Transitions - Ch. 36

Buffy wouldn't have woken up at all if she hadn't needed to go to the bathroom, and for a little while she tried that old trick of switching positions, shifting to her back or her side or her stomach, in hopes that the feeling would go away--but that didn't work for very long. She had to get up, and she didn't want to. It occurred to her that she was back at the aunts' house, Appleyard, with no memory in the world of how she'd gotten there.

Buffy slid out of bed, thinking, This is okay, I can handle it, but the minute her feet hit the floor she nearly went down again. She'd never felt quite that wobbly, and she could only make it to the door by touching random pieces of furniture for balance on her way, the way she'd sometimes teased Giles about doing after some of the more serious of his frequent head injuries. He looked like an old man doing that, she'd told him--and if that was the case she must seriously look like an old lady, because she was having a hard time even standing up straight.

She promised herself never to say anything like that to him again, and she really hoped that she'd live up to her good intentions. There was teasing and then there was teasing, after all, the one kind being okay, the other not too nice.

Like when Faith had told Giles she thought he was young and cute, and Buffy had answered...

Buffy didn't want to go there. It made her too ashamed of herself. What had been wrong with her?

She made it down the hall, did what she needed to, and tottered back again. So much for Slayer Strength and Slayer Healing, she thought--but then figured she was lucky to be alive. Thanks to Giles once again. Speaking of which, where was he? Like his place in Sunnydale, Appleyard seemed ultra-quiet. She wondered if Gileses naturally let off some kind of noise-dampening field.

Buffy crawled back into bed and lay there, breathing hard, kind of hoping she wouldn't have to move again all day. Actually, she probably wouldn't have to. Pretty soon, Giles would be up to check on her, and if she lay there on the pillows looking all pitiful, he'd bring her anything she wanted. Bad Buffy, she told herself--even as she started thinking about what she'd like for breakfast.

Instead, after a little bit, Aunt Rose appeared, looking serious. She had her doctor bag in one hand, and though she gave Buffy a little smile, it didn't really reach her eyes--she definitely didn't look happy, that was a big for sure. Buffy got a little scared, as if maybe something bad was still wrong with her after all, but Rose told her, "Be calm, Buffy. This is only a checkup."

She looked into Buffy's eyes and ears and throat with her scope-thingy, and made her follow the finger, and felt her throat, then warmed her stethoscope and listened to Buffy's heart and lungs carefully. She made her lie back and prodded her stomach, which was still kind of achy.

Afterwards, Rose folded up her equipment and stowed it away neatly in the bag. "Still a bit weak, are you?" she asked.

Buffy nodded.

"I'd advise that you stay quiet another day or so. Recover your strength. That was quite an ordeal you went through."

"But I'm okay, aren't I?" Buffy asked.

"Yes, dear," Rose answered, distracted.

"And...um...Rupert? He's okay too?"

"Our poor boy," Aunt Rose said, "Our poor boy. How much more is he expected to bear?"

"What do you mean?" Buffy's heart started beating too fast. She got dizzy, and had to lie back again. "He's okay, isn't he? Giles is okay?"

Aunt Rose took a piece of paper from the pocket of her sensible tweed skirt. Buffy stared at the words, "Margery's Strawberry Trifle," written in blue ink, in unfamiliar, spiky handwriting. She didn't get it. Rose had to turn the paper over in her hands, and there was Giles's note.

She'd always thought what nice handwriting Giles had--all even, and almost pretty. Not the kind of writing you expected from a big guy like him. But then again, maybe it was the kind of writing you should expect from someone who loved words as much as Giles did. The writing on this note was just barely recognizable as his, all loopy and shaky and scrawly, like he'd been in a hurry and scared about something.

The note said this:

My Dearest Buffy,

Sebastian's gone missing, and Moira and I must find him. You are ABSOLUTELY NOT to follow until you are yourself, well and strong, once more. Please, my love, listen to me this time, and don't think I'm being peremptory. As you told your mother before the Ascension, I can't do this and worry about you. Let me venture forth knowing you are safe, and I needn't be concerned. Promise me?

All my best love,

Giles

"What's peremptory?" Buffy asked Aunt Rose.

"High-handed. Bossy."

"Bossy man," Buffy whispered, her eyes stinging with tears. "Do they think...? Is Seb...?"

"It's too soon to tell," Rose answered. Her eyes got a distant look. "Too soon, by far."

In a little while she left and Willow came in her place, bringing a tray with toast, juice and yogurt. Buffy was too starving not to eat, but she cried the whole time, until Willow looked nearly frantic. Her friend didn't know Seb that well. She didn't know how Giles felt about him. If Willow did, she'd be crying too.

When Buffy had finished, Willow took the tray and crawled up on the bed. In a little while more, Xander joined them, and they all three sat, miserable, on the huge mattress.

"He'll be all right, right?" Willow asked, finally. It wasn't clear, exactly, which "he" she meant.

"He's Giles," Xander assured her. "He'll figure out something."

"Poor Giles." Willow gave a sad little giggle. "He got squeaky!"

Buffy looked at her as if she was crazy.

"He lost his voice really bad," Willow explained, "So all that came out was this little sound, like if you stepped on a squeaky-toy?"

"So he can't do magic." Buffy felt cold, and suddenly furious. "He can't even talk to do magic, and you think this is funny?"

"Buffster," Xander said. "Maybe time to crank back on the rage-o-meter?"

Willow hadn't taken offense. She made Buffy lie back, and lay beside her on top of the covers, stroking her hair. "It's like Xander says, he's Giles. Don't worry, Buffy."

"You keep saying that, that he's Giles. Well, okay, he is, but he's a person, and he's still not up to full strength--especially after all this stuff with me. And you didn't hear the guy."

"The guy?" Willow said.

"The guy. Mr. Stanley. You didn't hear him. He was like...evil. The way the mayor was evil. And he hurt Giles when he was a little kid, and he hurt his own son, and now he wants to hurt all of us." She started crying, harder and harder with every word. "And I'm so scared for him, that something bad will happen."

"Well," Xander told her, "There's always Moira."

"This would be bite-me-I-wanna-die, night-of-a-thousand-scars Moira?"

"Buffy--" Willow began, in the same gentle tone.

"Don't talk that way about her!" Xander snapped, just as angry as she'd been a minute earlier. For a little while they glared at each other, then Xander hung his head. "Buff, she's one of the family. I just don't wanna hear you talk that way about her."

Willow threw quick, worried looks at both of them. "Guys..."

Buffy rolled over onto her side. A minute later, Xander left, but Willow lingered, not talking, a quiet presence to watch over her in Giles's absence.

Moira roared up the M3 at speeds Giles quite suspected had heretofore never been attempted in an ordinary motor vehicle, weaving her way amongst the other cars as if they'd been standing still. Had not so much of his capability for terror already been engaged in worrying for Sebastian, he felt sure that his hair would have turned absolutely white by the time they reached the outskirts of London.

They'd barely spoken the entire journey, except for the time in which Moira dictated to him a list of the supplies she might need, to which Giles also added his own items. When the list was complete, Moira told him abruptly, "Give it me," and had, whilst continuing to drive, added her familiar knotted signature to the bottom of the page, then an imprint of the signet ring she wore on her right hand.

She made a brief stop in the neighborhood of Covent Garden, outside a dark little shop that appeared, from its window, to be the more exotic sort of parfumerie. Except that, inside, Giles breathed in odours that belonged to no perfume he'd ever encountered. A youngish woman with very long black hair and deathly white skin waited behind the counter. This apparition accepted his list, scanned it, and gave him quite a strange look--not strange in its expression, that was, but strange in that her eyes, for a moment, appeared to flash red. Before that moment, he'd taken her for one of those Gothic young persons, such as Amy Madison, or her timid young friend Michael, whose last name Giles could not recall.

"Oh, you're one of Her Ladyship's," the shopkeeper said, not deigning to explain herself further. She brought out a carrier bag with the word "Sabbat" imprinted in an elaborate script on one side, then began to collect the listed items.

This shop was either new, or remarkably well hidden--Giles had certainly never known of its existence. The young woman, upon closer scrutiny, revealed herself to be neither particularly young, nor actually a woman: siren, lamia or succubus would have been his guess, controlled by a particularly powerful binding spell, and Giles was still trying to decide which of the above she--or it--might in fact be when, with an impatient gesture, she presented his bag of purchases.

Ever methodical, Giles checked the contents of the carrier, ticking each item off against the list. Midway through, he had to stop, remove his glasses and rub his eyes, cursing inwardly. When would his vision return to normal? He hadn't time for this weakness.

He felt a cool hand touch his cheek, and looked down into eyes that were not precisely red, but tending toward that direction. Giles caught the offending hand and forced it away. "No," he told her, in his harsh demon's voice.

"I know you," the creature said. "Ripper."

"No," Giles told her coolly. "You're mistaken." He loaded his purchases back into the bag and hurried from the shop, to the accompaniment of her inhuman laughter. He would merely have to trust that she'd filled the order correctly; it certainly wasn't safe to linger.

"Moira!" he said in chastisement, as he rejoined his friend in the car.

"What is it, Rupert?"

"That creature--"

"Bit of a flirt." Moira shrugged. "She's bound, and her goods are the best in London." She drove in silence until they'd reached Gower Street. "Poor little Lamia, so far from home. She's been trapped here since the time of the Romans."

"You have the oddest acquaintances."

"Unlike you? What about the demon sorcerer, whom you introduced to that sweet little Rhoades Scholar from Pittsburgh?"

"He did me a good turn, just this year. They seem quite happy."

"I merely meant to make a point." She pulled into the carpark of the University College Hospital. "And do stop talking, Rupert, if at all possible. You quite make my throat hurt."

Giles gave her a look, which Moira returned, the two of them sitting silent in the stilled car. At length, she reached out to gently brush his cheek with the backs of her fingers, and told him softly. "We will find him, Rupert, and bring him home."

Giles threw his glasses on the dash and bent forward, pressing the tips of his fingers against his closed eyes. He wasn't prepared for this, not so much, so soon, with no room to catch one's breath in between. He'd known, of course, that he loved Sebastian--but Giles supposed he hadn't known how much, how this suspense, and this fear for his son's well-being nearly unmanned him. Moira's long, powerful fingers rubbed the back of his neck soothingly.

"You hide it well," she said to him, "But you feel more than any man I've ever known, my dear. You were right. Fond as I am of him, Seb does mean more to you than he does to me. He is my friend--but perhaps not my son, except in the more literal sense."

Giles raised his head to gaze at her.

"Yes," Moira said softly. "I am terribly worried."

Her hands fell into her lap, and Giles took one, giving her fingers a gentle squeeze. "Em, let's go see Celeste, shall we?"

Celeste had been placed alone in a glassed-in room at the end of the long women's-ward. The nursing sister on duty, a formidable creature of approximately Giles's height and build with a small watch pinned to the bosom of her pinafore like a tiny islet in the midst of a vast, dark-blue sea, blocked their way quite effectively.

"I'm sorry. No visitors," she announced in a broad Yorkshire accent.

"We're her husband's parents," Moira announced blithely--which was, of course, more or less the truth.

"We shall see," the sister answered, in ominous tones, vanishing within the curtained room, only to reappear seconds later.

"You may enter," she said, upon reemerging, in a slightly kinder tone. "But you mustn't tire her out, poor dear. Make it a brief visit, if you will."

Giles nodded, and told her, "Thank you."

The sister appeared alarmed by his voice.

Celeste lay still in her bed, looking thinner than usual, and uncharacteristically frail and wretched. The air smelled faintly of sickness, and his daughter-in-law's normally vibrant skin had taken on the colour of tea with milk that had been left standing out for hours.. Her warm brown eyes appeared dull, the only brightness in them from the tears that slowly formed and rolled in broad lines down her cheeks. She'd been brought a television, and on the screen above her quite a different Celeste was laying out a table for some summer luncheon, her voice warm and chatty, her eyes sparkling.

The Celeste on the screen wore a pretty turquoise frock, and her hands were full of flowers. Giles knew that her programme had become terribly popular, that people who would most likely never in their lives give such a party tuned in devotedly, merely to listen to that happy voice, to watch that bright face. She banished their loneliness, if only for an hour.

Giles stood at the side of the bed and took her hand. Celeste's eyes turned to his, then all at once she threw herself at him, her arms clasping round his waist in a way he associated with Buffy, or with Willow, her face pressing into his chest. It hurt, rather, but he made no effort to detach her. Neither did he freeze, as he might have in the old days, before he'd relearned the ability to love, to touch, to comfort. Giles enfolded her in his arms, stroking her tumbled hair.

"It's all right, Celeste," he attempted to murmur. "It's all right. We shall do our very, very best to find Seb, and to bring him home."

Celeste pulled away, gazing up at him in horror. "My God, Rupert! What happened to your voice?"

Giles smiled at her weakly. He shrugged. "Strained it a bit, I fear."

"Please, do stop talking!" Celeste continued to look appalled, and then her dark eyes flashed to Moira, as the older woman set out brazier and candles. "Em, what are you doing?"

"You're ill because of a rather insidious spell," Moira informed her. "One I believe the Watchers' Council aimed against Buffy, but which caught you in its crossfire. Since you're not the active Slayer, the effect was less deadly, but still enough to harm you, and that's something I must remedy." She passed Giles a slip of paper. "Think you can memorize that, Rupert?"

As usual, when Giles tried to read to any extent, his vision doubled and blurred, but by covering one eye and giving the paper his utmost attention, he was able to make out the words. His memory, always prodigious, seemed better than ever before: once he'd deciphered the writing, the words were his. Only, there were rather a lot of them, and he hoped he'd be able to get out the entire spell before his voice abandoned him once more.

It was a quite clever spell, really--one that seemed, on the surface, to be about gardening, but was really so much more. By the time they'd got through it, Giles felt the familiar rush of adrenaline. To work magic on this level, free from crippling fear that had haunted him nearly all his life. To share a ritual with a practitioner as powerful as Moira...Giles loved it, as he had always loved it.

To do so seemed entirely natural. He knew that perhaps his very appetite for such rites ought to concern him, but just then he didn't care.

They would go forth, and find Sebastian--and soon after, Mr. Stanley and his cronies would burn. In this, there would be no mercy.