Transitions - Ch. 23

Buffy woke with a scream tearing her throat. She couldn't remember sitting up, but there she was--upright in the middle of the bed, sweat-soaked, shaking and scared. For a minute she had the little-kid fear of being left all alone, but when she reached over, Giles was there. Just being able to touch him comforted her.

It surprised Buffy that he hadn't woken--usually he was such a light sleeper any little thing disturbed him. Then she realized that Giles was locked in nightmares of his own.

"Ethan," he gasped. "Dammit, Ethan, wake up. I need you."

Huh? Buffy thought

"Help me stop this," Giles was pleading. "I can't do it alone. Deirdre, Robert, Phillip--we must say the spell. We must say the spell."

Buffy shivered. Outside the covers, the air was like winter. When she touched Giles's arm, his skin felt icy, only the Eyghon tattoo just below the inside of his elbow was warm--hot, even. He was shaking with the chill. His skin ran with cold sweat. He had nightmares nearly every night--she knew that, had she seen it happen, and seen how he'd wake himself up and often not go back to sleep again. This was different.

"Giles." Buffy pushed on his shoulder. "Giles. Rupert." Two more sharp pushes, harder than she intended, but he still didn't wake. His right arm flailed toward her at full strength. Instinctively, Buffy blocked the blow, and Giles cried out, but still didn't wake.

"Sweetie, c'mon." She gave him a good, hard shake. "You have to wake up. You're having a bad dream."

His breathing was tortured, and somewhere underneath it, he was calling out Randall's name. Okay, she thought. Now officially scary. She shook him again, harder, but he wouldn't come to.

The raw place on her ankle itched, and Buffy rubbed it absently while she tried to decide what she should do. The remnants of her own dream haunted her: she thought it had been about her mom, some sort of badness with her mom.

Buffy got up out of bed, shivering violently, and dug her sweats and thick socks out of her suitcase. Once they were on she still felt cold, but not quite as bad. She padded into the bathroom and fetched a towel. Bending over the bed, she wiped Giles's face, and his bare chest. He stirred a little, almost as if he was waking up--but he didn't wake.

On an impulse, she bent and kissed him, just a gentle little kiss. Giles sighed and quieted. "Oh, it's all right, then." His voice sounded different, younger, his accent not quite what she was used to. "I had the most dreadful dream: I dreamt you'd died, and it was horrible, Ran."

Ran? she thought. Randall?

Buffy jumped back as if she'd been bitten.

Next thing she knew, she was downstairs, not even sure why she'd gone there, or what she wanted. She told herself she was thirsty, that she wanted a glass of milk to help her sleep, but that was just an excuse. She'd wanted to be away from Giles, and that made her mad at herself. It was so not fair. He didn't blame her for who she'd loved a month ago--what right did she have to blame him for things that happened a quarter of a century before?

Except that he still dreamed about them, and he'd mistaken her kiss for someone else's.

So now he has to be accountable to you twenty-four/seven? He has to watch what he thinks and says even when he sleeps? Why don't you see how completely difficult you can make his life?

In the dark kitchen, Buffy found a glass, and filled it with milk from the refrigerator. She followed the sound of a television down the hall to Sebastian's study. He was watching a British program that had two nice-looking young men in old fashioned clothes, one of whom was Jeremy Irons, only younger than she'd ever seen him. She'd forgotten what a pleasant voice he had, all quiet and British like Giles's--when he wasn't playing Simba's evil Uncle Scar in The Lion King. On the screen, the two young men were riding in a gondola, half asleep, one's head on the other's shoulder, then walking on a beach holding hands. Then an Italian lady was telling Jeremy something about romantic friendships and how they had to stop.

Sebastian sat cross-legged on the couch, watching. He had a glass of milk too, and a plate of cookies on the table--and the demon-in-a-jar was in his lap.

Buffy set down her milk next to the cookies and took the heavy lead jar away from him, carrying it across the room. She returned for her milk and sat down on the other end of the couch. Sebastian put the cookies between them, and Buffy took one. Despite the fact that she'd eaten dinner, unlike everyone else in the house, she still felt hungry.

The cookies were gingersnaps, which she could remember her grandma baking when she was really, really little. Since Celeste had probably made them, these were the best gingersnaps in the world.

"Whatcha watching?" she asked Sebastian.

He glanced at her. "It's called Brideshead Revisited. About two chaps who meet at Oxford and fall in love, though it's never actually said so. The dark-haired one is Charles."

"Yeah, Jeremy Irons. I like his voice."

Sebastian smiled. "And the yellow-haired fellow's Sebastian Flyte. Brideshead is the name of his family's estate."

"Nothing happy happens here, right?"

"Let's see--Sebastian becomes a drunkard and eventually ends up a poor lay brother at a monastery--in Africa, I believe it is. Charles marries Sebastian's sister, but eventually they part ways, and the lovely house is converted to a army HQ during the war. Celeste quite hates that part."

"Oh. Literature. Depressing."

Sebastian laughed. On the screen, credits began to roll. Giles's son dug the remote out of the couch cushions and switched off the power.

"How come you had the demon in your lap?" Buffy asked him.

"I kept fearing it would escape," Sebastian answered, but Buffy didn't think that was the whole truth. "Why are you up?"

"I had a bad dream."

"There's more than that troubling you. Did you want to tell me?" Sebastian asked.

Buffy shrugged. She'd probably work her way around to it eventually--but not yet. "Do you have any pictures of your dad when he was younger? Like, a kid and everything?"

Sebastian gave her a look--one of Giles's looks, that said he knew she was covering up, but he wasn't going to push it. Without a word, he went over to his desk and dug out a flat box, detouring to switch on the lights, then circled back to collect what looked like a stack of letters from the desk drawer.

Buffy moved the cookies, and Sebastian sat down beside her, the box on his other side. "Here's one of, I suppose you might say, my grandparents - Henry and Clara Giles."

"Whoa, that family resemblance thing is spooky." The way Sebastian looked like her Giles, her Giles looked exactly like his dad, right down to the wire-rimmed glasses. In the picture--a wedding picture, apparently, from the carnation in Henry's lapel and the little veil Clara wore with her suit--Henry looked about the same age Rupert was now, and Clara not much older than Buffy. "Giles's dad liked younger women too, huh?"

"For as long as I've had that picture, I always thought how fragile she looked, how beautiful she was--like one of those Victorian heroines too good for this world. Which, of course, she wasn't."

"If it's not too much of a big morbid thing, how did she die?"

"Heart, I believe. It wasn't made clear. I was merely asked to inform my dad."

"Asked by who?"

"By whom, Buffy."

"You really do sound like Giles! Who asked you?"

"Someone from the Watchers' Council, I believe. One likes to think they're not entirely heartless."

Warning bells went off in Buffy's head, but she shut them up as Sebastian pulled out the next picture.

"There's Rupert there, in the middle. Clarice on the left and Marianna to the right."

Marianna did look fierce. Even though the picture was in black and white, Buffy could tell she had dark hair and those intense Giles eyes--and she had her hockey stick grasped firmly and protectively in one hand. Clarice was the cutest thing Buffy ever saw--like one of those little kids in a Mary Engelbreit drawing. She had a round face, and long, shiny hair, and the brightest almond-shaped eyes Buffy had ever seen. With her, at least, Giles appeared to be the world's nicest big brother, because the two of them were holding hands, and smiling at each other.

All three of the kids had a kind of Xanderish look, though, as if, young as they were, they had to take care of their own hair and clothes, and didn't do it particularly well. They were all dressed in shorts, t-shirts, and sneakers without socks, mostly pretty grubby. Someone had brushed Clarice's hair and put it up in a slightly off-center ponytail, but Rupert's and Marianna's curly hair was way overdue for being cut, and Rupert had two black eyes and a piece of tape across his nose, the aftermath of the hockey stick incident, Buffy guessed. She wondered if his parents had even taken him to the doctor--probably not, since it hadn't been set right.

She glanced up at Sebastian, seeing his sympathetic look. "They don't appear very well looked-after, do they? But Rupert says they were happy. They had one another. Perhaps that was enough."

Silently, Buffy took the next picture he handed her. This one was recognizably Giles, in what was probably his school uniform: white shirt, maroon sweater vest, striped tie, blue blazer. He was bone-thin, and his hair had been cut brutally short, so you couldn't see any trace of the curl at all. His eyes, behind round, wire-rimmed glasses, looked bleak and tired--gray, with dark circles beneath them. He couldn't have been any older than thirteen or fourteen, but the expression on his face make him look like an eighty-year-old who'd lived a hard, unhappy life. She'd never seen a kid with that expression before. His shoulders were hunched, as if he'd been carrying something heavy for a long time, and couldn't find the energy to straighten up again.

"I was born a year after that photograph was taken," Sebastian said quietly. "I can imagine the boy in that picture giving me life, but I can't imagine him trying to raise me. I loved them, you know--the Delacoeurs. They were the loveliest people. One couldn't have asked for better grandparents, and that is how I thought of them.

"Do you know what Moira said on the BBC at the '76 Olympics? She was asked if she wished to dedicate her medal to anyone--that's the sort of thing they ask one, apparently. I watched her on the telly, as her eyes filled up with tears. She said she wanted to dedicate it to Sebastian, who couldn't be with her. My mum, Gemma, started crying at that, though she wouldn't say why. I developed a fantasy that Moira was my real mum, and I would not be swayed, even though my dad, Clive, said he'd punish me for upsetting Gemma--but he never did. I collected all her clippings, all the pictures in the sport magazines. I believe I wept when she announced her retirement shortly after, afraid I'd never hear of her again."

Sebastian took another picture from the box. "There's dad at about your age, at Oxford. He was quite the rugby player, I gather, in his day."

Buffy's jaw dropped as she stared at the picture. Giles, at eighteen, in his shorts and rugby shirt, was even more of a hottie than she'd guessed. He had great legs, and his hair was long and curly, his smile bright. "Wow. He bounced back."

The were other guys in the picture, some probably on the team, others civilians - but one stood out. He was short, and blonde, and looked like an angel. Not like her Angel, big, dark and brooding, but like one of the angel statues that stood around Sunnydale's multiple cemeteries--large blue eyes, straight golden hair and--for a guy--delicate features.

He looked enough like her to be her brother. Buffy felt the picture fall out of her hand.

"Buffy, is there something wrong?" Sebastian asked.

Randall looked like her--or she looked like Randall. Buffy wanted to cry. Her little voice of uncertainty started whispering all sorts of things, even while her common sense gave her a stern talking to. You didn't love someone so much that you were willing to give up your life because they happened to look like someone else you'd cared about twenty-five years ago. Of course Giles loved her--of course she was important to him. Randall was just in the front of his mind because of the weirdness with Sebastian earlier.

"Buffy!" Sebastian said, a little more sharply.

"It's okay. It just kinda--you know--that we look so much alike. Randall and me. Like I'm not--" She took a big gasping breath, and the words came out in a rush. "Like I'm supposed to be him."

"Buffy," Sebastian repeated, in a tone that was kind but a little bit stern. He picked up a the bundle of letters, undid the ribbon that held them together, and started leafing through the stack. "In many ways, you ought to thank Randall."

"How come?" Buffy answered, knowing she sounded just snotty as hell. She started to add something, then decided that it sounded both mean and crude, and barely managed to control her tongue.

"Because without Randall he would have been lost to Ripper, and perhaps to all human feeling, as well. Randall was not like those others. He may not have been a strong boy, but I believe him to have been a good person, and the still, small voice of conscience in that terrible place where they lived. That business with Eyghon--in an odd way, it was Rupert's remorse over Randall's death that allowed him to return from that darkness, and become the man we know today. The man I love as my father, the man to whom you, Buffy, have promised your hand."

Sebastian pulled the letter he'd been looking for out of the stack. "If you've any doubt of his feelings for you, my dear, then you ought to read this." He collected his empty glass, and hers, and left the study.

Buffy sneaked another gingersnap, unfolding the letter.

"My Dear Sebastian," it began.

"Please forgive the unsteady character of my writing for this particular epistle. I've suffered a bit of a mishap recently, and as a result the first two fingers of my left hand are rather thoroughly splinted, which makes the act of holding a pen a bit more of a challenge than usual. Please rest assured that there is no other damage, and that the offending digits are healing well."

"Liar," Buffy said. Sometimes, when he'd had to do a lot of writing, she still saw Giles rubbing those fingers--and he must have been betting Sebastian would never see him shirtless, and would never find out about all those scars on his back. Buffy shook her head. Poor, brave, silly, Giles--God forbid anyone should worry about him.

"My letters may become somewhat sporadic over this summer, depending upon how the cards play themselves out. As I wrote to you briefly before, my dear Buffy has disappeared, and I swear that I shall find her, if I possibly can. Your offer of a loan was kindly meant, I know--but allow your father to keep a bit of his pride, Seb, and refuse you for now. I've a bit put away, and it will suffice. As you know, my needs are not elaborate. Once I've finally heard from Buffy as to what shall be, I will ask you, however, to see if you can't find a buyer for my London flat. It's a decent flat, as you know, and ought to fetch a decent price, once the paperwork sorts itself out. You know that I have no immediate plans for returning to London.

"I write to you now, Sebastian, from Los Angeles. My flight has been delayed an hour, and I'm fighting rather an urgent desire to fall asleep where I sit, which would most likely cause me to miss my departure altogether. I try to be a stoic, Seb, but there are times when that wears thin, and all I can see is how I love her, and I miss her. There are times when I believe I am invisible to her eyes, or if I can be seen, it is as an annoyance. She must truly perceive me as one of the stuffy grey men I so railed against when I was her age.

"On the way down here, I found myself thinking of Randall. How so long ago now, I cared for him and failed him. I think of Jenny, and how I failed her as well. I must not fail Buffy.

"I said to myself that I loved Jenny--and in truth I did--but it was nothing compared to this. I say that I love this girl, but love is not a strong enough word. There are no words strong enough for this emotion. All the words of praise put together could not be strong enough. The most I can say is that she is all my heart and all my soul, my rising and my setting sun. When she smiles, it is like all the light of the world brought together in one place.

"I suppose that, in truth, I might live on without her, but what is a man without his soul, who can perceive only darkness? You told me once, Sebastian, that the true hell is the absence of hope.

"This sounds like so much foolishness, I know--but you, too, love a rare woman, and you understand my meaning.

"Buffy wrote to her mother that she blames me for all this pain that has come into her life, and why should she not? I cannot expect her to love me in return, or to forgive me for my part in her suffering. I only want to see her safe amongst her family and her friends. Perhaps, then, she might someday be healed.

"I was weak, and in a moment of weakness told a secret that should never been spoken. May God--or whomever--forgive me. I wish that you were here beside me, my dear son, to give absolution, and speak your words of wisdom and kindness to me. I love you Sebastian, and I miss you. Never doubt that.

"I shall write to you again when I can.

"Your loving father."

Buffy folded the letter and handed it back to Sebastian. He tucked it into its place in the stack.

"I should--" she said.

"It's late," Sebastian answered. "We both ought to be in our beds."

"How are you doing, really, after the demon thing?" Buffy asked him.

"I don't know," he said, honestly. "I feel odd, and afraid, and dirty inside. But I shall try to shake it off."

"I'd do that, if you can. 'Cause people love you."

Sebastian smiled. "And how are you?"

"Jealous. Silly. Kinda weepy after reading that letter. He lied to you, ya know."

"Did he?"

"There are scars all over his back. Angelus just beat the hell out of him--or something. Broken ribs, the whole nine yards."

"I suspected as much. There's one letter in here I shall never let you read. He was terribly angry when you hid Angel's return."

"Well, I had that coming."

"Not angry at you, but at himself, Buffy. Promise me you'll never let him feel such self-loathing again?"

Buffy blushed, knowing that Giles had written stuff about her, probably trying to put her in the best light, but Sebastian might have given events his own spin. "I know Giles probably described things the nice way, but do I come off as a total ditz in those letters?"

"You 'come off,' as you say, Buffy, as a brave young woman trying to make her way in the world. You have made mistakes, but so have we all. I'm certainly no one to criticize another." He looked up at her with a lot of grayness in his green eyes.

Buffy touched his shoulder. "You're a good guy, Seb. I'm going upstairs now."

"Goodnight, my dear," he said.

"You go upstairs too. Get in bed with your gorgeous wife, 'cause you're making her sad."

"I? Make Celeste sad?" Sebastian had a Giles-like look of amazement.

"Yeah, you, dumb guy," Buffy said, smiling. "She's kinda crazy about you. She was so upset when you were out on the terrace she folded like ten different napkin-animals and didn't even know she'd done it." Buffy bent down to kiss his cheek. "So, goodnight, Seb."

She climbed the stairs, going back to the pretty bedroom that now, with their stuff inside and the bed all messed up almost didn't seem too pretty to sleep in. Giles was sitting up against the headboard, a book on his lap and his hand over his eyes.

"Hey." Buffy bounced up onto the bed. "Whatcha reading?"

"Nothing." With a grimace, Giles shut the book and dropped it into the nightstand drawer. "It's no bloody use." He covered his eyes again.

He looked so upset, she thoroughly regretted her fit of jealous weirdness. For God's sake, the poor guy had just been dreaming, and she'd stomped out of the room.

"Let's break this down," Buffy said. "You've had memories coming back right and left, so that's a good, even if the way you get them is a little freaksome. So what are we talking here, with the reading problem? Do you see the words but not get them, or is it more of a vision thing? Because if you're just having a hard time seeing them, isn't that gonna be more a 'my head left a big dent in my wall about a week ago and my brain cells are still rattling back into place' sort of situation?"

Giles looked at her in surprise. "The words swim about. It's alarming."

"And this whole no eating, bad nightmare, not enough sleep thing you've got going is really gonna help a lot with that? You know, earlier, you were having this dream that was giving you a major wiggins, and I couldn't wake you up out of it. So I'm glad you're not doing that anymore--but I'm not glad to see you awake."

"You're not sleeping either," Giles pointed out.

"Seb and I were watching something educational on TV. It was literature, which means depressing. There were these two guys who met at Oxford, and they really cared about each other, and then something bad happened to one of them."

"Ah, you were watching Brideshead Revisited," Giles began, then looked at her. "Oh."

"Sebastian said that Randall was the only person who stopped you from going all Darth Vader, back when you were my age."

"Well, I did go fairly Darth Vader," Giles said, so quietly she could hardly hear.

"And so did I this year. So I guess we're back to where we were at the start of the evening, where I love you, and you love me, and even when things freak us out, that doesn't change?"

Giles took her into his arms, holding her so close it nearly hurt. "That will never change. Never, Buffy."

"Sebastian showed me the letter you wrote, right after I ran away."

"Oh," he repeated. "He ought not--"

"Giles," Buffy said, and stopped his mouth with a kiss. "It's all mutual." She snuggled up against him. "What time for the train tomorrow?"

"Not until nearly two. But if we wake in time, would you mind very much taking a stroll by the museum? There are people I'd like you to meet, though you needn't if the thought's too horrid."

Yikes, Buffy thought. Sleep deprivation and meeting smart people. These are things that don't mix.

"Okay," she said. "That sounds cool."