. Even for you."

"It might have been an option, some boys did. But it wasn't for me. Mr. Stanley liked me to come home." He gave Xander a look. "He wasn't abusive--as such, but he liked to influence me. He liked me to know who was in charge, and that the someone in charge was not I."

"Oh," the boy said. "Oh. And your mom didn't do anything. Like, step in on your behalf?"

"My mother's epitaph could easily be: Clara D. M. Giles Stanley - she didn't do anything."

"My mom doesn't do anything either," Xander said softly. "Or she does. She drinks. My dad--he's a lot like that, like Mr. Stanley. He likes you to know who's in charge. Did you know I have a big brother? Sean. He joined the army, I guess, and I haven't heard of him since. My dad burned all the pictures, so I can't even remember what he looked like."

"You should look your brother up on your own," Giles told him. "If only to write to. I've written to Sebastian for years."

"Yeah, I guess letters aren't a big commitment." Xander glanced at him again. Giles couldn't hide a look of guilt and sadness quite fast enough for his young friend to miss.

"That's not what I meant, you know." Xander shrugged. "Only that it gives the other person a choice. Maybe lets them get to know you a little first before the whole face-to-face trauma thing. Was that hard, with your son?"

"I spent more or less the entire time certain I would shortly pass into unconsciousness. But I did not--and as I've said, Sebastian put me very much at ease."

"It was nice, you know, Giles, the way you'd let me hang out at the library, or the way you told me I could stay at your place when it--you know--got too late? Even though I'm not your favorite. Even though I get on your nerves."

"Xander--"

"I know I've given you a bad time, but you were tactful, the way you handled it, not letting Buff or Will know. The way you got it, without me having to say. I--uh--kinda appreciated that." The boy rubbed his hands over the steering wheel, adding, very softly. "I wish you'd been my dad."

Giles didn't know what to say, but at last he answered, just as quietly, "Thank you, Xander. If it isn't too much, I think of you as my son."

"Ooh, male-bonding alert." Buffy leaned over the seat, resting her cheek on Giles's shoulder. "Xander, Will and I need a potty break."

Giles glanced back at her, shaking his head.

"I do so! But it's possible you didn't mean you were saying no, only that my timing reeks. You guys made Willow cry, you know."

"No you didn't," Willow denied, in a soft, teary voice. "There's a gas station up ahead."

"And," Buffy continued, "What makes you think you have to hide things from us, anyway? It's not as though we don't love you. This whole male pride thing? I don't get it. It's dumb."

Xander pulled off into the station. The two girls set off running, Buffy calling out. "I am so gonna die if we need to ask for a key."

"So much for secrets," Xander said.

"I meant what I said," Giles told him.

The boy looked away, blinking. "Damn desert wind," he muttered.