Tribulations - Chapter 6

There was heat, flickering light, and something that smelled so bad it had to be toxic fumes. Buffy heard people yelling, what seemed like miles away, and over that a dry, creaking, rattling sound.

Spider-monster, Buffy thought, and a shudder ran down her body so deep that it hurt. Giant demon. Spells.

Mayor Wilkins had been bad enough: having to fight two giant demons in one summer seemed like more than should be expected from any Slayer.

The shudder wouldn't go away. Buffy was shaking. Her brain didn't want to turn over and start working again, it just kept supplying slow motion pictures of the demon's waving, bristly legs, the spike going through that one poor Watcher's chest, the monster's body bobbing over her like a great, big, rotten fruit.

Something heavy pressed down on her from above, and Buffy was fairly sure that if it turned out to be spidery in nature, she was going to toss cookies.

"Hang on, Buffy," someone said. "We'll soon have you out."

Giles, she thought, and would have smiled except for the way she was shaking, and the fact that the back of her neck and her hands itched as if she'd caught the worst case of poison ivy in the history of the world.

"Buffy, can you hear me? If you can, try to say something."

"G..g..." She tried to answer, but her voice came out all weak and whispery, and her mouth couldn't seem to shape the words.

"The creature's blood--" a non-Giles voice said. "Most likely it contained some sort of nerve-toxin. Quite common, really."

Buffy tried harder, and managed to make a slightly bigger sound. Strong hands closed on her arms, hauling her free. Someone began to wash the stinging parts of her with something cool and salty-smelling. Someone else jabbed a needle into her arm. Her vision had gone blurry, but she could still see a familiar, beloved face bending over her.

"Monster...we...got...huh?" She reached up to stroke his hair, but a hand caught hers gently.

"Buffy, it's Seb," the face's owner said. "Sebastian, not--er--Giles. We're working to locate him just now. There's quite a bit of...umn...debris."

"Locate him?" Panic rose in her chest, and Buffy struggled to at least sit up, but couldn't make it. She felt all sick and horrible. Dizzy--as dizzy as she'd ever been in her life.

"Ssh, dear. Lie still," Sebastian told her. Buffy started to cry, because she couldn't do anything else. Giles was missing, and what if the spider had eaten him, or he'd slid down into the Pit of Despair, or...

"Got him!" another guy-voice said. "Good Lord, he's heavy!"

"The muck's all over him," said a third voice, also male.

"Clean him at once," Moira ordered.

"Your Ladyship, you ought to..." yet another voice began.

"Ought to what?" Moira snapped, sounding crankier than Buffy had ever heard her.

"Mum," Sebastian said quietly. "Go with Simon to the infirmary. "We've things well under control here."

Moira gave a short, bitter laugh. "Under control? Good God, Seb, do you see what I see?"

"Come along, Your Ladyship," said one of the voices Buffy had heard before, the quiet one that had talked about nerve-toxin. "There's no use trying to solve these problems presently."

Buffy felt a weird sense of weightlessness as someone lifted her--Seb, she realized. Seb's arms carrying her, when she really wanted Giles's. Her mind couldn't help but leap back to when she was younger, to that time when Amy's mom, Catherine Madison, made her sick, and Giles had picked her up so tenderly. So tenderly...

She was losing it, and she was afraid. Buffy forced herself to stay alert, to remember...

He'd been so worried for her, even though they'd mostly only fought back then, and she'd known then that he was hers--not the way he was hers now, on every level she could think of--but hers nonetheless. She'd known he'd always care for her. That he'd always be there for her.

"Giles!" she cried out, her voice still tiny and weak.

"Ssh," Sebastian told her. "Be still, love. Be still. The monster's dead. You were wonderfully brave."

"But, Giles--"

"Later," Sebastian told her, and Buffy didn't have the strength to argue.

Simon Quartermass brought her jasmine tea in a flask, pouring the steaming, flower-fragrant brew into Moira's empty cup with an almost exaggerated carefulness. But then, he'd been wounded--rather badly, in fact. He wore a sling to support his injured arm. Perhaps his other hand remained less than steady.

Moira wondered if her face revealed anything to him, or if it seemed, instead, stony and cold.

"I wish you would rest, ma'am," the young Watcher said quietly, lowering himself into the uncomfortable chair on the other side of Moira's desk. She glanced up, meaning to say something fairly sharp, then caught herself at the expression of bleakness in Simon's pale blue eyes.

"Ishmael's dead," he told her, bending forward to arrange the teacup precisely on the corner of her blotter. "No great surprise there, and yet..."

"One hopes," Moira said quietly. "Have you heard?" She swallowed against the painful lump in her throat. "Is there any news?"

"One does hope," Simon answered.

Not for the first time, Moira thought how childlike he appeared--except for his eyes, which held a weight of experience sufficient for a man of eighty. "I know that we aren't meant to form friendships within the Council, but..." He drew a deep, unsteady breath. "Ishmael was my friend."

Moira lifted the cup and sipped, forcing her hands to remain steady. She heard, beneath Simon's words, the ones he did not say: Ishmael Faisel had been his friend, as Rupert Giles was hers. The tea, normally so soothing, tasted thin and bitter in her mouth. She returned the cup to its saucer.

Simon continued to watch her, old eyes in a young face. "Ma'am?" he said.

Moira reached across the desk and wrapped her hand round his. Simon Quartermass's hand, too, appeared boyish, and yet her touch revealed, beneath the surface of what could be easily perceived, the scars and calluses that came from years of weapons practice--and now from one terrible day of true battle. Even wounded, he'd acquitted himself bravely, her Simon. She'd been right to ordain him--of all her Candidates, only he'd the brains and the guts for the bloody job.

A truth came to her in a flash of insight, one that made her simultaneously rejoice for and pity him. He would be the next, the Chosen Watcher. Perhaps, in time, Buffy should even come to care for him, as she hadn't for Wesley. Even though he would never, truly, be hers.

One Watcher, one Slayer, she thought As she had been with Helena, and Rupert with Buffy. For a Slayer to lose her Watcher amounted to a sentence of death. Well, Quentin Travers would have his way now, after all, wouldn't he? Had he--the miserable, spineless, toady--been the power behind these events? She ought to have killed him whilst she had the chance.

"What is it, Your Ladyship?" Simon asked, sensing at once the change in her mood.

"You shall be the next," she told him. "Even before...before recent events, I believe you would still have been the one."

The young man's eyes brightened, more with sorrow than pleasure, and then he glanced down at the sling that supported his wounded arm, cradling the injured limb closer to his chest. "When you knew that you'd been called, Ladyship," he said softly. "What did you do?"

"I wept," Moira answered, "And then..." The image returned to her so clearly it might have been an hour old, rather than sixteen years: first the tears, and then the fierce painful love she'd made with Rupert, tangled in the covers of his narrow bed, in the cold room where ice formed on the inside of the panes if one didn't wipe the gathering moisture away. All of a sudden she couldn't stop herself. She rested her elbows on the blotter, put her face in her hands and sobbed. For herself, for Rupert, for Simon, for all their friends and all their bitter enemies, for the fallen--and for the living who must carry on under such dire circumstances.

"I shall serve her, of course, to the best of my abilities," Simon said. "But I'm not really Buffy's, am I? Can you tell me...umn...what...what shall become of us?"

Moira raised her head. "I'm so very sorry, Simon."

"Yes," he answered. "Thank you. That's what I thought."

Though her eyes stung, Moira regarded him steadily.

"I saw the trace evidence in your blood," Simon told her. "I know what they...those men...our men did to you."

Moira felt her lips stretch into a faint, bitter smile.

"How many are we?" Simon asked, after a little time had passed.

Moira managed to locate a tissue in her desk drawer and, carefully, dried her eyes. "Did you know that my tears have almost no salt?" she asked.

"And why is that?"

"It's a Witchblood trait. A family trait, one might say." She shrugged, straightened, took refuge in business. "I've placed calls to Geneva, Oslo, Cairo, Toronto, Johannesburg, Hong Kong, Odessa. They're all coming home, our operatives from abroad."

"How many are we?" Simon repeated, no doubt having guessed the answer before she even told him.

"Twenty-four," Moira answered, then with a brief, bitter laugh told him, "Half of us will be on the Council."

"We can bring in new blood. From our own families--and from outside." He looked steadily into her eyes, as if daring her to contradict him, and Moira found she'd no longer the energy to point out the truth. She could only agree.

"Yes. Quite. Of course," she said, and though they both knew that was a lie, they smiled at one another.

"You ought to go, when we've straightened things up a bit here," Simon told her. "Take a day or so for yourself, then bring Wesley home with you? He's quite a good organizer, I recall." The young man's smile broadened just a little. "He'll soon have us running ship-shape and Bristol-fashion."

Moira sighed and leaned back in her chair, regarding the Watcher before her--the next truly Chosen Watcher, with affection, respect, sorrow. "I need to wait," she told him. "Just a little while. Until he's gone."

"If I could discover..." Simon began, genuinely distressed.

"I know, my dear." Moira sighed again. "You've been brilliant. It's only...there was nothing to be done, really, was there?"

"Mr. Giles was truly one of the best of us," the young Watcher said, a slight tremble in his voice that he obviously fought to control.

"Hush." Moira touched his hand again. She could feel her eyes pleading with him. "Not yet, Simon. Not until it's over."

Strange as it might seem, the quiet woke her. Buffy had grown up in cities and towns, and she was used to the all night sounds: cars on pavement or streetlights humming--even the wind in the trees. At the Watchers' Compound though, she heard nothing. No bugs, no cars, no voices, only flat dead silence, giving her one of the biggest wigginses of her life. She would have given twenty years just to hear Giles's quiet breathing beside her. One of his nightmares, even, would have been better than this.

Buffy couldn't stand it. She fumbled with the switch of the bedside lamp until a dull yellow glow lighted a little of the room. Her shadow leaped up like an ogre on the plain stone wall, seeming more alive than anything else around her.

"Stupid Tweedworld," Buffy muttered, her voice sounding as flat and drab as the furnishings. Everything she saw was plain and gray. She would have lasted about five minutes, living in a room like that.

She found herself slipping out from beneath the gray quilt, shifting from foot to cold foot on the gray carpet. Her clothes--probably demon-slimed beyond hope of dry cleaning--had been replaced with some other girl's clothes, and apparently that other girl was either a present or a future nun, because they consisted of a starched white blouse, a gray jumper, black tights and black sensible shoes. "Hey, you forgot the wimple," she said, but the room took so much life out of her voice, the sound only depressed her.

Buffy figured she had three choices: stay in the room naked, wrap up in the sheet, or put on the nun-clothes. Since the room had already begun to get to her, and sheets were unreliable, maybe the gray jumper was her best bet. Who knew? She might look kind of cute in it--besides, even if she didn't, she'd never know. The one mirror she could see was about the size of a postcard. She decided to get dressed, skipping the blouse, and go looking for Giles.

There was a washstand across the room with a big bowl and a pitcher of warmish water. Buffy cleaned up as best she could, stripping the bandages she no longer needed from her hands, but being careful with them, because her skin still stung a little--more as if she'd received a bad sunburn than anything else. She used someone else's brush on her hair, which someone seemed to have already shampooed for her--it had probably been full of demon gunk--put on tights, shoes and the dress of ugliness, then slipped out past the heavy door.

She found herself in an old-looking hall full of other heavy doors, each one exactly the same as the next. The sight depressed her, and she could understand perfectly why Giles had wanted to run away from all this--the Watchers had made him quiet and tweedy and stuffy on the surface, but not down beneath, not where it counted. Under the skin he was her fierce, tender, passionate Giles, who loved her more than she could ever imagine deserving.

And speaking of Giles, where was he? Every other time she'd been hurt or sick, he'd been right there. Why had he left her, this time, to wake up alone in the creepy gray room? Had Watchers' business called him away?

Maybe he was hurrying back to her right now. They'd run into each other on the stairs, or on the lawn in front of the building, and he'd sweep her up in his arms and swing her around. They'd kiss then, so deeply and completely she couldn't figure out where one of them left off and the other one began.

Buffy found herself running, her sensible shoes making no sound at all, even on the stone floor--down the hall down the front steps, over a little terrace thing.

Where was he? Buffy froze, turning. The stars showed up sharp and clear in a dark blue sky, and the moon was crescenty. The buildings all looked huge, but only a few of their windows were lighted. She felt small and lonely, like the only person awake in the whole world.

"Giles!" she called, but all that space just seemed to eat up her voice.

Buffy started running again, as hard and fast as she could, until she reached a lumpy-looking building that had more lights on than any of the others. A sign over the pointy-arched door read, "Main." She figured that would be as good a place as any to start--if nothing else, there might be someone inside willing to play guide for her. Almost tiptoeing, she climbed the broad, shallow stairs and opened the unlocked door at the top.

"Hello?" she called into the foyer, but there wasn't any answer. A little further in, she saw what looked like a reception area, opposite a pair of double doors marked "Administration." Just to the right, painted on the drab green wall, was a sign that pointed in one direction for the infirmary, to another for the archives.

Buffy felt like Dorothy when the Scarecrow pointed in two directions at once. She felt nervous, too, and she didn't know why.

Her hands slipped into the jumper pockets, as if that would give her some kind of protection. Even knowing it was silly, the kind of thing a little kid would do, she had to follow the impulse anyway. In the left-side pocket her fist closed around the stuff she'd found in Clarice's tree. Weirdly, the egg-shaped rock felt warm, warmer than her own skin. The gathering chill of a full wiggins began at the back of her neck.

Don't be stupid, she told herself. You're the Slayer. Act like one.

She'd head for the infirmary, Buffy decided. Since it was night, the archives might be closed, but with all the wounded, there was sure to be a doctor or a nurse on duty. She padded down the hall, wishing that her footsteps would make some sort of sound.

It took her less than a minute to reach the white door with the word "Infirmary" done in white letters on a neat black sign. Suddenly, things weren't quiet anymore. She could hear people moaning, and the suck and throb of machines. She didn't want to go any further, and yet she knew she had to, that the answer could only be found inside. She was just about to enter when the door sprung outward, sending her sprawling. A man in a green gown stared down at her.

"Hi," Buffy said, climbing slowly to her feet. The man kept staring. "I...umn...I'm looking for Giles? Rupert Giles?"

"You're Buffy," the man said, and suddenly he just looked tired and kind. "He was...that is...ah..."

A numbness started at the tips of her toes and whooshed up to her head, making her so dizzy she nearly fell down again. The man caught her, almost as if they where about to dance, and her cheek rested on his chest. It came to her that he smelled bad, like blood and disinfectant and sickness. He looked dead tired too.

"He called for you," the man, who might have been a doctor, told her gently. "That is, whilst he could."

Buffy pulled herself away from him. "He was probably worried about me. But see? I'm okay. I'm perfectly okay." She found herself backing through the door with the black sign, into the place where all the wounded people lay. At one end of the room there was a curtain drawn. The sound of machines came loudest from that place.

Buffy sleepwalked toward the curtain, pulling its folds back just a little. The first thing she saw was Celeste's dark head bent over a man in the bed, and her first thought was, Oh no, Seb got hurt after all.

Celeste must have sensed her approach, because she turned in her chair, gazing up at Buffy with her beautiful dark eyes full of tears. Seb must have been hurt bad then.

"I sent Bastian down the corridor, to have a bit of a lie-down in his mum's office," Celeste told her, but the words didn't really register. "I didn't think he could take much more, poor boy."

"But that's him. In the bed," Buffy told her. "Sebastian got hurt, right? But he's gonna be okay?"

"Buffy, love." Celeste got up and put her arms around Buffy's shoulders, pulling her close. She smelled bad too, which was very un-Celeste. "My dear girl."

"No," Buffy breathed.

"I've been talking about old times to him." Celeste kept one hand spread across Buffy's back, but the other touched the forehead of the man in the bed. The tubes and machines that made him breathe mostly hid his face. It was a horrible sound, the air being forced in and out of his lungs. "Talking about our good old times."

"No," Buffy said again.

"You needn't stay," Celeste told her. "Say your goodbyes, but don't stay, my dear, if it's too much for you. Rupert wouldn't want you to remember him this way."

"It's not him!" Buffy screamed at her.

"Buffy. Dearest."

"It's not him! There's been a mistake!" The curtained space, and Celeste's face, blurred in her vision, and suddenly she was on the other side of the white door again, running and running, until she crashed through another set of double doors at the end of the hall. Buffy had a brief impression of books and tables, and she thought, Oh, it's the library. I'm safe now.

But it wasn't the library--not her library, at least--and nothing would ever, ever be safe again.

The room went spinning and spinning. She was just about to go down, when a soft little voice spoke to her.

"Buffy, isn't it?" the voice said. "I've been expecting you."

She caught herself with her hands against a tabletop, keeping her head down until things got steady again. In front of her stood the tweediest little hedgehog man she'd ever seen, like an illustration from a kid's storybook, like someone who'd be right at home with Badger and Ratty and Mole in The Wind in the Willows.

"Who are you?" she managed to gasp. The hedgehog man squinted up at her through his tiny glasses. She was used to being smaller than almost anyone, but this guy barely came to her chin. He carried his little hands folded together in front of his chest, as if he was praying.

"Mr. Briggs," he said. "I keep the books. I've always kept the books." He took a step closer, looking like the most harmless guy in the universe--but Buffy's hackles began to rise. She was getting a vibe. A most definite vibe.

"You're a demon!" she blurted.

He blinked up at her again. "Well," he said, sounding quiet and sweet and regretful. "You might call me that." His little pink tongue flickered over his lips as he stared at the pocket of her jumper, exactly as if she had something good to eat in there What was it hedgehogs liked? Scrambled eggs? He stared as if she had a pocket full of scrambled eggs.

You're losing it, Buff, she told herself. Completely losing it.

"What's that you have in your pocket?" Mr. Briggs said to her. "Show me, if you please."

Buffy knew she shouldn't, probably, but she couldn't help herself. Her hand delved into the pocket and dug out Clarice's things. Mr. Briggs clucked his tongue. "The poor little Giles girl's treasures," he said. "Such a pity. An adorable child."

His tiny fingers prodded one piece from another, until he found the egg-shaped rock with the pictures on either side. "Ah," he said.

"It's just a rock," Buffy told him.

"No, no, not at all," he told her, sounding just like someone brushing aside an apology. "Do you like wishes, Buffy? You look like a girl who would like a wish."

"Umn..." Buffy knew how this was how you got into trouble. Demons. Wishes. Heart's desires. She just couldn't stop herself. "I...umn...I guess I do."

"You want poor Rupert back again, isn't that it? You want him healed?" Mr. Briggs's finger stroked the picture of wings on one side of the stone. "A very worthy wish. Say I can have this, and one other thing, and it's granted."

"What other thing?" Buffy asked.

"Ah!" Mr. Briggs smiled up at her--a sweet smile, patient and kind. "That's for me to know, and you to find out. Isn't it, my dear?"

Visions of Rumplestiltskin danced through her head, but Buffy couldn't refuse. "I--" she began, a little warning bell inside her head screaming "no no no!"

The picture came back to her clearly of Giles, her Giles, in the bed behind the curtain, burned and broken and fighting for every breath. She couldn't walk away from this. She couldn't.

She lifted the stone and put it in the little man's hand, slimy cord and all. "Whatever you want," she said, "It's yours."