Tribulations - Chapter 9

Buffy knew it was day outside, probably close to noon, but their room stayed darkish. Right then she preferred things that way--which wasn't like her--but the dim light reminded her of the old library. She wasn't sleepy, but she didn't want to get up, either. Instead, she lay in her favorite position, with her cheek against Giles's chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart--one of the most wonderful sensations she knew, a feeling that, with Angel, she hadn't even known she'd missed.

Giles had curled his left arm around her, cradling her body against his. His fingers stroked softly over her hair. Buffy wanted him to say something, but at the same time didn't. Giles was about as far from dumb as a person could get--he'd always read her at least as well as he could read one of his books, way better than she could read him. He had to know something was up, especially after her little shower scene. She might as well have hung a huge sign around her neck that said, "Buffy's wigging."

"I can't say what will happen," Giles told her at last, his chest humming under Buffy's cheek as he spoke. "You know, Buffy..." his voice caught just a little. "You know I never intended any of this."

Suddenly alarmed, Buffy flipped over onto her stomach, glaring up into his face. The oversized guy's shirt she'd worn to sleep in got tangled around her, but she didn't bother to straighten it out. "What are you saying?" she demanded, in a voice even she recognized as unreasonable. "Are you telling me you're staying here? That you're letting those...those Watchers...suck you back in?"

"Good heavens, Buffy! Why should you think that?" Giles sat up abruptly. His expression told Buffy clearly enough that she'd managed to completely offend him. "Worse yet, why should you say such a thing to me?"

"I didn't mean..." she started, but couldn't put into words exactly what it was she hadn't intended.

"Then, Buffy, what did you mean?" Talking with commas--never a good sign. Giles didn't raise his voice, of course, but really Buffy might have liked it better if he did. That would've meant he was being unreasonable right back at her. Instead she watched that hurt, almost bruised, look flood into his green eyes.

"I should have thought I'd proven my devotion before this," he added softly.

"I just thought you might...with your family's...that tradition stuff...and the Watchers being all short-handed and everything." Buffy knew she was making excuses, and even to her, the words sounded lame. She watched Giles's face, and could see him consciously hold the features still, do the grown-up thing, not overreact. "That was pretty much the stupidest thing I could have said, huh?"

Giles shrugged, giving her a tiny sliver of smile, that went away almost at once. He cupped her face with his open palm, smoothing his thumb over her cheek. "Ah, Buffy," he sighed. His other hand rose to her other cheek. He stooped a little to kiss her forehead, then lower to brush one of those meltingly sweet kisses against her lips, a kiss that didn't ask her for anything in return--though normally Buffy would have given her own back to him with everything she had. This time, though, she felt confused by Giles's expression--he looked sadder, to her, than could really be explained by the words she'd said.

"I'm sorry," Buffy told him, meaning it, even if she didn't completely understand. "That was dumb, what I asked you." She rose on her knees to kiss him in return, a little more deeply than before. "I bet that, even if they chained you up, you'd still be working out a way to make it back to me."

That got her more of a smile. Giles scooted up against the headboard and reached out his arms. Buffy wriggled into his lap, loving the way he embraced her, and the way the warm weight of his chin rested on the top of her head.

"I--" he began hesitantly. "I ought to have told you at once."

Buffy waited for him to continue, wondering what Giles could possibly mean.

"I..." he went on, if you could call it that. "There's a...a possibility..." He held Buffy tighter. "Ah, God," he said in complete anguish, "Buffy, I ought never to have touched you."

"WHAT?" Buffy jerked away. She couldn't believe it, she just couldn't. What the hell was he saying?

"Oh, my love--not that. Never that." Giles caught hold of both her hands, looking so deeply into her eyes Buffy couldn't believe he didn't read everything there: all the secrets she'd ever have, right up to the big, scary recent one, every single word that made up her soul. "Just now--" He pulled in a deep breath that could almost have been mistaken for a sob.

"There's a possibility that I've been infected with demon blood," Giles blurted out finally. "There was--" Gently, he took his hands from hers, spreading them open in front of her. They looked perfect, smooth and perfect, without even the little scars and nicks of his Ripper days, or all those years of Watcher training. Buffy ran her fingertips over his right palm, where the horrific gash that the Slayer-turned-vampire Helena had left him as a souvenir should have been.

"Did you notice," he asked, his usual calm, civilized Gilesness barely covering how scared he was underneath. "My--er--my back is the same? Healed. Entirely healed--and I can't think why, except that I was drenched in the demon's gore." He took another of those sobbing breaths. "Buffy, I can't help but thinking it may have effected a change in me. That I have been not so much cured as...altered."

He looked so miserable and so concerned that Buffy's heart went out to him. "Oh, Giles, no! It was the..." She ground to a stop. How could she tell him? To tell that secret would just mean trading one kind of fear for another, and his fear for her had always been ten times worse than his fear for himself.

Giles gave her one of his questioning looks, eyes wide and clear green as old glass. "It was the what, precisely, Buffy?"

She stared back at him, completely tongue-tied, until Giles started to look a little impatient--but before she was forced to answer, someone pounded on the door.

After giving her a different look, Giles pulled on the robe that had been left for him and, without making any sound, slid open the nightstand drawer, taking out an already-loaded mini-crossbow. That was her Giles, Buffy thought--near death and emotional turmoil still wasn't enough to make him forget his boyscout oath of "Be Prepared."

"Rupert!" Moira's voice called impatiently through the door. "Rupert, open up at once--it's of the utmost urgency!"

The crossbow balanced in his left hand, Giles undid the lock and twisted the knob with his right. As soon as the door opened, Moira blew into the room as if she'd been suddenly dropped out of a tornado.

"Expecting trouble?" she asked Giles, after a glance at the weapon.

He shrugged in return.

"Well, you ought." Moira crossed her arms over her chest--at first glance she seemed looked poised and confident, but when Buffy looked even a little bit harder, she could see how the lines around the older woman's eyes had deepened, and her mouth had thinned to a hard, straight line. Not a happy Moira, by any means.

"What happened?" Buffy asked, knowing that it probably wasn't anything she wanted to hear.

Moira glanced at her briefly, her emerald-green eyes all shadowy. "Rupert, we must go to the Hellmouth at once. Harker's reporting a disturbance there, one that may well be a breach."

Giles ran his hand over his face, the way he did when he was most tired and upset. "Has something come through?"

"It's..." Moira straightened, pushing her fingers back through her hair--her own version of the face-rubbing."It's thought there may be a connection with the demon Istirel's appearance yesterday. And, Rupert..." She raised her hand as if she wanted to touch him, but then stopped herself--not because she felt weird about the contact, but as if she might lose it completely if she experienced even that tiny human connection. "Rupert, we've found...I've no idea how to say this..."

Buffy moved closer to Giles, putting her hand on his back. She could feel the heat of his skin through the thin silk of the robe, and how, despite that, he was shivering.

"Who has died?" he asked, in that detached Watcher-voice that really meant he wasn't detached at all.

"Briggs," Moira answered, hardly louder than a whisper. "Mr. Briggs is dead."

"Briggs...? No, Em, that's impossible." Giles sounded completely rational, no one could have sounded calmer, but he'd gone dead white, and when Buffy steered him backward toward the bed, he sat down heavily on the edge.

"Did you hear what I said about the Hellmouth, Rupert?" Moira asked in her own version of that voice. She sleepwalked across the room to the wardrobe, and despite her zonedness, pulled out a perfectly coordinated guy-outfit in under ten seconds--but afterwards she just stood holding the clothes to her chest, as if they were some kind of security blanket.

"Briggs is dead?" Giles repeated finally, in such a soft tone Buffy could hardly hear.

"But he just..." Buffy began.

Moira and Giles traded looks, and for a minute Buffy felt like someone left outside in the cold, her nose pressed against the glass of a bookstore in which Moira and Giles knew every page of every volume by heart, and she couldn't even read the titles.

"I must..." Giles said vaguely. "I must..." He got up to take the clothing from her hands, returning from the bathroom less than five minutes later still stubbly, but fully dressed. He stood in the doorway, and Moira went to him, draping a maroon tie around his neck, then knotting it with care. Giles's face wore that frozenly pleasant expression that meant he was repressing as hard as he possibly could.

"I shall..." Giles cleared his throat and tried again. "I shall need to see the body."

"The Hellmouth--" Moira began, reaching out again as if she meant to touch his arm.

"Later," Giles told her, somehow managing to sound sharp without raising his voice or changing his tone. "Where?" he asked.

"We've left him--it--in situ for just now," Moira answered. "The third viewing room, at the Archives."

"Just so," Giles said, sounding more British than Buffy had ever heard him sound. The clothes he'd borrowed were too big, but he managed to carry them off with dignity. What worried Buffy was how closed-off he looked, as if there were thick black curtains over his soul, letting no light out and none in. He started to follow Moira out the door, but Buffy grabbed his sleeve and held him back.

"Moira, hold on a sec," she said, as Giles gave her a look like he'd just woken up. "In fact, go on ahead, we'll catch up."

Moira hesitated a second, but in the end, decent person that she was, closed the door behind her. Giles stood looking down at Buffy with that same expression of frozen niceness, and she had to fight the sudden urge to slap him, anything to make her own scared, cranky, real Giles appear once more. Somehow, though, she didn't think slapping was the answer--but maybe the truth would help.

"This is gonna sound harsh," Buffy said, talking fast so that she wouldn't lose her nerve. While she talked, she started putting on her nun-clothes again--anything but look at Giles right then, though she would have given a years allowance to have something else to wear. "But I saw Mr. Briggs just before you got up. Something that called itself Mr. Briggs, anyway. Little hedgehoggy guy, glasses, red eyes and sharp pointy teeth."

"Buffy?" At least Giles's face moved, creasing into a frown.

"You were dying," Buffy said. The whole weight of that hit her, and she froze with the gray jumper bunched up on her arms. Giles moved around behind her, gently pulling it over her head, lifting her hair out of the way so that he could do the zipper up the back. "You were dying, Giles," she whispered.

He put his arms around her from behind, holding her. "Yes," he said very quietly. "Curiously enough, it was very much as described--the voices calling one, the clear, welcoming light."

"I couldn't let you die."

Giles held her a little tighter. Buffy turned in his arms to face him, rubbing her cheek against his tweed-covered chest.

"So he--the little hedgehog man--said that if I gave him Clarice's rock and something else, he'd make you all better again. And that part must have been really real, because I have the other stuff, but not the rock."

Giles made a hmmning sound that went right through her.

"Then it got weird, because part of it was dreaming--like at first he looked like a regular guy, but in the dreaming part he had red eyes and pointy teeth. He served me tea in one of those old lady cups, and after I drank it, he said, 'Elizabeth, this seals the bargain.' He knew my real name."

"Well," Giles answered thoughtfully, "Mr. Briggs would do. He likely knows--knew--more about us than we know about ourselves. He--" his chest gave a little lurching shudder. "He was my friend. My closest friend in the Council, Moira excepted, since Mr. Merrick died."

"I'm sorry," Buffy pulled away a little, so that she could look up into his face. There was a bit of a lost-boy look in Giles's eyes, but the rest of him was under control, so under control it almost worried her. "What I saw, then...that wasn't your friend."

Giles raised a hand to rub his jaw. "No, dearest. Most likely not."

"How bad do you think I screwed up? Assuming that part wasn't a dream or anything."

"Much as I appreciate your concern for me, Buffy--you took a tremendous risk, the repercussions of which remain to be seen."

"That bad, huh?"

"I'll need to research--" Giles began. Despite the tension, Buffy couldn't help but smile. That was just so him.

"You'll consult your books?" she asked--which got a little bit of a smile from Giles in return, one that disappeared again when Moira rapped sharply on the door, then opened it again.

"Buffy? Rupert? Did you plan to come along any time today?"

"We're with you," Buffy answered, curling her small hand around Giles's big one. "We'll come through this," she whispered to him, "The same way we always do."

Giles looked down at her and nodded, but there was still a funny look in his eyes.