Transitions - Ch. 15

By the time Buffy stopped to burrow through her carry-on for what seemed the twentieth time, Giles found himself fighting something that approached irritation. Lord, they hadn't reached the terminal yet, what would she be like when...?

Giles cut off the thought. She would be fine. She was a brave girl, and she would be fine. Buffy felt understandably nervous and apprehensive--that much was clear from the strain evident on her face, and now was not the time to be sharp with her.

"Dearest," he began, in as patient a voice as he could muster, "I believe we've ascertained that you've brought all your necessary documents. Would you like me to take care of them for you?"

"Note to self," Xander said, with annoying perceptiveness, "Giles calls Buffy 'dearest' when she's starting to get on his nerves." He shifted Giles's garment bag on his shoulder. "How much tweed did you pack anyway, G-man? This thing is heavy."

"Huh?" Buffy said. "What did I do?"

Willow took the carry-on from her hands, extracted the passport and passed it to Giles.

"I just wanted to make sure..." Buffy's voice trailed off. She fidgeted with the handle of her suitcase.

Having tucked the document safely into the breast pocket of his jacket, Giles touched her cheek, smiling down at her. So much trust in her face, so much love, it made him nearly misty-eyed--though it also gave him rather more than an inkling that he oughtn't to have taken the pills after all. They helped deaden the pain, but did nothing for his powers of concentration, or for his ability to keep his emotions in check.

"I don't think I've ever asked you, Buffy--do you like to fly?" Giles draped a protective arm round her shoulders, feeling more tension there. "I'm a bit of a nervous flier myself," he told her, by way of conversation, smiling again. "Though I promise I shan't embarrass you."

"I love to fly!" Willow exclaimed. "The way you get to see the mountains from up above, and when you go over the clouds they look all solid, like you could just get out and walk around. When I was a little, little kid I'd cry to go outside. Outside the plane. Then dad explained that I'd plummet to my death. 'Course I didn't know what plummet was, but it sounded scary."

"When I was little, and I went to visit Aunt Eileen in Illinois, I thought she lived in the middle of a big, huge patchwork quilt," Buffy said. "'Cause that's what it looked like, from the plane."

"Ah, this would have been the fields, the different colours of the fields." Giles was charmed by the image, like something from a storybook. He could imagine young Buffy's childish excitement.

"I was disappointed," she told him, and Giles didn't know what to answer.

A long line awaited them at the Virgin Air counter, and a longer wait. Many of their fellow passengers stood in large family groups, and seemed to have brought everything they owned, in large, battered cartons held together with quantities of sticky-tape and rope. Suddenly, a myriad of languages reverberated from the walls, undampened by the acoustical tiling. Giles heard Cantonese, Japanese, Hindi, French, German, English spoken with both British and American accents.

Giles shut his eyes, letting the sounds wash over him. He thought that perhaps he understood a word here and there; he knew he ought to have understood more. The voices, the variety of them, reminded him of home.

When Xander offered to hold their place, Giles shook his head, though he came to regret his stoicism as the queue inched ahead. The room spun--he'd gotten very high indeed, more off-center than he'd been since his bad old days--and his companions threw him increasingly alarmed looks. Buffy finally removed a plastic bottle of water from her bag.

"I don't know if this will help, but have a sip," she whispered. "What's up? You look like you're about to crash."

Giles shook his head again, but he took the water, and drank. "I'm fine," he said.

"Giles thinks that 'take with food' warning on his pills is just for other people." Xander poked his arm. "Real men don't even use water."

"I'm quite all right, I tell you," Giles answered, in an undertone, but more sharply than he intended. He didn't want to admit to being monumentally stoned.

The plump, middle-aged woman standing before them in line turned around, telling him, in a soft Southern drawl, "You know, you should be nicer to your son. I'm sure he's just worried about you."

Xander slipped a steadying hand under his elbow. "Yeah, Dad, be nicer to your son."

Embarrassed, and grateful, really, for the support, Giles sipped again from the bottle. The water did help revive him a little. He actually couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten or drunk anything, and ordered himself to take no more of the pills until he'd done both. "Thank you, Buffy," he said, "That's better."

Lovely, old man, he chided himself. Now you've worried her. She'll think that she won't be able to rely upon you.

"As soon as we're through here, it's straight to the cafeteria, mister. And I don't want to hear any arguments." Buffy had turned to him, her eyes searching his face. Though Giles knew she meant to be reticent, for his sake, in this public place, her demonstrative nature got the better of her. She rubbed her open hands over his lapels, no doubt wanting to touch him in some more complete fashion, then fussed with the straps on his sling.

The woman turned again, openly staring, and Giles could see her attempt to work out their relationship--but then the ticketing agent called, "Next!" and she was forced to leave, presumably unsatisfied.

Their own turn arrived a moment later.

Buffy hefted her own large rolling suitcase, and his garment bag and carryall, onto the platform.

"Whoa, honey! You must be stronger than you look!" the agent said. "I nearly dislocated my shoulder on that bag of yours--easy as you handled it, I expected the darn thing to be light."

"I like to keep in shape," Buffy answered, smiling--while the man, with great impertinence, grinned back at her.

Swallowing a mild pang of overprotectiveness, Giles leaned on the counter. He fumbled his wallet from his pocket and attempted, one-handed, to extract his driver's license and credit card. He couldn't seem to manage.

"Okay, sweetie, give it here." Buffy took the wallet from his hand, removed the two cards and laid them atop the counter, then snaked her little hand inside his jacket for their passports. "That's all you need, right?" she asked the agent.

"You call your dad, 'sweetie?'" her responded--perplexed, apparently, to the point of losing any vestige he'd once possessed of a professional demeanor.

"Fiance," Buffy answered, with yet another of her perfect, glowing smiles.

"Fiance," Giles echoed. How could he be cross with her for even an instant? She was lovely. She was magnificent. He adored her.

Willow passed forward a computer printout, and the agent began to tap keys. "So, that's two tickets, one for Buffy Summers and one for Rupert Giles. That correct?"

"Bingo," Buffy answered. "That's us." Her hand crept into Giles's, and she rested her cheek against his arm. "I like this suit," she whispered. "It's not prickly, like the tweed."

"And we'll need a fax of the death certificate, within ten days, to qualify you for the special funeral rate." He seemed so chipper, so nonchalant, Giles thought, as if the words he spoke did not actually connect with his brain. "Now, I just need to see your passports."

"Uh...here?" Buffy tapped the two documents: her own little booklet shiny and new, its photograph showing a bright-faced, hopeful child, its pages pristine; Giles's passport dog-eared, water-stained--and in one place, blood-stained--filled with stamps from places to which he could no longer remember traveling.

"Wow, " the clerk said. "You've really seen the world."

"At one time," Giles answered, more than ready for all this to be over.

At last it was. Buffy tucked their boarding passes and identification away, carefully, inside his breast pocket, and Giles shivered a little at the touch of her small hand over his heart.

"Do you wanna sit down a little before we find your gate?" Xander asked him, taking Giles's carry-on from Willow. He seemed unnaturally nervous, his eyes wide and dark. His hand returned to Giles's elbow with that same steadying touch.

What are you thinking, Xander? Giles wondered.

"No, let's press on," he said, trying to make his voice firm and cheerful. He knew that once he sat he'd most likely be out like the proverbial light, and because of this, motion seemed imperative.

Giles didn't like that his physical state seemed so obvious to all who regarded him. Though he tried to remain fairly open, for Buffy's sake, he'd a natural instinct to hide weakness. Xander's apparent desire to shepherd him caused some embarrassment--he couldn't understand what lay behind it, why the boy should be so bloody apprehensive.

As they walked through the airport it came to him--he wasn't himself, obviously, and Xander's natural impulse was to hide that from the world, in the same way that the boy had no doubt covered for his mum and dad and uncles since he was only a small child. Whatever the discomfort, Giles vowed, he'd definitely swallow no more of the pills.

He stopped a moment, letting the girls pull ahead, and looked down into Xander's eyes with as much steadiness as he could muster. God, when had the boy got so tall? "Son," he said quietly, "It's all right. I shan't humiliate you."

Xander ducked his head, flushing. "No, it's not that. It's--" He gulped in air. "It's okay, Giles. I know you won't." The boy looked up again, flashing his lightning grin. "Forgot who I was with. Tweed-guy."

"Just so." Giles smiled in return. "The very worst you can expect of me is that I shall bore all and sundry to untimely deaths."

They passed through various gates, stopping just short of the satellite for international departures, where Willow and Xander would not be allowed to follow.

"Now, don't lose track of time," Willow cautioned.

"Yeah, like we didn't leave home early enough to have two hours still left to kill. Last time I ever listen to Caution-man here." Xander laughed, himself once more.

"Far better than racing through the airport, scrambling for one's gate," Giles responded, without any real ire.

"My man," Buffy said, grinning, "Don't you love him when he goes all stuffy like that? I know I do. Let's eat."

"You're hungry, I suppose," Giles said to Xander. "Or is that a question that never bears asking?"

"Mmn, I wasn't going to mention it. But yeah. I'm eighteen--what do you want from me?"

In response to Giles's glance, Willow nodded. "I'm hungry too."

They found their way to a booth, in a restaurant that overlooked the airfield. The space smelled appallingly of hot oil, and for a moment Giles thought he was going to find it necessary to withdraw and leave his young friends to their own devices, but he fought the feeling down, just as he'd been trained to do.

"You watch our stuff," Xander told him. "Buff and I will rustle up some grub. What do you want? Tea, I bet?"

"Please."

"And to eat?"

"I'm not particularly hungry," Giles wanted to answer, but dared not. Buffy had spoken.

"Your appetite's been lousy." Buffy rubbed his shoulder tenderly, sensing his reluctance. "How 'bout if I get you some soup, or some Jell-O, or something?"

"I despise Jell-O. It tastes like ectoplasm."

"And if I knew what that was, I might be disgusted," Buffy answered. "Are you being difficult, Rupert?"

"Remember, in Ghostbusters, when that chap said, 'I've been slimed?'"

Xander's jaw dropped. "My God, Giles! A pop-culture reference!" His eyes narrowed. "Wait, you watched it for the demons. You are a sick, sick man."

"That was ectoplasm," Giles answered.

"Were those real demons?" wondered Willow. "I mean, like in your books?"

"So, a yes on the soup?" Buffy asked, forcing a return to the subject at hand.

Giles started to shrug, but found the gesture uncomfortable. "Yes. Lovely."

She and Xander ambled away, still bantering.

For a time, Giles watched the jets gather speed, surge away from the ground, and achieve takeoff. As always, it all seemed impossible, far more magical than the grubby little spells he'd been able to accomplish when he was minding the Wild Magic. What could he accomplish now, without that restraint? The urge to experiment tempted him rather severely.

Willow laid a penny in the palm of his hand.

"Willow? Ah, what...?"

"For your thoughts." She touched his sleeve. "Oh! This is softer. The tweed's awfully prickly, and it must get hot. This must get hot too, though. I mean, it's still wool. What were you thinking?"

"When I put on this suit, or just a moment ago?"

"Uh...the moment."

"How I'd wanted very badly, as a boy, to be a pilot," Giles told her.

Willow gave a small, elfin grin. "Buffy said. Or a grocery-store guy."

"I believe, at the time, it was the possibility of unlimited sweets tempted me toward that career. We weren't allowed, at home." Giles returned her smile, and wondered if, left to steer his own course, he'd have made a pilot. What a stupendously different life that would have been.

He leaned back into the booth, shutting his eyes. His sight had already begun to fail somewhat by the time his mother married Mr. Stanley, but perhaps that was the endless hours of reading, deciphering page after page of cramped characters printed on tissue-thin paper from volumes thick as Bibles. Augustina, he remembered, would come across him in his father's study late at night, and would embrace and caress him, enfolding him in her lovely girl-scent.

He'd imprinted early on women of her type: not so much her looks, in appearance every woman he'd loved had been quite different--but even sweet Eva had possessed a strong streak of that stubborn, knife-edged confidence--enough, at least to carry her away from him. He'd often quarreled with Augustina, and life with Moira was at times akin to a war waged between an army of less-than-patient diplomats and an army of berserkers. He'd loved trading barbs with Jenny, and Buffy...oh, Buffy could be his heaven, all the zest that so excited him, combined with a warmth that, at its best, made him feel secure, loved, at peace.

He wanted to call out to her, just to see her turn, and smile. He found himself hungry, every minute, for the sound of her voice. Ridiculous it was, really, that he so could not bear to be apart from her.

Giles focused, to see Willow regarding him once more.

"You've got it bad, don't you?" Willow said. She looked as if she wanted to say something more, words of caution, perhaps, or support, but at that moment Buffy and Xander returned.

"Wake up call," Xander said, plunking a tray down on the table. He passed Giles a covered Styrofoam container, and handfuls of saltines. "When I was little, my mom always fed me crackers if my stomach felt bad. 'Course that usually just meant I threw up crackers instead of something else, but you get the idea. I got you juice too, and it's in a bottle, so you can take it with you if you don't want it now."

"I'm all right," Giles repeated, for what seemed the hundredth time that day, then added, "Thank you, Xander. What do I owe you?"

"You paid. I still had your wallet." Buffy handed it over, distributing the food efficiently before she whisked the tray away.

She'd been a waitress, Giles recalled, that awful summer after she sent Angel to hell. Buffy slid in beside him, prying the lid from his container of soup. "You have to eat it all," she told him. "Even if it tastes yucky."

Giles stirred the soup with his plastic spoon and tried a sip. It tasted salty, though not unpleasant. Suddenly he found that he was hungry after all. He'd finished it even before Xander swallowed the last bit of his first burger and plunged on to the second. Buffy and Willow also had burgers, which they seemed to enjoy.

Giles turned his attention to the tea.

The beverage, too, tasted remarkably good, and leaning back in the booth, he sipped the fragrant liquid, allowing it to warm his insides. Three-piece suit aside, he'd felt chilled in the artificially-frigid air.

"You're not gonna eat those, are you?" Xander asked, gesturing at the saltines--torn, obviously, between generosity and a desire to consume every edible substance in the place. His own plate resembled a field after visitation by a plague of locusts.

"Be my guest."

"We could get you a burger too, if you're still hungry," Buffy offered, "Or a sandwich or something."

"We'll be served a meal on the flight, Buffy. Probably several. I'm not a growing boy, as Xander is."

Xander had already munched his way through a dozen of the little packets, devouring every crumb. Truly, it was a marvel. "Okay!" He twisted around to glance at the wall-clock. "You guys should get to your gate."

A silence fell between them, during which Buffy burrowed again through her bag, and Willow cleared the table, depositing all their leavings nearly into a rubbish bin. The quiet continued as they walked toward the security check-point, where Buffy and Giles, again, would be required to show their passports and boarding cards.

"So," Xander said.

"So," Buffy answered. She embraced the boy quickly, whispering something into his ear which made Xander smile. She hugged Willow next, lifting her bodily off the ground.

"Oh! Oh! Ribs!" Willow exclaimed, making Giles glad he wasn't the only one occasionally disconcerted by Buffy's enthusiasm. "I'm so much gonna miss you."

"Me too," Buffy said. "Miss you, I mean. Check on my mom, okay? Make sure she's dealing?"

"Okay." Willow rose on tip-toe to kiss Giles on the cheek. "You guys take care. Watch out for weirdness."

"And you," Giles answered. "Err on the side of caution. Anything untoward, refer to Moira."

"Nice to hear that vocabulary's coming back," Xander laughed, pulling Giles into a quick, embarrassed hug.

Walking away from their friends, Buffy's hand again slipped into his. Neither one of them would look back, though Buffy's face, to Giles's eyes, appeared desolate.

"We shan't be gone long," he murmured to her, as they waited to pass through the scanner.

"Yeah, I know, I know," she answered. "But you know how much I wanted to leave Sunnydale? Now I'm scared to go away."