Transitions - Chapter 61

"Xander, you realize if you peek, we're gonna have to kill you," Buffy said, burrowing for her and Will's shorts in the packhorse's saddlebags. The other horses, the ones they'd ridden, stood in a little circle, lazily munching grass--they reminded Buffy, in a more horsey way, of the usual crowd that hung out on slow nights at The Bronze.

"Such an admonishment didn't work for Cupid and Psyche," Moira said to no one in particular, "Do you think that it shall for Xander and Buffy?"

All the older people, and Willow, laughed, but Giles said, "Hardly the same situation, Em."

"You get this?" Buffy whispered to Willow.

"It's a Greek myth thing," Willow explained. "About not peeking. Psyche did, and then she had to do a bunch of ucky jobs. Ants helped her."

"Aunts?" Buffy thought of Flora, Rose and Violet, who were supposed to be joining them for their picnic.

"No, Buffy. Ants. The crawly bug kind."

"'Sides, you're safe with me." Xander flopped down on the ground, groaning. Even before Buffy and Moira had gotten so far out ahead of everyone else, he'd already fallen off his horse about a million times, and he looked more as if he'd been dragged through the mud the whole way from Appleyard than he did like he'd been riding.

"Maybe I could get you to kill me anyway?" he wondered. "As a favor?"

"Poor Xand. I guess riding isn't your sport. Activity. Whatever." Willow knelt down beside him, gently brushing the hair back from his forehead. She bent to kiss the part she'd uncovered, and then for a minute they both froze.

"Will" Xander barely breathed.

"Not fluking," she said, almost too low to hear. "Definitely not fluking." She got up to her feet like a marionette whose puppeteer had jerked really hard on its strings. "Changing now!" She vanished behind the tree.

Buffy joined her after a second, passing Will her shorts. "You're gonna have kind of a hard time changing without these."

Willow put her head against the treetrunk, pulled back, and clunked it once, hard, against the wood. "I love Oz." Another clunk. "I love Oz." Clunk. "What's wrong with me?"

Buffy unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans. "You and Xand have been pretty tight this summer, with Oz gone, and the weirdness that's happened 'n' all."

"But I love Oz!" Willow slipped out of her own pants and pulled on her shorts. "But that's my thing--I always love Xander too. And which is bigger, friend love or love-love. And what do you do if, no matter how much you fight it, and no matter how much you love the person you're in love with, one keeps trying to turn into the other. See, if dad had just let me go on the tour--"

"Then you would've spent the last month stuck inside a van with Devon, Sunnydale's Mr. Stupidity 1999," Buffy answered, "And it woulda been, 'Homicide, Life on the Streets."

"That's my Buff! Help me see that side. I forgot that part." Willow giggled. "Demons much better."

Buffy finished buttoning her shorts. "I'd even take being buried under a falling building."

"Or being caught inside scary spells. Or--" Willow stood with her shoes in her hand, staring down at her bare feet. "Oh, Buffy."

"What?"

"Or sending my friend to hell." When she glanced up, Willow's eyes were brimming. "Oh, Buffy," she repeated, and started a glare-of-death at her innocent-looking sneakers.

"Are you decent?" Giles's quiet voice asked, from around the other side of the tree.

"As decent as we're gonna get, sweetie," Buffy answered, not looking away from Willow's miserable face. Why was Will blaming herself? There wasn't any need for her to turn into guilty-girl. Nobody blamed her.

"Willow?" Giles said gently.

"The aglet's come off." Willow tugged at the frayed end of her shoelace.

"Aglet?" Buffy asked, not getting it.

"The poky plastic part, at the end of the lace." The tears spilled over Willow's lower lids. "I ruin everything. I'm bad."

Giles gave Buffy one of his "What?" looks. She shrugged, not sure if her friend was having Oz-guilt or sucked-into-hell guilt, or just a big whopping case of homesickness.

Giles's questioning look turned into a preparing-himself-for-battle look. "Willow," he repeated. He took the shoes out of her hand and stooped to set them on the ground, then straightened again. "You are, most certainly, not bad." He cupped Willow's face between his hands--Buffy could almost feel the gentleness of that touch on her own skin--turning it up to his. "You are a lovely, brave young woman who most understandably became frightened in a terrifying situation. You needn't feel guilt or remorse of any kind."

"You always say that." Willow's lower lip quivered. "You always--even when it isn't true. You're too nice to us, Giles. You take too good of care of us. Even when that building fell on us, you thought more of me than you did of yourself."

"Nonsense," he told her quietly. "How could one care too much for such treasures?" He lowered his hands to her shoulders. "It's no burden whatsoever. And, believe me, when the tower fell, I was quite concerned with neither of us being horribly crushed."

Okay, Buffy thought, In about five seconds he's gonna have me crying too.

Willow reached up to touch his cheek. "But, look at you."

"I'm perfectly well. No ill effects."

"You always say that too." Willow's eyes moved, watching his, as if she was reading a book, "But how often is it true? You lie to protect us, Giles, and I wish you wouldn't."

He gave a little laugh. "Believe me, I've heard volumes on this subject from Buffy as well."

"And?"

"He knows that if he doesn't take care of himself, I'll hurt him." Buffy gave her best friend a hug. "So don't worry anymore, 'kay? 'Cause it's all right."

"Not, perhaps, my words," Giles said, "But certainly my sentiment." He put an arm around each of their shoulders--lightly around Willow's, tighter around Buffy's, pulling her nearer to him. "Let's see what fabulous feast Celeste has prepared for us, shall we?"

"All in favor say, 'Aye,'" Buffy answered.

"Aye," Willow said, and her voice hardly even quivered.

Celeste had already bossed her husband and Moira into spreading out the picnic blanket and opening the hamper--and even though it was a big hamper, it seemed to have held an impossible amount of food. With psychic-quality timing, probably courtesy of Flora, the aunts were screeching up in the Range Rover. Buffy waved to them, seeing a teeny hand that was probably Aunt Violet's wave back.

Giles let Willow go with a little smile and a squeeze to her shoulder. Will gave a slightly brighter smile in return.

"Surprise, surprise," Aunt Violet cried out, obviously worked up to a Disney fairy-godmother level of excitement. "Look who we've brought you!"

To Buffy's total amazement, out piled the museum people--Elspeth, the sweet old lady who cared for Giles so much, nice Miss Belizar, shy Mr. Firkins and sarcastic Mr. Seaton-Bowes--only he wasn't sarcastic there. Outside of his natural habitat of the back rooms of the British Museum, he seemed even shyer than Mr. Firkins. In fact, only Elspeth looked perfectly at ease--the others stood blinking in the sunshine, as if they were nocturnal animals that had suddenly found themselves awake during the day, and weren't exactly sure what to do about it. Buffy felt a little sorry for them.

"Hey, guys!" she said, and went over to give Elspeth a hug. "Long time, no see."

"Indeed," Mr. Seaton-Bowes said in a little voice, then cleared his throat.

Mr. Firkins was staring at Celeste--who was sitting with her legs tucked beneath her, on one corner of the blanket--his jaw hanging open to an extent that even Wesley might have noticed.

Celeste reached up her hand to him, giving one of those radiant Celeste-smiles. "Welcome to Appleyard, Mr. Firkins. Won't you come sit beside me? I believe we're nearly ready to begin, and I'm certain you're quite hungry after your journey."

"Oh," he breathed, kind of melting down beside her. "You're too kind. You're too, too kind." He blinked again, as if he was just waking up. "You know my name?"

"Rupert's often spoken of you," Celeste answered, still smiling.

"Cecil," he said to Mr. Seaton-Bowes, "She knows my name. The Perfect Hostess. My name! Me!"

"Just Celeste," she told him, somehow managing not to laugh.

"Celeste." He kissed her hand. "You are, indeed, celestial."

"Er...Reg," Giles said mildly.

Mr. Firkins blinked. "Laying it on a bit thick, was I, Dr. Giles?"

"Ah...perhaps a bit. No matter how celestial my daughter-in-law might in fact be."

"Still, one does like to preserve one's decorum." Mr. Firkins blushed even redder as Celeste handed him a plate.

Buffy glanced at Willow, who was obviously trying really hard not to laugh. At least that was something--Will's eyes looked brighter, and she'd lost that 'I'm bound-and-determined to beat myself-up' look. "British," she mouthed. Buffy nodded, grinning in return.

Before long, everyone had arranged himself or herself around the blanket, and had started to dig into Celeste's feast. Everything tasted great--even the encore of the cold demon soup--and though Buffy couldn't always identify exactly what was on her plate, she decided to enjoy the whatever-it-was anyway. All of it. The same way she intended--after her conversation with Seb in the stable that morning--to enjoy every bit of her life.

"Life's short," she'd told Willow in The Bronze, what seemed now like a million years before. And life was short, or could be--whether you were a Slayer, a Watcher, or a regular, everyday person. It could be true for anyone, not just for herself.

She felt like Dorothy when she got back to Kansas after all that time of saying, "There's no place like home." She watched the people laughing all around the blanket, and suddenly felt like she was part of a huge family, the kind of big family she'd never thought she'd have. Seb caught her eyes and smiled at her, then Celeste saw him do it and beamed at her too. The aunts and Elspeth, who blended so well with each other you could hardly tell which three belonged to the set and which one didn't, all grinned at her in their nice, auntly way.

When she looked back closer, Buffy saw Xander, Willow and Giles watching her.

"Buffy?" Giles said, in his soft, concerned voice. "Is something amiss?"

"No." She patted his arm. "God, no sweetie. No amissness here. I was just thinking...you know...about stuff. Life. Family. Stuff."

"Waxing philosophical in your old age?" he asked, lightly.

Buffy laughed. "Yeah, something like that. You know...how I was glad to be here. How I love you guys."

Willow laid her cheek against Buffy's back, between her shoulderblades, and Xander, who'd engulfed and devoured enough food to take care of a family of five for a week, rolled over to his stomach, looking up at her. No one said anything. They didn't need to.

Giles touched her lightly beneath her jaw, leaning over to kiss her temple.

"There's an old song," he said, after several minutes had passed, "That goes, 'Joy, health, love and peace, be all here in this place.' Somehow, those words seem apt to me."

"Uh-huh." Buffy smiled, feeling happy and sad all at the same time. Happysad, which should be a real word. There was something she still needed to do, someone that was missing from the circle--someone she was missing, and had been for a long time, almost without realizing.

Giles read what she was thinking in her eyes. "Celeste?" he said.

Celeste glanced up, still smiling, "Yes, Rupert?"

"Have you brought your telephone? Buffy needs to ring her...ah...to ring someone."

Celeste went foraging, and after a minute came up with the little hi-tech gadget. "Here you are, then," she said, putting the phone into Buffy's hand, all her niceness showing in her warm brown eyes. "Take as long as you like."

"We'll be back shortly." Giles climbed to his feet, then reached down a hand to help Buffy to hers. They wandered away from the others, until all they could hear was the rise and fall of their voices in the distance, like the ripple of a stream.

"It will be quite early, still, in America," he said. "You'll most likely wake your mum up."

"I knew you'd guessed what I needed."

Giles gave his quick, familiar, semi-embarrassed smile.

"Oh." Buffy stared down at the buttons. What if her mom wasn't home? What if she didn't want to talk?

Giles watched her a minute, then bent to touch his lips to hers in a sweet, undemanding kiss. "You're aware that she's most likely missed you every moment? It's certain she'll wish to talk. Your mum loves you, Buffy, more than anything else in her life."

"Are you doing that Aunt Flora mind-reading thing?" Buffy asked him, trying not to get teary-eyed.

Giles only smiled, took the phone away, pushed the buttons and handed it back. Buffy hadn't even know that he'd learned how to use a digital. He constantly surprised her.

She watched him stroll off, giving her privacy but staying within her sight. Sebastian came around from behind the tree to meet him, and as the phone rang, Buffy watched them talk.

"Hello?" a voice said in her ear, sounding sleepy and a little sad.

For a minute all Buffy could feel was a big lump in her throat, but then her own voice came out of somewhere. "Mom?" she said. "Mom, it's me. Buffy."

"Buffy?" Joyce answered, then her voice broke. "Oh, Buffy, sweetheart. I've missed you so much!"

Buffy started crying too, but not in a bad way. She cried because she knew, suddenly, whatever else happened, she and her mom would be all right. And that made her feel, just as suddenly, as if she was, finally, all the way grown up.