Transitions - Ch. 18

"So, what does your son look like?" Buffy asked, as they climbed the ramp between the jet and their gate. The carpet beneath her feet was a dark gray, and the walls a lighter shade of the same color, as if they were walking through a big raincloud. At the top of the ramp was more of the same, the carpet studded with uncomfortable chairs of the kind Buffy had seen in every airport she'd ever been to. A crowd of people clustered there, waiting to greet their disembarking loved ones.

"Rather like me." Giles shrugged, and Buffy tried to decipher his expression--she'd half-expected him to look happy to be back in his homeland, but he didn't, or not exactly. Since that one hellacious outburst he hadn't even mentioned his mom, or the funeral, or any plans beyond tomorrow. She couldn't tell if he was just tired--after all, on the plane, she'd slept but he hadn't-- or if he was repressing big-time.

"Younger, of course," Giles continued. "Better looking. Better tempered by far--quite unlike me in that respect."

"Well, he doesn't have me to put up with," Buffy joked, but Giles didn't get it.

"You're far too hard on yourself, Buffy," he answered, in a serious tone, as he scanned the crowd, apparently not spotting the person he was looking for.

"Giles, sweetie, remind me to remind you of those words six months from now, when you've gotten your memories back and I've done something that makes steam come out your ears."

"Do you think that's likely to occur?" Giles asked, in the same serious voice--but a glance at his face told Buffy she'd lightened his mood, at least a little. He'd meant it as a joke.

"Where we live?" She smiled up at him. "Ya never know."

Giles's hand moved to Buffy's back, resting just between her shoulderblades; the warmth of his touch went right through her. It was an old fashioned, gentlemanly gesture, and yet it spoke volumes. They were together. They were joined. She felt like the heroine in one of her romance novels. Touched by him, she felt beloved.

"That's odd," Giles said. The other people from their flight had seemed to get their meeting-and-greeting over with fairly quickly, and had moved away. In consideration of her companion's less than perfect vision, Buffy glanced around too, but few of the men she saw were the right age, and none of them looked anything like Giles.

It was weird--all the British people she'd met before: Giles himself, Wesley, Moira, even icky Mrs. Post and Quentin Travers had been fairly tall, so she'd kind of expected that everyone in the country would be the same--but they weren't. Lots were only average height, and some of the guys, especially the older ones, weren't that much taller than she was. There were plenty of women her height, and plenty more that could only be described as tiny. Also, Buffy had never seen so much drab-colored clothing in her life. Except for a few Indian women in their beautiful saris, and some of the--maybe--Africans dressed in clothes with complicated patterns, the dominant shades seemed to be beige, gray and navy. Giles, in his gray suit, blended right in.

Added to that, most of the everyone-in-my-family-tree-was-British people seemed to have kind of medium-colored eyes and medium-colored skin and hair. Most of them, like Giles, talked quietly, though she heard all kinds of accents.

"Welcome to Tweedworld," Buffy muttered.

"What's that?" Giles asked her, then added, in an almost--for him--apprehensive voice, "Sebastian's not here."

"Maybe he got stuck in traffic?" Buffy suggested, shifting their two bags on her shoulder. Giles's didn't weigh much, but she'd practically had to hit him over the head before he'd let her carry it. "Do people get stuck in traffic here?"

"Oh, yes. Most definitely." Giles's hand moved up to her shoulder, kneading her slightly tense muscles.

Buffy glanced out the windows. Outside, it was all ugly and airporty, not what she'd expected. She didn't know exactly what she'd expected to see. Windswept countryside, she guessed--she'd heard the name "Heathrow" and it had made her think "Heathcliff," like in that movie Willow had insisted on renting with Ralph Fiennes in it, which Will had liked, but Buffy hadn't, because the guy Ralph played had been so extremely mean and cranky, with gross hair, too, and that girl Cathy he'd been in love with was just plain stupid. The scenery had been beautiful, though, in a wild way that was totally un-California and, now that she was in England, that was the sight Buffy had expected to greet her. Instead she got gray skies and concrete.

She didn't know what she expected about anything, really, but she was prepared to be mad at Sebastian for standing up his dad and making him stress.

"So, what do we do?" she asked Giles.

"Collect our baggage, wait a bit, and if he still hasn't arrived, make our own way into town. It isn't as though I haven't done this before," he answered.

"Someone's always supposed to meet you at the airport. It's, like, a law, or a rule, or something." Buffy was definitely mad at Giles's son, she decided. Sebastian knew his dad wasn't feeling his best.

Then a not-exactly-happy thought hit her. What if it was her? What if there was some sort of bad feeling because of her, and that's why Sebastian hadn't shown? But he'd said he would, hadn't he, and if you couldn't rely on a minister to keep his word, who could you count on?

"Let's go, shall we? Find our luggage?" Giles seemed a little disappointed, but not particularly upset. Buffy let out a breath that she hadn't known she'd been holding.

"I don't want you to have to deal with it," she said. Buffy noticed that they were heading in the opposite direction to the one that said baggage claim, and got them turned around again. "So, you've done this before?" she teased.

The minute Buffy said the words, she felt sorry. Giles's sense of direction seemed to have said goodbye along with all the other stuff, and it was hardly fair for her to give him a hard time about that--she remembered how bad she'd felt when she lost her own powers, and how even knowing the loss was temporary didn't make it any easier to take. Giles couldn't even be sure that this was temporary.

"I assure you, Buffy," he told her, just a teeny bit abruptly, "That I am perfectly capable of handling my own luggage."

"I'm sorry," she said. "Anyone can get turned around. I just happened to notice the sign."

"But I never did before, did I? Get turned around, that is. As for the sign--" He swallowed hard, and pulled away from her a little, sliding his good hand into his pocket, his shoulders hunching as he walked. Buffy could read him perfectly. She knew so many of his little gestures and what they meant: he was horribly angry at himself, maybe worried about Sebastian too--and from that she knew Giles's son was the kind of person you could rely on, not the kind who flaked out on you. And his inability to make out the sign had scared him.

"Giles, stop." Buffy caught hold of his arm. "Stop. Calm down." God, he really was upset, even more than she'd thought. "Funny, huh, me saying that to you?"

Giles stopped, shut his eyes, and took a series of deep breaths.

"See, it's no big," Buffy said soothingly. "People get turned around in airports all the time. Other people get stuck in traffic and are late picking them up. It doesn't mean anything, Giles. It's not like you to overreact to things."

Giles pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Okay, he was tired, and she'd seen him get cranky when he was tired before. That didn't mean anything either. She hoped.

"Thank you," he said. "For reminding me." His voice sounded dry, and Buffy wasn't sure for a minute if he was honestly thanking her, or maybe abusing sarcasm just a little bit. He hadn't been snide with her in the longest time, so long that she almost missed it.

"Reminding you of what?" Buffy asked, timidly--half afraid to find out what Giles was actually thinking.

"How I'm meant to be," Giles answered. He kept walking, but Buffy was so shocked she could only stand there with her mouth hanging open, having a Wesley moment.

He meant...What did he mean? she wondered. What did Giles mean? That because he loved her so much, he was trying to live up to some standard of Gilesness that she'd invented?

Well, that for sure wasn't like him. He was a caring, kind and, in lots of ways, generous man, but he was also stubborn as hell, and when he made up his mind about something, it could literally take physical violence to make him back down again.

She remembered the night she'd gone to fight the Master--how Giles had intended to go in her place and she'd actually had to knock him out to stop him. Or the way she knew he'd searched for her the previous summer--he'd been tortured, and she'd seen the horrible evidence of how bad that had been--but she knew from Willow and Xander that he'd never stopped, never let pain or discouragement make him give up.

Giles had gotten a long way out in front of her. Buffy took off running, the soles of her shoes skidding a little at the place where the gray carpet ended and gave way to slick, gray-speckled tile floor. She grabbed his arm harder than she intended, spinning him back around to face her.

"Where is it?" she demanded, suddenly realizing that they were fighting, with no idea in the world how they'd gotten there. Giles looked pale in the flourescent lights, and desperately tired. Buffy didn't know what she was saying to him, or why she said it, but the words came out anyway. "Where's your stubbornness? How can you let yourself be this way?"

"Buffy," Giles said, in his usual quiet voice, looking down at her, his gaze more focused than it had been in days. "Do you honestly believe this doesn't take stubbornness?"

"What doesn't?" Buffy took a step backward, suddenly unable to read him again. "Or does." She paused. "Whatever I'm trying to say."

"To reinvent one's self out of nothing. Do you honestly believe that doesn't require an act of will?"

"I--" Buffy began, teetering on the brink of figuring out what he was trying to say. "I--Giles, don't be mad at me."

Giles touched her cheek, stroking the line of it with his thumb. "My love, I'm not angry with you. You've misunderstood."

"Sometimes I don't understand you," she admitted. "Or sometimes--and don't take this wrong--I'm afraid to know what you're going through."

"I'm always afraid," he answered. "Always, when you're out there in the night, I'm terrified for you. I never want to send you out alone, and yet I'm afraid that I'd be merely a hindrance, were I to accompany you. I can never sleep until I know you are safe."

"You remember that?" She looked up at him, into his eyes which were, at that moment, more gray than green.

He nodded, so slightly Buffy could hardly see.

"So, when I'd forget to check in, or when I went to The Bronze first, and then called?" She didn't dare mention the times she'd gone to Angel, been with Angel, and never even thought.

Giles didn't answer her questions, but Buffy knew. She remembered all the times she'd teased him about looking like he'd slept in his clothes.

"In the past," he said, finally, "I could do my bit. Not the greatest part, I know--but what I could. It's true that I missed things now and then, but not so terribly often." He took off his glasses again, and his eyes caught hers, wide and vulnerable.

"No," Buffy said, not even sure if she was contradicting him, or just trying to stop him from saying the words. "You were--are--great."

"I can't take the thought of you--" His voice broke suddenly. "I can't bear the thought of you having to rely upon bloody Wesley."

"I don't--" Buffy began. "I can--" But the fact was, she couldn't. Half of her arsenal lay inside the dusty, musty books, and if he couldn't deal with them, who would? Willow, Xander and Oz were great about helping, but only with the ones in English. That left Wes, who she'd pretty much told to go to hell, and Moira, who had a life of her own and wasn't going to stick around forever.

Wesley, she knew--though not really a bad guy in his way, after all--wasn't nearly as smart as Giles. He was inexperienced; he missed things. Big things even. He'd missed the fact that the demon Balthazar wasn't dead, and you couldn't get much bigger than that. Wesley, with all the good intentions in the world, was likely to get her killed, no matter what she'd told Giles a few days earlier.

How long had Giles been worrying about this? she wondered. How awful did it make him feel? She'd needed him, and he'd saved her. She needed him now--well, maybe not at-this-minute now, but soon--and he wouldn't, as things stood, be able to help her. It must be killing him.

"I wanted you here with me," he confessed, "Not merely because I can no longer bear to be apart from you, but because I was afraid of what you might encounter, so near the Hellmouth."

"You know we'll have to go back, right?"

Giles sighed. "Yes, I know."

Buffy let the bags drop to the floor and slipped her arms around his waist. She pressed her face to his chest, being careful of his injured hand. So close, all she could feel was his warmth and his solidness, with none of his uncertainty. They would deal. Somehow, they would deal.

"For better or for worse, Giles," she whispered against his vest, "In sickness and in health. From this day forward."

Neither of them added the final line. They never would. That was something that hovered too close to them to ever, ever be admitted.