Transitions - Ch. 53

What am I, Vortex-girl? Buffy thought, but there was no humor in it. She couldn't do this again, she just couldn't. Having to see the guy you loved sucked through a purple, swirly hole into hell once in your life was bad enough. To be expected to watch the same thing a second time, with a different man, was impossible.

"Giles, stop!" she screamed. Why didn't he stop? Why did he have to go on with that spell? They'd find another way. They always found another way.

But he didn't stop. She could hear him clearly, that quiet, calm, familiar voice saying words she didn't understand. He sounded like he was hurting, maybe hurting bad, and his voice faltered a little here and there, like it was really hard for him to keep going--but he did it anyway.

That was Giles for you. He always kept going.

Buffy tried to step inside the magic circle-thing, thinking that where he went, she would follow. The spell wouldn't let her through, though--the barrier just bounced her back again. She tried hitting it harder, then cutting it with her sword. Giles's sword, really, the magic one Moira had given him, that they'd found again in the Evil Baron hall. Even that didn't work. The sword itself could go through, but she couldn't. Every time Buffy tried, she ended up a couple yards away.

Maybe, she thought, Giles built the spell do to that. Maybe he was trying to protect them. Trying to protect her.

She decided she hated that Merlin Maggot guy, with his stupid spellbook. The vortex was getting bigger, and it looked scarier than the one that took Angel. Its colors made her think of blood and bruises. Giles was all wrapped up in the darkness that was the Ripper-demon, and slowly, inch by inch--so slowly it hurt Buffy to watch, he was getting dragged back into the opening.

"Bastian, DO something," Celeste yelled.

"Don't you bloody think I would, if I knew how?" Seb yelled back. There were tears running down his cheeks. Buffy believed him. She believed him completely.

"You couldn't wait two minutes for them to find the right page?" she yelled at Willow, but felt bad as soon as she said it. This wasn't Will's fault, really. If Willow had been able to keep herself from wigging, she would have. It wasn't anyone fault, except maybe the Watchers' Council's.

She hated Mermorgan Hall, Buffy decided--no question there. She hated magic. And she hated hated hated invisible barriers.

"Dammit all!" she yelled, and kicked at the divider. Giles was defenseless in there. They'd left him defenseless. Buffy looked at the sword in her hand, then at the darkness that had overwhelmed the man she loved, and made a decision. She grabbed hold of the blade, throwing the sword as if it was some kind of javelin. It went spinning through the air, and missed him completely, sliding point-first into the hole.

Dammit again. This was so not her day.

Buffy leaned her hands against the barrier, fixing her eyes on the lonely figure inside. She would have given anything to be able to stand there with him, even if that was it, the end for them both. It was a hundred times worse to be stuck here, while Giles was there, and be unable to reach him.

Unlike Sebastian, and unlike Willow and Celeste, she didn't cry. "I love you," she told Giles, over and over. Hoping that even if he couldn't see or hear her, he'd somehow know.

His voice was sounding worse now, choked and horrible, as if whatever was happening to him was almost more than he could stand. As if it was more than he could stand, but he was standing it anyway. She knew no time at all had passed, but it seemed like forever, and another forever passed as the vortex finally caught him.

"Buff," Xander said. She didn't look up, but she felt his arms wrap tightly around her. He held her as the vortex closed over Giles's head.

Buffy knew it was wimpy, but she was glad she didn't have to see Giles's face at the end. It would have been more than she could stand. As it was, she couldn't keep on her feet. She felt all hot, then cold, and as if her heart was beating funny. Words were pouring out of her mouth, a whole bunch of bad words, some she couldn't even remember learning--some that were even Giles's funny British swear words, that didn't, as far as she could tell, mean anything.

That's what did it. Giles's stupid swear words. She fell out of Xander's arms, face down onto the carpet. The spell wasn't there anymore, and the vortex had closed as if it hadn't ever been there. She could have rolled all over the rug if she'd wanted. But she didn't want. All she needed in the world was for someone to wake her up, and tell her it had been a bad dream.

That wasn't going to happen. Buffy knew it just wasn't. Angel may have come back, but Giles wasn't going to. He was human, and his body wouldn't last five minutes down in that place.

Buffy started crying then, so hard that the noises she made sounded alien and ugly, and she felt as if things were tearing loose inside her. Angel had been her lover, but Giles was that, plus her mentor, her teacher and her friend. Angel had no life outside her, but Giles had given up his whole full life to be with her. The thought of never hearing that warm voice say her name again, never seeing that light in his eyes, the tenderness with which he gazed down on her--of never, never as long as she lived feeling his touch again, not even the simple pleasure of his warm hand holding hers--that was too much for her to stand.

Xander and Will had gone down on their knees beside her, trying to comfort her, but they were both crying too hard themselves for anything they said to make sense, so in the end they all ended up lying on the carpet together, holding each other and sobbing.

Somewhere, far, far off in the distance she could hear Sebastian crying too, and muttering stuff, and the sound of books being thrown, as he said, "There has to be something. There has to be something."

Into this came Moira's calm voice. "May I ask what's happening?"

Something about her tone was like a bucket of cold water being thrown over them. Everyone stopped sobbing at once, falling into a numb, shocky silence.

"I come home," Moira said, stepping through the open door. "To find my house full of corpses, and my library packed with weeping Americans. Please, would someone enlighten me?"

"We lost Giles," Willow told her, sitting up, and sniffling. "It was my fault. The demon scared me, and I came out of the circle, so he had to go in, and then it got him, but he was saying the spell anyway. And the swirly vortex-thing opened and--" She made a slurping noise. "It was awful. Awful awful. So we cried. For Giles."

Moira's forehead wrinkled a little in confusion. "Er, Seb--"

"We came here, through the Hellmouth, I suppose, and the Ripper demon followed us." Sebastian handed over the Merlin-guy's red book. "We thought to use that spell in order to contain and banish it, but things...er, things went rather amiss. It had taken a sorcerer for its host, and I'm afraid it...ah...afraid it bested me. As Willow's said, she was trapped inside the spell, and then Dad took her place, and the creature caught him."

Moira rubbed her temples. Buffy thought she looked tired, and sad, and as if she'd gone through something else, that maybe she was just starting to deal with. She wondered if Moira knew what had happened to the others then, remembering what the older woman had said about corpses, figured Moira knew, all right.

"I'm sorry, Em," Buffy said, catching the Watcher's eyes for a minute.

Moira gave a tiny smile. "I believe we can fix this, Buffy."

"Honest?"

"Honestly, dearest. Dry your eyes."

Buffy wiped her face on her sleeve, wishing she had a Kleenex to blow her nose, and maybe some Visine to make her eyes stop burning. "What can I do?" she asked.

Moira's smile grew a little. "That's my brave girl," she said, then glanced up as the room began to fill with quiet red-headed women. "About bloody time you got here," Moira told them, but she didn't sound snooty, or even mad, really. "Are you ready, for once, to prove your loyalty?" She turned the uber-mom stare on every one of them. "Or would you like the separation to remain permanent, and to make your own ways out in the world?"

"You weren't here, Morgana," Briony began, "And we didn't know..."

"Oh, bosh, you knew very well," Moira answered. "You thought you'd return to the old ways, when the old ways were forbidden to you. Isn't that true, Bree?"

The younger woman hung her head.

"We'll chalk it up to a learning experience, and say it's forgotten, shall we?" Moira gave her a look, that made Briony glance up again. "Shall we, Bree?" she repeated.

"Yes, Emmy," she whispered, nothing like the confident, bossy woman they'd first met in the forest.

"Very good, then. I need you--all of you. Holly. Ivy. Laurel. All of you. Are you with me?" Moira stared at them one by one, and one by one, they nodded.

"Me too?" Willow asked. "I mean, since it's sort of my fault and all. And it's Giles."

They started talking magic-stuff, and Sebastian got involved too, leaving Buffy, Xander and Celeste bunched together on the outside.

Celeste gave Buffy a comforting hug. "You can rely upon Moira," she said. "For anything magical. If Rupert couldn't be reached, she wouldn't deceive you."

Buffy knew Celeste was trying to be nice, and she appreciated it. "If he's in that place, though," she said. "Where Angel came back from, what if he's not okay? What if it's too much for him? I mean, he's a human guy, not a vampire. How much can he take? And he wasn't in the best, best shape to start with."

"Um, Angel was in hell for a long time, Buff," Xander told her, meaning to help--but that didn't help. What am I? she thought, Like, the dating kiss of death? Smooch me and go to hell? Buffy wanted to start crying all over again.

Please, she thought, in a silent prayer to anyone who would listen. I'll do anything. Just let me have him back again. She put her hands up over her eyes. Anything.

"Buffy," Moira said in a quiet voice, "Are you ready?"

That was fast, she thought.

"Umn, yeah. Ready for what?"

"To find Rupert," Moira answered.

"Me? I mean, I thought you'd do magic-stuff." Buffy saw the serious expression on Moira's face. "Oh, you are going to do magic stuff."

Slowly, the older woman nodded. "Sebastian and the girls will be our anchors here. They'll open a backdoor into hell, as it were, but you and I must find Rupert and bring him out again."

"Okay," Buffy said, standing up straight and squaring her shoulders. "I can do that."

Ripper had gone, a for-once voiceless evil torn away from his body on the harsh, defiling currents of that place--drawn, perhaps, into a deeper hell. The demon's absence provided little consolation. Giles was left with a sense of futility, eternity--a sense of measureless, unceasing suffering. He lay face down in a place that seemed to have no dimension, breathing in a substance that stung his throat as salt will, in an open wound.

"Okay, let's go," said a voice that sounded terribly, painfully familiar.

Giles fought long and hard to speak, and when he did, only two syllables emerged. "Jenny?" he said--but of course it couldn't be she. Jenny would have no place in hell.

"Who did you expect?" she answered tartly. "Some guy with horns and cloven hooves?"

Giles wasn't sure if it had always been so, but they were in a desert, in a sandstorm. His skin baked with the heat. Dust and grit filled his eyes, and he would have given his soul for a single touch of rain. Except that, being here, his soul was, rightly or wrongly, perhaps already forfeit. A vision of lovely Jenny hovered over the desert floor, shining and clean.

"Get up," she told him, "What are you waiting for?"

Giles scrambled to his feet, trying to regain his balance enough on the shifting sands to slog along behind her. Every step brought agony, the steps of Hans Andersen's Little Mermaid walking on needles and knives. He wondered if this was what Moira felt, walking and running on the never-entirely-healed remains of her old injuries.

"No Disney versions here," the spectre of Jenny said, as if she'd surmised his thoughts--sarcastic, yet apparently rather sorry for him.

Giles made a brief sound, in too much pain to answer her fully. The wind felt poisonous, like radiation, stripping away his strength, burning his skin, making him feel deathly ill. Dimly he could detect a building in the distance, and he bore for it, not even knowing why, slipping and staggering on the treacherous sands.

Hours passed before he reached the entrance, and he fell in the doorway, half out, half in.

"All this," Jenny said sadly, "All this suffering, and do you think she'll come after you?"

"I shouldn't want her to, Jenny," Giles answered, gasping, his throat raw, his strength, for that moment, insufficient to fight the illusion. "It's far too dangerous. I did what must be done, and that's the end of it."

"You shouldn't want her to," the creature who could not possibly be Jenny responded, "But you do." She paused, still hovering. "She didn't come after Angel, did she, Rupert? And he was the love of her life."

Giles pushed himself up against the doorjamb until he was nearly sitting, and regarded her. Her face, once beloved, perhaps always beloved, in some part of his heart, appeared, beneath its usual exotic beauty, both angry and tragic.

"Jenny," he said to her, even knowing that her appearance must be an illusion, a lie. "Why do you say such things to me? Being what I am, I knew what must be."

Jenny crouched down, until they looked eye to eye. "Sacred Duty, huh?"

"The angels don't actually get to sleep while the devil leaves the porchlight on," Giles said, quoting from a rather odd record, of which Jenny had been fond.

The duplicate of Jenny laughed. "Proof that the Goddess has a sense of humor: it's the afterlife, and a stodgy British Watcher is paraphrasing Tom Waits songs to me. Not what I expected."

"You're not Jenny," Giles answered. "This isn't your afterlife."

She smiled a little, the expression containing something terrible, something so unlike Jenny in life that for the first time Giles was entirely convinced that this being could not in any way be she. "Believe what you like," said the demon who wore his dead love's face. "It's all relative, really. Do you plan to get up now?"

Giles did, with great effort, and moved inside, into the dimness. He knew this place well, and hated it more than any he'd encountered--more, even, than The Factory. This was the Mansion, usually to be located on Crawford Street, in Sunnydale. A mansion that would have been beautiful, if it hadn't been in such decay. Giles was no expert on American architects, but he'd often thought the design looked like Frank Lloyd Wright.

In this dream, vision, hallucination, whatever it might be, the house had become a maze, turning inward upon itself. Giles began to laugh.

"What?" his companion asked, obviously annoyed. One wasn't meant to laugh here. One was meant to suffer, and go mad.

"It's the maze at Hampton Court. The hedge maze." Still amused, Giles began to walk it confidently. He loved a good maze, and he'd been many times through the one at Hampton Court. He'd taken Celeste there once, as a child, and watched her run along the paths in her pretty white frock, her dark hair flying.

Has hell a set geography? Giles wondered, or was he influencing it with his mind, converting its dimensions to something understandable, something he might survive?

"This is not allowed," his companion told him angrily, looking less like Jenny with every moment that passed. The apparition's hair remained dark, but it had shortened, and the face it framed had become square, coarser-featured, masculine. Jenny's slender body had given way to one taller, broader, powerfully male, clad in leather trousers, white shirt and a long, dark coat.

"Rupert, buddy," this denizen of hell said to him. Its fist swung out, catching Giles off guard, and fireworks exploded behind his eyes.

He woke feeling wretched: battered, exhausted, feverish, with even the dim light too harsh for his eyes. He slumped in a hard chair, his head hanging onto his chest, his hand on fire--not the left oddly enough, as it ought to have been, but the right. The events of the recent past returned to him slowly, and he groaned.

When the demon who wore Angelus's face touched him, it took all Giles's control not to shudder. He could not be back here, could not go through this again. He could not. They'd guessed his weaknesses, apparently, but even though he knew this setting to be false, he had reached his limit. He'd wakened shouting from this nightmare on too many nights.

"Let it end," he prayed, just as he had the first time. "Please let it end."

But, of course, it did not.